Balthazar Malone, Avan Jogia, is the teenage scion of a wealthy, politically connected New York City family. He spends his evenings producing social media videos that dramatize the fear surrounding gun violence in schools, a topic he treats with a performative intensity designed to draw views and reactions. When one of his posts receives a sharply sardonic reply from a user named "deathdealer_16," he escalates his online activity by sending direct messages in hopes of uncovering who the person might be. His search becomes personal when he grows convinced that this anonymous user is planning a school shooting, a fear that threads through his every action and social circle.
Meanwhile, Balthazar’s world is thrown into sharper relief during a private company–run, hyper-controlled school shooting drill. As his classmates participate, he becomes increasingly fixated on Eleanor, a vociferous student activist who bluntly rejects America’s gun culture. To impress her, he shows her his inflammatory posts, the suspicious messages from "deathdealer_16," and even footage said to be from a real Arkansas school shooting. A moment of intimate connection is attempted when Balthazar leans in to kiss her, only to be met with Eleanor’s chilly rebuke and a firm exit. He then tries to trap the person behind the threat by feigning openness and curiosity, aligning himself with a dangerous path of deception that will pull others into his orbit.
The story widens as the online persona "deathdealer_16" turns out to be Solomon Jackson, a troubled young man living in a Texas trailer park with his disabled grandmother. Solomon is portrayed as a maladjusted loner, socially offputting and quick to temper. He has just reconnected with his absent father, Beaver, a drug addict who previously worked in the adult industry and who now ropes Solomon into a pyramid scheme selling testosterone supplements. After paying for a trial supply, Solomon’s hopes to prove himself fall flat when he cannot sell any product. His circumstances grow tougher: rent rises in the trailer park, and he is fired from a gas station job after a confrontation with a female coworker. Yet his online chats with the Terra persona kindle a dangerous sense of possibility, especially when he believes Terra intends to meet him in person.
When Balthazar reappears in Solomon’s life in Texas, both are drawn into a fragile, coercive bond. Solomon presents a packed room of guns and a scrapbook of past ideological “phases,” showing off his weaponry and his father’s supplement business as a way to lure Balthazar into collaboration. He pressures Balthazar to sign for an order, insinuating that failure to do so would endanger others, a tactic that reveals how fear and manipulation intertwine in his world. The two men wander into a dangerous dynamic, with Solomon asking Balthazar to cry as he does in his videos, trying to train him to mimic the performance that has kept Solomon’s own life afloat in social and economic terms. The plan to demonstrate a shooting at a local school becomes a shared fantasy, a chance to prove their power to themselves and to the people they watch online.
The pair’s journey takes them to a gas station and later to a school, where the supposed plan is pitched as a practical demonstration. Balthazar—carried along by Solomon’s insistence that he has friends and influence—begins to understand the gravity of what is being discussed, even as he toys with the idea of violent posturing. When Taylor, Solomon’s coworker, ridicules their efforts, the facade begins to crumble. A trip to meet Beaver in a bar follows, where Balthazar starts to see the real danger: Solomon’s grandiose ambitions are a fragile front for the deeper, more coercive needs of a desperate man trying to secure a sense of belonging and control.
The tension culminates when Beaver’s grip tightens and the two boys return to the trailer for one final confrontation. Solomon wants to demonstrate his control and test Balthazar’s loyalty, but the tension erupts into violence that spills beyond the room. A stray shot mortally wounds Solomon’s grandmother, intensifying the stakes and pushing both boys toward a terrifying final act. The chase through the trailer park ends when Balthazar, forced into a corner, shoots Solomon in the head as police close in. With the scene resolved, authorities gather the evidence and the narrative’s truth becomes a matter of perspective. The aftermath sees Balthazar back in New York City, where he gives a television interview about his experience, projecting a carefully curated version of events that frames it as part of the ongoing struggle in which young people are asked to fight for their lives.
Across these parallel arcs, the film examines how online personas, real-life traumas, and the impulse to seek validation in dangerous ways can collide with the responsibilities we owe one another. It questions the line between performance and reality, and it challenges viewers to consider how easily fear can be weaponized when access to information, influence, and personal connections becomes a form of power. The characters’ journeys—one through the glitter and peril of urban privilege, the other through a harsh, marginalized existence—intersect in ways that reveal both vulnerability and volatility, ending with a reckoning that reverberates far beyond the trailer park and the city’s glittering towers.
