The Most Assassinated Woman in the World

Paula Maxa is a leading actress at the Grand Guignol in Paris, famed for on-stage deaths and ultra-realistic gore. The theatre’s director builds its legend on gruesome effects that shock audiences, while Paula embraces her notoriety as the 'most assassinated woman in the world'. This is the world in which the story begins.

Journalist Jean from Le Petit Journal is tasked with writing a critique of Paula’s performances. He arrives at the theatre and is handed a bouquet by a costar to deliver to Paula, triggering a tense, curious exchange between journalist and actress. The meeting hints at a growing mutual intrigue beyond the professional boundary.

Paula notices the flowers and asks Jean to discard them, but the bouquet carries a note from an admirer. The note proclaims love for her performances and a desire to murder her in real life, signed only with the initial 'J'. The threat bleeds from fiction into reality, setting a ominous tone.

After Jean leaves, an unknown man enters Paula’s dressing room and steals the postcard attached to her mirror. The theft hints at a deeper danger linked to the admirer and the on-stage murders that follow in the narrative.

The next morning Paula awakes from a nightmare where a masked man with a cane stalks her to a cafe and kills her. She also envisions a pale, doll-like girl in a bathtub. The visions blur the line between stage horror and real threat.

Jean goes to work bearing a hip wound from a prior incident. A coworker urges him to see a doctor, but he ignores the advice. His boss reveals the paper’s broader mission: to investigate murders in town that resemble on-stage crimes, suggesting the killer is drawing inspiration from the theatre’s fiction.

Despite the danger and the tangled web around them, Jean visits Paula and asks her to go on a date. The budding connection adds a personal stake to the escalating tension between fiction and real danger.

Back at work, Paula continues to see the same girl from her bathtub vision, now on a beach and calling out a name—Marie-Therèse. The vision intensifies and begins to intrude on her waking life, deepening the sense of a connected past and present danger.

That night Paula receives a package containing the dress for her upcoming performance, along with a note repeating the deadly threat: 'This is the end, I am going to kill you one final time.' The sender remains unknown, heightening the sense of imminent danger.

During Paula’s date with Jean, the same unknown man reappears, sniffing Paula’s perfume and trying on her wigs and makeup. Paul, the special effects director, intervenes and orders the intruder to leave, revealing a disturbing collaboration between the killer and the theatre’s world.

Paula opens up about a childhood trauma: her sister Aimee ran away to become an actress, and a violent man (also named Jean in her story) assaulted Paula and killed Aimee. Paula blames herself for not saving her sister and carries the blast of that memory with her, haunted by the cane-click she still hears at night.

During the final performance, the planned on-stage murder becomes brutal reality when Jean De Lancry deploys a real knife. The audience initially cheers, then panics as real blood erupts. Paul orchestrates a body swap, placing Violette’s corpse in Paula’s supposed place and is arrested for Paula’s murder, while Paula survives and is later seen at the cemetery with Violette buried inside her tomb; Jean remains missing Paula and continues to kill women who resemble her.