Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire are three intelligent young children who receive terrible news that their parents have died in a fire and have left them an enormous fortune not to be used until the eldest child is of age. When they are sent to live with Count Olaf, a greedy distant relative, they soon learn he is trying to steal their fortune for himself.

This is the story of the Bauedelaires, three young orphans, Violet, Klaus and Sunny, looking for a new home, who are taken in by a series of odd relatives and other people, including Lemony Snicket, who narrates the film, and starting with the cunning and dastardly Count Olaf, who hopes to snatch their inheritance from them. Violet is the oldest of the Baudelaires at 14, and is their brave and fast-thinking leader. The only boy is middle child Klaus, 12, who is intensely intelligent and obsessed with words. The youngest is infant Sunny, who speaks in a language only her siblings can understand, and she has a tendency to, bite...

After the tragic death of their parents, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire travel from guardian to guardian by a good friend of their parents, Mr. Poe. The orphans stay with herpetologist Montgomery Montgomery and grammar-wise Josephine Anwhistle, but the worst one was Count Olaf, an evil and greedy man, who, with the help of his assistants, the bald man, the hook-handed man, the person of indeterminable gender, and the two white-faced women, tries to steal the Baudelaire fortune. To do this, he disguises himself in the forms of assistant, Stephano, and ship captain, Julio Sham.