Hard times plague John Nada (Roddy Piper), a construction foreman who finds himself perpetually down on his luck. One day he finds a pair of special sunglasses that allow him to see things and people for who and what they truly are. He sees that the world is not colorful, but truly a black and white shaded wasteland. Even more frightening to John, he sees through the glasses that most people have the faces of aliens and that these aliens come from the Andromeda galaxy. He discovers that the messages he sees through the sunglasses are directed at the true humans and that the messages are the aliens' way of controlling the human population without the human's knowledge. John takes up the cause to find other humans who know the truth and to fight for humanity's survival.