Bruce and his two followers, Craig and Paul, bully Spooner, a skinny high school student. David, a new kid at the school, walks over to ask Spooner where the student lounge is, but Bruce tells him to get lost. David asks if Spooner will back him up but Spooner tells David to mind his own business. Bruce lets Spooner go and David walks away. David can’t get anyone to direct him to the student lounge until he meets Theresa. After she gives him directions, David tells Theresa he would like to see her again and she says maybe. He finds the lounge and is greeted by his old friend Mark, who introduces him to the three boys who were bullying Spooner. While giving David a tour of the school, Mark explains that he is one of the big men on campus and neither he nor David have to worry about getting beat up like in their last school. Mark says he owes David and, if David stops being a loner, Mark can make life easy for him. In the student parking lot, Mark introduces his girlfriend, Theresa, to David. After she leaves, Bruce and the gang come up and argue about what to do after school. Mark wants to show David around, but Bruce wants to hang glide. An old Ford Mustang drives by belching smoke and backfiring. The five boys jump in a van and chase the Mustang until they cut it off. Bruce tells Rodney, the driver of the Mustang, that they have to make sure his car is safe. Pushing Rodney out of the driver’s seat, Bruce and his buddies all pile in. Bruce puts the car through its paces, driving into barrels, backing into a wall and driving over cement barriers. They leave Rodney in tears with a wrecked car. Over the next few days, David watches as Mark and his friends terrorize the school. They pull a knife on Oscar, an overweight underclassman, to scare him into climbing a rope. They force everyone out of the school’s pool when Craig wants to practice his high diving. They verbally abuse Mary and Jane, two of Theresa’s friends, by saying they need sex and that the girls are lesbians. They then beat up Artie, a deaf kid who works at the library, for trying to collect late fees. David has seen enough and confronts Mark, who says they have a good thing going. He tells David to go with the flow or he will be treated like all the other losers. The next morning, David sees Rodney hitchhiking and insists that he accept a ride. When David asks about the Mustang, Rodney explains it is a total wreck and he doesn’t have money for a new one. David offers to help him fix it. At school, David asks Spooner to stand up to the bullies, but Spooner says that will only make things worse. Artie says the same thing. No one will back David. Meanwhile, Craig, Paul and Bruce decide to rape Mary and Jane. They drag the girls into a classroom, but Theresa comes in. Bruce tells her she is lucky to be Mark’s girl, and throws her into the hall. David sees Theresa fall and hears the girls' screams. He bursts into the room and beats up Craig and Bruce while Mary and Jane pummel Paul. Later, Mark convinces Bruce to give David one more chance. They spot David’s jeep by the beach and Mark finds Theresa and David skinny-dipping. Bruce offers a plan to put David in his place, but Mark wants no part of it, claiming to still be David’s friend. The next day, the boys find David working under Rodney’s car. When David refuses to come out, Bruce kicks the carjack and the car falls, crushing David’s leg. Weeks later, David comes back to school with a permanent limp. Bruce thanks David for not telling the authorities about the car incident. A few days later, David sabotages Bruce’s hang glider, causing Bruce to fly into a power line and get electrocuted. Next, David find’s a note saying the school pool is closed for cleaning. That night, David kills the lights as Craig arrives to practice high diving. Craig decides to dive in the dark and breaks his neck when he hits the bottom of an empty pool. A few days later, the students rise up and tell Paul and Mark their days of rule are over. Paul, Mark and Theresa go to the beach to decide what to do. Mark wants to lay low, but Paul says he isn’t going to die without a fight. He grabs his surfboard and climbs the cliff to his van. When he opens the door, David knocks him out, drags him into the van, and then pushes the vehicle over the cliff. Mark arrives in time to see the van explode. He tells David that he knows he is the killer, but he won’t turn David in because he feels guilty about David’s leg. David says not to pity him and that Mark is next. That night, Theresa goes to David’s bedroom and begs him not to kill Mark. David tells her that she and Mark are safe. The school changes after the bullies’ deaths. At first, all the students are supportive of each other, but soon new bullies emerge. Arthur and Spooner start rival gangs and try to make alliances with David to rule the school. David is in the parking lot when Rodney drives up in Bruce’s car. He explains that Bruce’s parents sold it to him cheap to get rid of it. He tells David that a revolution is coming where poor kids like him and David will rise up. Rodney then walks up to another student’s sports car and kicks out the headlights. The next day, Spooner goes to argue with Arthur about who is the new school leader. Arthur has turned off his hearing aid, but when he turns it on, pain shoots through his head, his ears bleed and he drops dead. Later, Oscar opens his locker and is blown to smithereens. In the parking lot, Rodney starts his car and it also explodes. Spooner tells Mary and Jane they should run away until all the craziness is over. They make camp in the desert. One morning, Jane finds some dynamite and Spooner tosses it away. They join Mary in the tent for sex when an explosion causes a rockslide that buries them. The police think Spooner was the killer and accidently blew himself up, but Mark and Theresa know better. They drive to David’s house and Mark takes out a pistol. He tells Theresa to stay in the car and goes in to confront David. Holding the gun on David, Mark says he knows why David killed the bullies, but wants to know why David also killed the other students. David says it’s because after he got rid of the bullies the other kids were even worse. Theresa comes in, distracting Mark. David grabs the gun and then locks them in the garage. Mark and Theresa eventually escape and go to the school gym where a student alumni dance is being held. When David sees Theresa, he tells her she has three minutes to get out. She refuses to leave and dances with Mark. David runs to boiler room, grabs the bomb and runs outside with it. The bomb blows up, leaving nothing of David behind. Theresa tells Mark that they will say Spooner left one more bomb.