The film opens with a woman called Leonora, who enjoys running as a hobby, going for a run,
while the narrator tells us about how most murders are about love and almost never random.
At the same time, a man is waiting in a van, who is none other than the woman’s husband, Christian.
Upon seeing her pass, his hatred for her prompts him to accelerate his vehicle,
and he decides to run her over.
We are then shown the narrator, an old detective who is telling this story to his daughter over
lunch. Based on their conversation, the detective is convinced that Christian is guilty, and is
still unable to stop thinking about the case. He resumes telling the story, and we are taken to
the past, to be exact 3 days before the murder. That night, Christian and Leonora are woken up
by Christian’s phone that keeps vibrating at 3 am. Annoyed, Leonora demands to see who’s
been calling him, but Christian refuses. This raises her suspicion that Christian
might be having an affair, so she proceeds to try and take the phone away from him.
The detective then fills us in on their background: Christian is a co-founder of a
construction company. He built the company with his friend, Peter, while his wife Leonora was
an accomplished violinist, who had to give up on her career to take care of their sick son, Johan.
The next morning after their fight, Leonora apologizes to her husband for lashing out,
and he shrugs it off and tells her that it’s fine. She then proceeds to take their son to school,
while Christian heads off to work. At work, he can be seen flirtatiously eyeing one of his workers,
Xenia, and later they meet in a private area of the construction site. As it turns out,
she is the one who sent the message last night. Xenia then gives him the ultimatum to choose
between her or his wife, which gets Christian conflicted because although he loves Xenia very
much, his son Johan has been getting better and he would like to be a good father to him.
Hearing this angers Xenia, and she storms off with disappointment.
When Leonora gets home, she decides to look through Christian’s Facebook, while on call
with a phone company in attempt to retrieve the messages on Christian’s now broken phone, but the
company rejects her request. She ends up seeing a picture of Christian and Xenia smiling fondly at
each other, and that seems to be enough for her to feel like there is something between them.
To further confirm her suspicion, Christian seems entirely disinterested in being intimate
with her when he comes home from work that day. Despite the tension, the couple leave to attend
Christian’s work event that night, and during it Leonora’s jealousy grows all the more,
as Christian gives Xenia a lengthy compliment for her astounding work.
Later on, when everyone is celebrating, Leonora catches Xenia and her husband climbing upstairs,
so she proceeds to follow them. But to her surprise, this leads
her to the shocking sight of the two having sex with each other. Even worse, Xenia is smiling
at her when she catches her watching, while Christian is oblivious to his wife’s presence.
That next morning, Christian gathers the courage to sit down with his wife,
and finally tell her that he doesn’t want to be married anymore. Unwilling to stay silent
any longer, Leonora finally tells Christian she saw what he was doing yesterday at the office.
And this is where the plot thickens: Leonora starts to get infuriated, because she agreed
to give up on her career for the past 20 years to take care of their sick son, which means that
if they get divorced, she would have nothing. She then begins threatening to report Christian
to the police, because as it turns out, Christian committed fraud in his business to make a fortune.
Plus, he could profit more from this crime, which is why Leonora was forced to give up her career.
Afraid he will go to prison, Christian tries to offer his wife some money, but she refuses,
stating that it's not about money, it's about the deal they've made for their family.
Now that Christian is planning something, he goes to track down Leonora’s former best friend,
Kassandra. Meanwhile unbeknownst to him, Leonora has decided to follow him.
Christian and Kassandra end up sitting down to have a chat, during which he tells her
that he’s planning to divorce Leonora. Hearing this, Kassandra simply warns him that when she
was young, Leonora used to have a boyfriend named Mike, who died from falling off a cliff.
According to the town rumors, the boyfriend was planning to break up with her, and was already
seeing someone else at the time, which surged the rumor that Leonora pushed him to his death.
Seeing the potential to blackmail Leonora back, Christian decides to track down the girl Mike
was cheating on Leonora with at the time. He visits the spot Mike the boyfriend fell from,
and shared a phone call with Sonja, the woman who Mike cheated on Leonora with.
