A gay man whose life is already in shambles attracts the interest of a young female serial killer who murders people around him, focusing suspicion on him while forcing a reckoning with his dark impulses.

SYNOPSIS:

Chase Midden (35) finds his husband Seth having sex with his best friend Jillian. They claim they cheated because Chase seems to lack a personality outside of his work. Later, commiserating with his friend Rodney at a gay bar, Chase meets April Day (24), who buys the friends many drinks and gets Chase to record a video in which he expresses his violent thoughts about Jillian. Chase wakes up in the morning not knowing how he got home, but the living room TV is playing the video of his violent wishes on a loop, and Jillian’s mutilated corpse is on his sofa.

Although the police doubt April’s existence, their evidence is inconclusive, so they don’t arrest Chase, who relocates to a hotel. April finds him there, and at gunpoint, she explains that her behavior was, at least in part, Machiavellian: she used Chase and Jillian as a means to satisfy an unrelated desire, which, for her, justified the killing. She leaves, and Chase and Rodney search for her, learning little. Walking to Rodney’s car, Chase and Rodney cut through an alley, where April attacks and knocks them both unconscious. Chase awakes and finds Rodney slaughtered like Jillian, and he again seems like the culprit. Further, April has threatened Seth, whom Chase rushes to warn. Seth has Chase taken away by police. At the police station, April shows up again, posing as a lawyer. She explains that she’s a psychopath who has trouble connecting with people—but she and Chase will be friends. Again, Chase is not under arrest, so he is still free, but he knows his time is short. He goes on the run.

Staying in touch with Seth, who increasingly regrets rejecting him, Chase moves from motel to motel with April on his heels. At one motel, April drugs Chase again and forces him to watch her torture and murder a motel worker as she proudly claims the title of sadist. Chase feels his mind deteriorating, even wondering, like Seth and the police, whether April might be a figment of his imagination. At another motel, April arrives with vodka, and Chase lets her in. She explains that they’re both narcissists, and narcissism—along with Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and sadism—is the fourth “pillar” of the Dark Tetrad, a cluster of personality traits associated with socially averse, dangerous people. Drugged again, Chase awakes and discovers that April has murdered an entire family in the motel parking lot. He flees and meets April at a prearranged location before following her home. The Dark Tetrad, she reveals, is something she aspires to—and something she sees in Chase. Quicker to believe than she anticipated, he kills her. He arranges to meet Seth and, as April has long wanted him to do, butchers him, fully embracing the new dimensions of the personality that April has awakened.

_The Dark Tetrad_ won Best Thriller/Horror Script in the Hollywood Dreams IFF, was a finalist in the Boston Screenplay Awards, was a quarter-finalist in the Miami Screenplay Awards, and was a selection in the Marina del Rey FF, all in 2021.