The film opens with a nurse walking down a quiet hospital isle, after finishing her night shift.
She stops shortly when she hears rustling in the background. But seeing that there’s no one around,
she proceeds to the shower room, and starts taking a shower, when
all of the sudden an unseen figure slashes her throat, killing her.
We then see a figure take a dead body and buries it,
before driving away to his next location. This time, it is a house. The man finds the
bedroom and slowly walks towards a sleeping woman, until she wakes up and turns around...
A baby’s cries can be heard in the background, and the man whose name is Evan tenderly tells
his wife Lauren to go back to sleep. He goes to check on the baby, who he then cradles lovingly.
The next scene takes us to three months earlier, where Evan who is a social worker,
interviews teenagers with troubled families. Based on his interactions with the school students,
we can tell that he is a kind and benevolent man. After work,
he goes home to his pregnant wife, and lovingly puts his arm around her.
Long story short, Lauren and Evan rush to the hospital, where the wife promptly gives birth
to their son, Andrew. While watching her in labor, Evan gets gruesome flashes of his father getting
killed, a memory which forever haunts him.
In Lauren's painful groan, the baby is born.
A few hours later, Evan’s mother pay a visit
to see Lauren and her first grandchild at the hospital. But then, baby Andrew starts crying,
prompting Lauren to try to breastfeed him. Seeing Lauren's struggle, a nurse who is none other than
the nurse we saw in the opening of the film walks in, and roughly guides the baby to breastfeed.
Evan looks upset by how rude the nurse is, but the nurse leaves before he gets to say a thing.
At night when Lauren is asleep, Evan cradles his newborn son and promises to never hurt him,
and to love him unconditionally. After they return home from the hospital,
we watch the couple struggle for days to follow, because it is very hard to get baby Andrew to
breastfeed, which eventually stresses Lauren out because Andrew isn’t gaining weight the
way babies are supposed to. On top of that, the baby’s cries keeps the couple awake at night.
On one particular night, Evan picks up a knife, and has a flashback from his childhood, where
his father violently beats him, until his mother threatens the man with a knife to protect Evan.
When Evan wakes from his sleep the next morning, he finds that his mother has shown herself in,
and is now cradling the baby. He gladly welcomes her to the guest room,
and the two sit down to catch up, during which the mother tells Evan to not beat himself up over his
stressed out wife and constantly crying baby. Evan spends his day at work pondering over
his life lately, and later on when he’s alone behind his desk, he starts listening to an old
voice recording of a man who sounds drunk and unwell. In it, the man is making excuses for
beating up his kid, saying that he has a hard life and he needs to take it out on someone.
He is then interrupted by one of the teenage boys he’s currently supervising whose name is Ray.
Sporting a bruise on his face, the boy begins telling Evan about how his father just beat
him up along with his younger sibling. After listening to the story, Evan assures Ray that
everything is going to be okay, and that he will report this to the police. Once Ray leaves, he
takes a look at Ray’s father profile, a man with a criminal record who is currently out on parole.
Ray’s story keeps him awake that night, and again he sees
a flashback of his father with a slit throat. Itching to do something, he packs his gear and
drives away from the house, on a mission to find Ray’s father. Evan then finds the drunken scumbag
at a parking lot outside a grubby bar, and kindly lights his cigarette, before offering him a ride
home. During the drive, we learn that on top of being abusive, the man is also violently racist.
The man leads Evan to a fancy but vacant house, and Evan gives him a beer as the man
requests. Upon following him inside, Evan learns that he has been secretly
squatting at this place for the past year. After making sure that nobody else knows
this man’s whereabouts, Evan knocks him out, and ties him up in a chair.
Once the man wakes up, Evan sets up a recording device, and shows the man a picture of his son
Ray to remind him why he’s doing this. It is clear based on the man’s response that he has
no love for the kid, and starts cursing at Evan, which prompts Evan to take out a sharp knife and
cut him in the gut, finally scaring him. It is at this point that the man starts
pleading his case by saying that he never meant to hurt his children,
and that he only loses control every once in a while because kids are hard to deal with.
Having had enough of his bullshit, Evan stabs him and slashes his throat, and watches as
he bleeds to death.
He packs up the body, and burying it in the middle of nowhere.
Afterwards, he returns home as if nothing has happened.