Apparently, they were camping out in the woods at the time, and snuck away to make love. According
to Sonja, she felt as if she was being watched the whole time, and when Mike went away for a smoke,
moments later she heard him scream.
Just then they suddenly found him at the bottom of the cliff.
To add, Kassandra was certain she saw Leonora at the site.
What makes it even creepier, while Mike stays on call, we can see Leonora lurking nearby.
Back to the detective, he added that when people in town were questioned for Mike's murder,
Leonora’s music teacher swore that she was at violin practice the whole time this went down.
When Christian gets home after, Leonora tells him to leave, but he is reluctant because he
fears that she will call the police. Christian then tries to blackmail her,
by saying how the folks at Leonora’s hometown believe she killed her boyfriend Mike.
Hearing this, Leonora is upset but simply brushes it off, since no one
has any evidence to support the claim. She goes on to tell him that the only
way she won’t go to the police is if he stays with her, and even forcefully dials Xenia’s
number on his phone, pressuring him to break up with her, but he couldn’t because he loves her.
With nothing left to argue about, she begins to roughly shove him,
and kicks him out of the house, claiming that both the house and their son are hers.
All animals, according to the detective, will attack if they are cornered or have no other
choice, which is what Christian does. He comes up with a plan, in which he goes to his office,
and swaps his car with one of the white vans. At the same time, Leonora is doing her routine,
jogging around while it is slowly raining. Meanwhile, Christian finds a spot behind the
trees, by the path Leonora passes through during her evening jog.
As soon as he sees his wife passing around, he starts accelerating,
and runs her over.
When he notices that she is still moving, he shows no mercy and drives backwards,
running her over once more.
He then leaves the spot, and silently sneaking his way into the office to make
it seem like he’s been working this whole time.
When he gets home, he avoids looking at his son,
and cries in the shower out of guilt. After everything that's happened,
Christian has a drink to relax and unwind. But all of the sudden,
Well, of course, Christian is shocked and speechless when he sees Leonora returning home.
The wife casually asks him if he’s decided to leave his mistress, and announces how pleasant
it was to take a new jogging route for today. As his wife walks away, he stands in horror
with the realization that he must have hit the wrong person earlier.
That night, Leonora asks him if he came back because he still wants her, to which he says
yes although we know that he’s obviously lying. That next morning when they’re bout head out,
their neighbor shows up to announce that a lady was killed in a hit and run last night,
along the track that Leonora usually passes through during her daily run, which shocks her.
After that, Leonora goes to the hit and run scene, where she learns that
the woman who was hit is a mother of three.
A few days later, a graduation party is held at
their house, when all of the sudden the detective shows up to interview Christian in case he saw
or heard anything out of the ordinary that night. Christian says that he was working extra hours at
the office during the incident, and they quickly leave after they’re satisfied with the answer.
Shortly after, he stares at Xenia’s texts that he hasn’t replied,
and looking very uncomfortable at the grad party.
He goes to visit the place where
he ran over the woman, and read the writings left by her children on a makeshift shrine.
Riddled with guilt, he goes to the police to turn himself in, but are instead told to sit and wait.
During this time, he gets a text from his son, and gets reminded that he doesn’t want to disappoint
him. At the same time, he sees a news report announcing that the police thinks whoever is
behind the hit and run might have fled the country already, and so he changes his mind and goes home.
But it’s not over; Leonora eventually grows suspicious after discovering that her carwash
card has run out of balance all of the sudden. After asking the clerk about it, she obtained a
security footage detailing the exact time and date her card was used to make a transaction, which she
ends up presenting to her husband later that day. The security footage shows Christian attempting
to wash the white van he used to hit the woman. As a result, this leads Leonora to believe that
her husband attempted to kill her but failed to. Seeing the guilt on Christian’s face concludes
her fear, she makes a call to the police in attempt to turn her husband in, but Christian
takes her phone away. To diffuse the situation, he makes up a story that they decided to call,
because they recently saw a truck with a foreign plate in the area recently.
He then goes after Leonora, and hands her phone while begging
for her to stay, but she simply drives away out of fear.
