Scream Bloody Murder

A young Matthew accidentally starts his father's tractor while he works the land. The tractor fatally wounds his father and mangles Matthew's left hand, which is replaced by a brutal hook. This incident marks the first step into the dark spiral that follows.

He is placed in a psychiatric hospital, where the injury and his growing detachment become central to his identity. The hospital environment frames his relationship with trauma and sets the tone for his later actions. The memory of the accident haunts him as he tries to make sense of himself.

Upon turning eighteen, Matthew is released and returns home to a world that has shifted in his absence. His mother has remarried their neighbor, Mack Parsons, altering the family dynamic he re-enters.

The boy now grown develops unsettling, almost forbidden feelings toward his mother and experiences an odd aversion to sex that clouds his impulses. These contradictions distort his sense of self and fuel his later violence.

When he confronts Parsons, Matthew's resentment erupts into violence, and he murders the neighbor with an axe. The act marks the first explicit escalation of his brutal impulses.

An argument with his mother escalates at home, and she dies after being knocked to the ground and hitting her head on a rock. The tragedy deepens Matthew's disconnection from reality and magnifies his guilt.

The following morning, Matthew hitchhikes with a young couple. He murders the man by beating his head with a rock and drowns the woman in a roadside stream. The violence marks a widening spiral in his acts.

In a town he encounters Vera, a painter and prostitute who embodies a maternal image for him. The encounter intensifies his fixation and deepens his unsettling blend of desire and control.

He murders a drunken sailor who visits Vera's circle, an act that foreshadows the extent of his obsession and his slipping grip on reality.

He fraudulently gains entry to a grand mansion and murders the owner with a pillow, slashes a maid with a cleaver, and even beheads the resident's dog. The brutality expands his violence into a perverse display of power and arousal.

With Vera now at the center of his warped world, he brings her to the mansion and imagines a shared life together. When Vera resists, he imprisons her and tries to force a domestic life upon them.

Vera's manipulation exposes Matthew's deep-seated disgust with sexuality; she provokes him to attempt sex, and when a doctor visits the house, he bludgeons the man. The act demonstrates his inability to regulate his impulses.

In a final, brutal moment, he catches Vera as she tries to escape and rips her throat out with his hook. The murder seals his descent into a void of guilt and denial.

After Vera's death, Matthew roams the town haunted by hallucinatory specters of those he's killed. He breaks into a church and, surrounded by phantoms, uses his hook to end his own life.