Three stories of human treachery are given an unexpected link in this dry comedy drama from Icelandic filmmaker Baltasar Kormákur. Holt (Forest Whitaker) is an insurance investigator who is sent to Minnesota to look into a bus accident; the bus seems to have had significantly more passengers after it crashed than it had when it left the station, and Holt, posing as a police detective, needs to know who is telling the truth and who is attempting to cash in on the tragedy. Later, Holt is back on the job, when a badly burned body is found in a wrecked car, and the ID on the corpse indicates the victim was a small-time con artist with a police record.

The victim's sister, Isold (Julia Stiles), claims that her brother's accident happened after his gas tank was drained and he was struggling to make his way home on a stormy night, but Holt isn't buying it; and Isold's husband, Fred (Jeremy Renner), and son, Thor (Alfred Harmsworth), don't seem especially trustworthy. Finally, a man and a woman struggle to make their way to shore after their car sails off a cliff into a body of water. While they seem grateful to make it back to dry land, it seems the woman has reason to be unhappy with her mate when she viciously attacks him. Who are these people, and what is their story?

A Little Trip to Heaven received its North American premier at the 2005 Toronto Film Festival.