The husband starts to feel nervous and lose hope,
and some time later, the detective pulls up at their house. Before he meets the detective,
he gives his son an embrace and tells him he loves him. But unexpectedly, the police are
not here to arrest him; they are here to ask more about the foreign plate he reported on the phone.
Christian spends the entire interaction looking nervous, which raises the detective’s suspicion,
but he doesn’t have the evidence to arrest him. He also gets a text message from Leonora asking
to meet him for dinner. When they sit face to face again, she expresses to him that she could
never possibly report him to the police, because all she cares about is their son,
and how his life would be ruined if Christian went to prison. But at the same time, she has
lost her trust in Christian, and for him to win it back, she would like him to murder Xenia,
because as long as the mistress lives, she will always serve as a liability to their marriage.
She then proceeds to lewdly convince Christian that all he needs is a strong alibi,
just like the one she had when she murdered her boyfriend, Mike. Well, it is at this point
that she begins to reveal everything about the rumor, including how she snuck into the
woods and watched Mike making love with Kassandra, before pushing him off the cliff when he’s alone.
Afterwards, she made a run back to the school, and entered the music room through the window,
wherein a turntable had been playing a violin track the whole time. She immediately pretended
that she’s been playing the violin, when the music teacher came to check on her shortly after.
And that's how she completely dispels any suspicion that she committed the murder.
And so, the two decide to stay at a hotel for vacation as an alibi,
while in reality Christian is tasked to murder Xenia and make it seem like a robbery.
He climbs down the balcony when no one’s watching. And then pays a visit to Xenia’s house, but she
turns him away because he’s been ghosting her. Christian remains adamant; he breaks through
her door, and holds her while saying that he loves her more than he’s ever loved anyone.
At the same time, his wife is at the hotel, making a call to room service,
while deliberately making casual mentions that her husband’s in the shower. To add the final touch,
she uses Christian’s phone to text Xenia with a message saying that Christian is leaving Xenia,
because he cares more about his wife and kids. Back to Christian, he immediately goes to distract
Xenia when the text message arrives, because he knows what’s in it. He instead kisses her,
and gets her away from her phone. At the same time, Leonora takes an
extra notch to her efforts; when the waiter shows up with their food, she goes to the bathroom, and
plays a voice recording of Christian’s voice to make it seem like they’re having a conversation.
But unbeknownst to her, instead of killing Xenia, Christian ends up
spending an intimate night with her. Much later that night, Xenia goes to
the bathroom to clean up, right when she notices that the window is open,
and a moment later, Leonora is already behind her, and proceeds to stab her in the gut.
Since Xenia is taking forever, Christian goes after her,
but instead finds a bloody Leonora standing over Xenia’s dead body.
A few days later, the police are summoned to Xenia’s house, because the neighbors have
reported her missing. They soon discover that all of Xenia’s electronic devices are missing.
But oddly enough, there isn't a dead body in sight, the bed sheets are free of any DNA and
fingerprints. Furthermore, the police managed to retrieve the latest text message on her phone,
which is sent by Christian’s phone and states that Christian would like to end their affair.
This leads the police to the couple’s house to interview them, but the detective is still not
satisfied with the results, and is convinced something is amiss.
He sends a team of hounds
to search through the woods near their house for any dead body, while Christian and Leonora are
seen celebrating a house party at the same time. Leonora then quickly sends the nervous looking
Christian to light up the bonfire in the middle of the lake, and we can see the police hounds
walking out of the woods. But then, the police hounds suddenly start barking near the lake,
while Christian hastily pours gasoline over the bonfire, and tries to light it.
Despite his efforts, he cannot get the matches to burn, and
eventually there are only two matchsticks left.
After some time, the bonfire finally lights up.
Upon seeing a lady with a binocular, Christian walks up to her and asks to try it. He then
uses the binocular to look at Xenia’s body, which has been placed inside the bonfire.
Afterwards, the family decides to sell their house and move away,
and we later finds Christian's walking around with a bag near the lake.
We now return to the detective, who is finally
finished telling the story to his daughter. It appears that Christian was never convicted for
the murder due to the lack of evidence, but the detective is convinced that he’s guilty.
The film ends with a shot of Xenia’s bones at the bottom of the river.