And Soon the Darkness

Jane and Cathy share a midday meal in a busy rural French restaurant. They notice a handsome man drinking alone at the adjacent table. Shortly after, the women depart and the man leaves on a Lambretta scooter, signaling the start of a tension-filled encounter.

On a country road surrounded by farmland, the man on the scooter passes the women. Several minutes later, they pass by him again as he rests by a cemetery. The uneasy chase foreshadows danger to come.

In a small village, the man reappears and the women glimpse him again. Cathy grows tired and stops to sunbathe in a wooded area along the road, while Jane argues about the itinerary. The disagreement ends with Jane deciding to continue the journey alone.

Jane reaches a rural roadside cafe and asks for help. Madame Lassal warns that the area is dangerous for a lone traveler and urges Jane to leave. The warning compounds the sense that Cathy may be in peril.

Still sunbathing, Cathy becomes unnerved as she senses she is being watched. When she attempts to leave, someone destroys the wheel of her bicycle and an unseen assailant confronts her. The danger to Cathy is immediate and personal.

Jane returns to the sunbathing spot and finds no sign of Cathy except her camera lying in the grass. Moments later, the man they had seen earlier stops along the road and introduces himself as Paul. He offers Jane a ride back to the village as she searches for Cathy.

While questioning locals in the village, Jane learns of an unsolved rape and murder from three years earlier, described by an English schoolmistress as a scandal. The case casts a long shadow over the area and hints at hidden danger. The new information intensifies Jane's resolve to find Cathy.

The schoolmistress agrees to drive part-way toward the gendarme as Jane pleads for help. En route, she explains that the murder occurred in the same wooded area where Cathy disappeared, linking the past crime to the present disappearance.

Unable to locate the gendarme, Jane returns to the roadside cafe and asks Madame Lassal for help once more. Paul then reveals he once worked for the Surete and has privately studied Cathy's case, which leads to a dispute when Jane discovers he has taken Cathy's film as evidence.

Jane locates the gendarme's residence and explains the disappearances to him; the gendarme leaves to investigate while Jane waits. Paul arrives at the house, but Jane refuses to open the door, escalating the tension.

Paul breaks into the gendarme's home, prompting Jane to flee into the woods. She stumbles upon an abandoned trailer park, hides in a camper, and discovers Cathy's corpse.

Paul corners Jane in the woods and she fights back, striking him in the face with a rock to defend herself. The struggle heightens the peril surrounding both the search for Cathy and Jane's safety.

At the edge of the abandoned trailer park, Jane finds the gendarme, who begins to fondle her. He then sexually assaults her, and Paul, though injured, arrives and hits the gendarme with a large branch, ending the assault.