Documentary filmmaker David Leigh Leigh sets out to uncover the truth behind a string of murders tied to a cable-access show called Fact or Fiction. The case centers on two on-air figures whose lives become entwined with Leigh’s pursuit of answers: Steven Stefan Avalos Avkast and Locus Lance Weiler Wheeler, whose public intrigue masks darker secrets. Leigh’s mission to tell the real story through his documentary is complicated by the show’s own fragility—its popularity wanes as the investigations deepen, threatening imminent cancellation and forcing Leigh to push his project forward against mounting pressure.
Fact or Fiction evolves from entertainment into a perilous investigation, and Avkast launches the idea of a live IRC segment to ignite renewed interest. A caller propels the team toward the Jersey Devil, a mythic figure associated with the Pine Barrens, prompting the group to recruit Rein Rein Clabbers Clackin, a paranormal-sound man, and Jim Jim Seward Suerd, a psychic. Leigh later voices doubts about Suerd’s stability, but the plan is set: travel to the Pine Barrens, guided by Suerd, and broadcast the expedition live across television, the Internet, and amateur radio.
They trek into the Barrens with the aim of locating the Jersey Devil, and the journey unfolds as a high-stakes broadcast. As the hunt intensifies, only Suerd returns from the perilous expedition; the others are brutally murdered, and Avkast’s body is never recovered. The prosecution builds its case around the surviving footage, curated by a video engineer nicknamed “The Killer Cutter,” to argue that Suerd alone could be responsible for the murders. Leigh recounts the trial, noting that while Suerd is convicted, some observers doubt his guilt—crucial details include the absence of blood on Suerd’s clothes and his alleged IRC activity at the times of the killings.
After the verdict, a damaged videotape arrives, and Leigh hires data retrieval expert Michelle Michele Pulaski Monarch to reconstruct what the tape shows. Monarch’s reconstruction gradually reveals the killer’s face, suggesting a shocking possibility: the person on the tape is Leigh himself. The documentary’s perspective shifts as the footage seems to bend away from Leigh’s narrative and toward his own involvement, casting doubt on everything Leigh has documented.
From a third-person vantage point, the film reveals Leigh’s actions in a chilling turn. The narrative endgame shows Leigh attacking Monarch and suffocating her with a piece of plastic sheeting, then loading her body into his car and driving into the woods to continue narrating the next segment of his “documentary.” The unthinkable twist redefines the entire investigation, turning Leigh’s meticulous inquiry into a trap that ensnares the very person at the center of the story.
