Macabre

Jane is a married mother living in New Orleans who carries on an affair with Fred behind her husband and children's backs. She maintains the relationship in secrecy, creates a shrine to Fred in her boardinghouse apartment, and guards her complicity with increasing paranoia. Her moral boundaries erode as the danger of her actions expands and violence seems inevitable.

Leslie is Jane's husband, largely unaware of the affair for most of the story. He presents as a conventional family man who tries to maintain appearances while the truth unfolds. The revelation of the affair and its consequences shatters his sense of security and family life.

Fred is Jane's lover, whose clandestine relationship with Jane ends when he dies in a car crash after their encounter. His severed head later becomes a macabre symbol that haunts the characters and fuels the horror. He remains a memory that drives the ensuing acts of deception and violence.

Robert is Mrs. Duval's blind son who runs the boardinghouse and grows suspicious of Jane’s past. He investigates the strange happenings around the apartment and ultimately becomes a pivotal force in the film’s climax.

Lucy is Jane's adolescent daughter who suspects her mother's infidelity. She murders her younger brother Michael and later uses flesh from Fred's severed head in a soup, exposing her ruthless side. Her confrontation with Jane ends with Lucy's death at Jane's hands.

Mrs. Duval is the boardinghouse owner whose death in the intervening year leaves Robert to manage the house alone. She is a backdrop to the story’s social setting, maintaining the environment in which all the events unfold.

Mr. Wells is a boarder at the Duval boardinghouse who appears in the house’s social life but remains a minor figure in the plot.