Days pass, and we see the boy updating Evan about his life; he looks happier now,
and voices that eversince his dad went AWOL, his family has been doing great, which satisfies Evan.
The next time we see Evan at work, Ray returns
to tell Evan that he’s now wondering where his father might be, because it seems that he’s
gone without a trace, so much so that even his parole officer is looking for him. Hearing this,
Evan tells the boy to not worry, because it isn’t the first time Ray’s father went AWOL.
The next teen that Evan sees is a girl named Kelly, who is clearly distressed because of
her uncle, but seems reluctant to tell him what happened. Immediately able to tell that
something isn’t right, Evan tracks down the uncle later that night. He then brings the
uncle to the same empty house as before. Here Evan immediately accuses the uncle of
raping his niece, an allegation which he doesn’t deny. Infuriated, Evan punches him in the gut,
but the man only keeps going on about how it’s only natural for him to be attracted to his 15
year old niece, which makes Evan cut him in the gut. But before Evan gets to continue, he gets
a phone call from his wife. The wife pleads for him to get home immediately, because baby Andrew
has a fever. After hanging up, he repeatedly stabs the man in the gut, until the man bleeds to death.
Evan then rushes to the hospital, but he forgets to put all the evidence in the trunk tightly.
At the hospital, the doctor tells them that the baby is fine, and here they encounter the
same bitchy nurse again. The nurse tells them that it's normal for a baby to run a fever,
and to try not to get hysterical at every little thing. On their walk back to the car,
Evan finally realizes that a bloody tarp is sticking out of his trunk. Strangely though,
the mother then drags the wife away from the sight, and assists her in getting into the car.
After making sure that his little family have settled in at home,
he drives away, and when he arrives at his destination, he goes to bury the body.
One night, as he's putting baby Andrew to bed, he receives a call from Chris,
one of the teenagers he works with, and immediately goes to see him.
They sit in front of a grocery store with dried blood on the side of Chris’ face.
Based on the boy’s story, his drug addict of a father just beat him up.
The next morning, Lauren asks Evan where he’s been at night these past few days,
to which Evan replies that he’s simply been either taking night drives or helping out kids.
The wife says that he shouldn’t be working outside of work hours, but Evan simply
gets up from the table and leaves for work. At work, Evan gets a call from Chris updating
him that his junkie father has apologized, promised to get clean, and wants to take him
to the movies tonight, which baffles Evan.
That evening, Evan decides to hunt down Chris’ father anyway,
and it is reveal that the father is at the hospital,
wanting to see a doctor and get some pain meds, but the bitchy nurse tells the junkie to go away.
The nurse then ends her shift, and walks down the hallway.
Here we are welcomed back to the opening scene of the movie,
and Evan begins treading the hallways as well. The nurse then undresses, and takes a shower alone.
At the same time, Chris’ father sneaks up inside the pharmacy to steal some medicine.
But to our surprise, Evan is actually following Chris’ father instead of the nurse,
revealing to us that it wasn’t him who killed the bitchy nurse.
In a shocking turn of events, it is actually Evan’s mother who snuck up and murdered the nurse.
while on the other side of the hospital, Evan knocks out Chris’
father and takes him to the empty house. Evan begins by telling the man that he is
an incompetent father who can’t possibly love Chris and violent toward him.
The father expresses that he never meant to hit Chris, but rather, Chris got in the way when he
and his wife got into a fight, and being the drug addict he is, he gets violent when he’s high, and
he truly wants to get clean but simply relapsed. He then goes off about how Chris has some
inheritance money, but he swears he’s not after it.
Chris’s father finally tells Evan that Evan is the actual incompetent father,
because there is no way someone with such love for violence can be a good father to his children.
Offended, Evan decides to not take mercy,
and proceeds to stab the poor man in cold blood and slits his throat.
After Evan buries his dead body that night and sets up a barrel fire,
he recalls memories from his past, wherein he discovers that his mother is a serial killer.
And it is also revealed little Evan kills his father by slitting his throat,
because he was physically abusing his mom. In fact, he does the same way to all his victims.
The mom and little Evan then embrace each other after burying the father, and from that point on,
the two have been murdering people to either protect themselves, or others they care about.
Once Evan gets home that night, his mother casually wipes away the
blood splatter on his neck, signifying that she knows what Evan’s been up to.
