Plot

A free-spirited 15-year-old girl flirts with a dangerous stranger in the Northern California suburbs and must prepare herself for the frightening and traumatic consequences.

Free-spirited 15-year-old Connie Wyatt is too young to drive, but not too young to drive the boys crazy. She also wants to escape the boredom of family farm life. Her suspicious mother wants to keep her safely at home, but she wants to while away the languid summer days hanging out with her friends and flirting with boys at the local burger stand. But when she flirts with a mysterious, handsome stranger named Arnold Friend, she finds herself in danger and must prepare herself for the frightening, traumatic consequences. Based on the short story "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?" by Joyce Carol Oates.—MGM/UA Home Video

Connie Wyatt (Laura Dern) is a free-spirited 15-year-old who is anxious to explore the pleasures of her sexual awakening. Before she enters her sophomore year, she spends the summer moping around her family farmhouse. She suffers from the put-downs of her mother, Katherine (Mary Kay Place), while hearing nothing but praise for her older sister, June (Elizabeth Berridge). However, her father, Harry (Levon Helm), somehow manages to float around the family tensions. Connie also helps paint the cottage, just as her mother constantly demands.

Connie passes the time cruising down the local shopping mall with her friends and flirting with boys. However, when an actual date leads to heavy petting, she escapes from the boy's car. She frequents a hamburger drive-in popular with locals, where without her knowledge, an older man (Treat Williams) observes her with interest. One night as she leaves, the man in a sportive demeanor informs Connie "I'm watching you!" and proves this soon after. Connie and her mother get into an argument about her going out at night and being careful with whom she flirts, which results in Katherine slapping Connie when she brings up how Katherine became a young mother. Connie declines to attend a barbecue with her family that afternoon and is abandoned in the house.

Later, the same man who was watching Connie approaches the house in a 1960s hot rod. The side of his car is painted with "Arnold Friend" which he claims is his real name. Besides dressing and behaving like James Dean, he also name-drops several teenybopper acts, even though he appears to be in his thirties. Although he initially comes off as kind and friendly, he gradually adopts a sinister demeanor, alternating between speaking Connie in a warn, seductive voice and shouting insults to his fellow car passenger when he inquires about a phone. Arnold informs Connie about how he has been watching and that he knows all about her, recounting the details of her family's barbecue plans with shocking accuracy. He then begin speaking about how he could be her lover. Connie orders him to leave, but he coerces her into going on a drive with him by threatening to burn the house down. His friend remains behind, supposedly to watch over the house as they head off into his car.

When Connie returns home, she is bewildered and disheveled and informs Arnold that she never wants to see him again. It remains ambiguous whether or not he raped her once she accepted her fate; it is implied that she isn't the same person she was at the film's beginning. When Connie's family returns from the barbecue, her mother apologizes to her weeping for slapping her earlier that day, but Connie reassures her that everything is all right. At the film's ending, she doesn't inform June about what happened, but dances with her to James Taylor's recording of the song "Handy Man".