It's Birmingham, England in 1986 and Billy Zero has just walked out the hospital after trying to kill himself at the age of twenty-three. Amid ceaseless drinking in seedy nightclubs, backstreet bars, drug-fuelled parties and long, amphetamine charged nights punctured by his sense of demented loneliness, Billy Zero is sifting through the pieces of his broken life, compulsively searching for love and cheap thrills in an effort to assuage his feelings of alienation. With its frenetic and chopped-up narrative, 'Black Cradle' backtracks the grotesque personal life of Billy and his freakshow of bored and bewildered friends - fusing together the grim omens of his rootless childhood and the brutal events leading up to his suicide attempt.