In the morning, Evan finds his mom watching TV,
when he notices that there is a breaking news of three dead bodies being discovered in a field,
which is none other than Evan’s usual body dumping ground.
At work, Ray comes to him, crying over the news of his alcoholic father’s murder,
but in contrast, Kelly looks satisfied to hear that her rapist is dead, while Chris is
grieving because he’s convinced that though his father was problematic, he really was changing.
But instead of feeling any remorse, Evan simply convinces Chris that there’s no way someone like
that could change, and the father was simply into Chris’ inheritance money.
This gets Chris to tense up, because he never told Evan about the inheritance.
Evan immediately gaslights him, by saying that he did tell him but must have forgotten.
Later that day, a detective named Overstreet shows up at the house to see Evan,
and points out how all of the murder victims are relatives of Evan’s clients. He hasn’t made his
verdict yet, but admits that Evan is a suspect. Up next, the detective interviews Evan’s wife,
and asks if Evan has been absent at night as of late, which Evan’s mother firmly denies.
Lauren looks confused and nervous, but proceeds to deny as well.
Later that night, Lauren refuses Evan’s kiss, seemingly suspicious
of both her husband and Evan's mother. The next day, Detective Overstreet shows up
again to question her in private, since neither Evan nor his mother is home. Here the detective
tries asking if Evan has ever seen Chris outside of work hours, and Lauren nervously denies.
The detective then questions if she knows her husband’s whereabouts on Thursday, March 26,
which she replies by saying he was at the hospital with her because their baby was running a fever.
Thinking she’s lying, the detective takes out a security camera picture of Evan’s car,
caught being at a different location that night. Irritated,
she goes off about how stressful their married lives can be ever since having the baby, and Evan
would take drives at night, but he always comes home to her and she trusts that he’s a good man.
Since the detective has no evidence, he leaves her his business card, so she can contact him
anytime if she has anything to say. Later that day, Lauren tells Evan that
the detective showed up again today, asking where Evan was last Thursday.
The husband simply brushes it off, and tells her that he hopes the
detective won’t come poking around again. That night, Evan is woken up from his sleep
by an enraged Chris banging on his door. After he welcomes the kid in, Chris pulls out a gun,
believing that Evan killed his father, since Chris never told Evan about the inheritance.
While Lauren watches helplessly, Evan tells her to go inside.
Thinking quick, Evan subdues Chris,
and convinces him that he’s been really stressed out. Evan then puts the gun to Chris' head,
but changes his mind about killing Chris. He lets him go but keeps Chris’ gun in his possession.
After the husband falls asleep, the curious Lauren goes to his study,
and plays the recorder Evan always uses to record both his interview sessions with his clients,
as well as his murder victims. To her horror, she discovers the murder recordings, and decides
to fish out a newspaper coverage featuring the victims, to double check if they’re the same
people that she listened to on the recorder. But then, she is interrupted by Evan’s mother,
who seems to have discovered that Lauren has found out about all this.
The mother then passive-aggressively telling her that Evan is a good man,
who learned the hard way that children need to be protected, and that they now have their own family to protect.
Later that day, Lauren calls Evan to let him know
that she wants to spend some time alone and go shopping, which Evan consents to. Afterwards, she
secretly makes another call to someone, presumably the detective, and says she’d like to meet him.
When Evan meets his mom later that day, the mother suddenly tells him to not trust his wife and not
let Chris go that easily. Evan then goes and follows the teen as he drives out of his house.
Lauren has arrived at a remote location,
but to our surprise, it turns out that she is meeting with Chris there.
Evan watches their interaction to sus things out, while Lauren admits that Evan really did kill
his father. Lauren pulls out a gun,
and shoots Chris in the head
She puts the gun in his hand,
then reaches for his phone, and types something down.
All is witnessed by Evan who smiles as he realizes Lauren is willing to do anything to protect him,
just like his mother. The next scene shows Evan watching the latest news coverage,
detailing how Chris was found to have committed suicide at the body dumping site.
Chris posted a suicide note online wherein he admitted to committing the three murders.
They are interrupted by the detective, who pays a visit to voice his condolences.
It’s at this point that Evan tells the detective he often let Chris be alone in his office,
and that is likely how he knew about the other abused kids. The detective eventually
decides that there is nothing left to look into in this case, and shows himself out.
The film ends with the couple calmly looking over their baby, ready to move on with their lives.