Following the death of his wife in the early 1970s, television personality John Leary relocates to Oakland, California, with his two sons: twelve-year-old Jack and three-year-old Dylan. Due to his job hosting the late-night horror movie program, Midnight Shriek, Leary quickly gains popularity among the eccentric neighborhood children, who believe in monsters and live in fear of their crippled neighbor, Norman Strick. One evening, the children spray-paint Norman’s front stoop, but are frightened away by his vicious dog. As Jack sneaks back to bed, Norman arrives at the Leary household with his foot bloodied. Without revealing Jack’s involvement in the prank, Norman claims to have cut himself while investigating a noise in his yard, and Leary takes him to the hospital. Over time, Leary’s former in-laws become increasingly critical of his heavy drinking and his decision to leave the boys with a babysitter while he is at work. On the first day of the new school year, Leary oversleeps, forcing Jack to take a tearful Dylan to preschool. Tragedy strikes the neighborhood when the grandmother and guardian of a child named Dexter Mitchell dies of a drug overdose. The incident reminds Leary of his responsibilities as a parent, and he resolves to walk his sons to school every day. When a girl named Karen Morris shows romantic interest in Jack, he invites her over for dinner. After the meal, Leary leads them in a series of games, and Jack shyly kisses Karen goodnight. As the young lovers grow closer and the Oakland Athletics win the World Series, Jack believes “everything is falling into place.” On Halloween, Jack decides he is too mature to go trick-or-treating in costume, and opts to pass out candy at home instead. After visiting with Norman Strick, Dexter Mitchell shows up at the Leary house dressed in a Nazi uniform. Horrified, Jack immediately tells his father, who remains skeptical until Norman knocks on the door collecting campaign contributions for a Neo-Nazi state assembly candidate. Just then, the Learys’ black babysitter enters the house, and Jack closes the door in Norman’s face. That night on his television show, Leary goes on a drunken tirade lambasting Norman’s beliefs. The next morning, Jack finds Norman’s dog poisoned on their front lawn, and police wrongly suspect Leary. In the following weeks, Leary’s producer suspends him from the show, and Karen breaks up with Jack. Embarrassed by his father’s behavior, Jack implores him to start acting like an adult. Instead, Leary withdraws, leaving Jack to tend to his younger brother. One afternoon, Dylan and Dexter watch television while Jack retreats to the attic to cry about the loss of his mother. Upon his return, Dexter announces that Norman kidnapped Dylan and drove away in a white car. Police investigate, and Leary speaks about the issue to the viewers of his television show. As tension settles over the house, Jack remembers the argument between his parents that preceded his mother’s death in a car accident. A few days later, Leary and Jack learn that Dylan has been found in a muddy creek across town. After three days in the hospital, the boy is allowed to return home, but he refuses to speak. Meanwhile, stress causes Jack to lash out at his schoolteacher, and Leary loses his temper with his in-laws. Finally cracking, he goes to the Strick house and threatens Norman’s elderly parents with a baseball bat, beating dents into Norman’s prized Thunderbird convertible. As a result, the Leary children are sent to stay with their grandparents in Los Angeles, California. Miserable there, Jack books a one-way airplane ticket back to Oakland to retrieve his father, whose anguish has caused him to struggle at work. Late that night, Leary returns home and begins fixing a sandwich, unaware that his son is asleep upstairs. In the basement, Norman secretly cuts the power line, pitching the house into darkness. Jack hears the intruder, but mistakenly clubs his father on the head, knocking him unconscious. Norman emerges from the hall closet and chases the boy out the upstairs bathroom window. Jack becomes trapped on a tree branch, but Norman loses his footing and falls among a pack of ferocious dogs in the yard below. Sometime later, Leary cleans up the house for Dylan’s homecoming. Although he continues his job as a “creature-feature” host, he refuses to play-act as a monster for the neighborhood children. One night, Jack plays his mother’s favorite song on the piano and begins to sob, uncertain about their family’s future. Dylan approaches and speaks aloud for the first time since his recovery, identifying the name of the song as “Jack the Bear.” In time, Leary watches as his sons resume their lives and play in the yard with their friends.