In 1892 Fall River, Massachusetts, Lizzie Borden, Chloë Sevigny, a 32-year-old woman, lives under the domineering rule of her father, Andrew Borden, Jamey Sheridan, and his wife Abby, Fiona Shaw, sharing a tense dynamic with her elder sister Emma Borden, Kim Dickens. The household feels stifling, not just from bosses and expectations but from the shadows of a community that watches their every move. Into this carefully maintained world arrives Bridget “Maggie” Sullivan, an Irish immigrant who takes a job as a servant, and whose arrival begins to loosen Lizzie’s tightly wound daily routine. Bridget, Kristen Stewart, is earnest and hopeful, and Lizzie, sensing a chance for change, quickly forms a close bond with her, even as she guides Bridget toward literacy and a sense of autonomy that had long eluded her.
As the days unfold, the house becomes a stage for intrusions—trespassers, unsettling notes, and threats that Lizzie suspects are tied to Andrew’s recent land purchases and the shifting power within the family. Lizzie overhears a private conversation between her father and Uncle John, the town constable, Denis O’Hare, in which Andrew hints that his estate will pass to Abby rather than to his daughters. The tension mounts when Lizzie acts on a desperate impulse: she raids Abby’s jewelry box and hawks its contents at a local pawnbroker, a choice that enrages Andrew and leads him to retaliate in a brutal way—killing Lizzie’s pet pigeons and forcing Bridget to prepare them for dinner. The household’s fragility becomes clear, and Bridget’s world—still fragile, still hopeful—begins to tilt under the weight of hidden resentments.
A new strain of fear enters when a letter from Ireland arrives for Bridget, delivered just as Bridget learns of her母’s death. Late one night, Lizzie discovers Andrew sexually assaulting Bridget in the attic servants’ quarters, an accusation that shatters any remaining illusion of safety. In a moment of shock, Lizzie smashes a hand mirror in her bedroom and flings the broken glass toward Bridget’s door, leaving a literal mark on the path of their fear. Andrew, sensing vulnerability, cuts his feet on the glass as he leaves. From this point, Lizzie and Bridget’s bond deepens into a perilous romance—one that Lizzie guards with a mix of tenderness and secrecy as Bridget, now able to write, begins to exchange letters with Lizzie across the house.
Complications compound when Uncle John’s threatening notes grow more personal, and Lizzie confronts him only to witness him assault her—an assault Bridget also witnesses. The danger of their relationship leaks into the public sphere: Andrew discovers Lizzie and Bridget together in the barn, and in the aftermath, he brands Lizzie an abomination and forbids any further contact, even as Bridget remains loyal and supportive. In a bid to reclaim some control, Lizzie destroys evidence of the will she fears will deny her a share of the family’s wealth by burning Andrew’s will on the kitchen stove, a moment that crystallizes the stakes for both sisters.
The following day, tragedy erupts: Andrew and Abby are found dead in the house, each bludgeoned with a hatchet. Authorities quickly turn their suspicions toward Lizzie, though Emma swears her sister’s innocence. Lizzie faces a tense, closed trial, while Bridget visits in jail and, after a final farewell, boards a train to Montana, asking Lizzie to end all contact. A climactic flashback reveals the murders in their full, horrifying complexity: Lizzie and Bridget stage a sequence of events in which Abby is killed inside her room, Bridget is present yet hesitant in the den, and Lizzie ultimately finishes Andrew with the hatchet. The crime is completed with the grisly act of cutting and disposing of the murder weapon and cleaning up the evidence, signaling a calculated act of survival that will define Lizzie’s life.
In the courtroom, Lizzie is ultimately acquitted, but the verdict does little to mend her standing in Fall River. She remains a social outcast, estranged from Emma, and she spends the rest of her life in the town she once sought to reform. After her death at 66, she leaves the majority of her estate to the local humane society, a final, quiet statement of a life lived under scrutiny and rumor. Bridget, who chose Montana over the chaos of the memory of Fall River, stays there for the remainder of her life, living to the age of 82 and preserving a personal history that intertwined deeply with Lizzie’s. The story lingers as a portrait of power, longing, violence, and the fragile line between protection and control, told through a lens that centers on two women navigating a world that wants to define them by the shadows of their choices.
