A psychopath faces off with a serial killer in an eerie game of cat and mouse that leaves a County Sheriff in the middle of disturbing chaos.

SYNOPSIS:

After the death of his wife and daughters, Leslie Causel capitulates to his long time suppressed psychopathic urges. On the night Leslie intends to conduct his first kill, another predator interrupts him just before the act. Leslie aborts and secretly bares witness to the killer's successful murders. Leslie becomes more tormented from his failure and suspects a local butcher's apprentice, Leonard Neffecte, to be responsible for the killings. In a strange attractiveness to each others' odd creepiness, they befriend each other.

Childhood flashbacks reoccur for Leslie and Leonard throughout: one with two brothers laughing and another with a boy on a swing.

Leslie keeps his eye on Leonard and in the meantime becomes friendly with his single mother, neighbor, Susan, and her kids. Another family killing soon occurs in the house next to Susan's and the local Sheriff, Buchannan, becomes suspicious of both Leonard and Leslie shortly afterwards.

Leslie's profile as a socially inadequate, disorganized serial killer leads him to killing a hooker and also posing an attack at Buchannan's home. Leonard's profile as a socially adequate, organized serial killer leads him to killing his girlfriend and rousing suspicion of himself. Off the record, Buchannan blows up and accuses Leonard of being the killer and being at his house the previous night. Although Leonard is able to escape charges, he secures his suspicions on Leslie. Leonard then discovers Leslie's relationship with Susan.

Leslie, Leonard, and Buchannan are caught in a web of killing and mutual suspicion, which starts to take a toll on the former hard city cop. Leslie and Leonard go hunting together one day and not only speak in a creepy metaphorical rhetoric of killing and predation but nearly satisfy their urges to kill each other- unknown to both. All the while Buchannan and his troopers watch the twisted situation unfold.

The finale comes in the form of Leonard going to kill Susan and her kids and Leonard stopping it. Leslie's motive for stopping Leonard is unknown... either he wanted to save Susan and the kids, or he couldn't allow Leonard to kill what he wanted for himself.

The two battle each other, realizing both cannot coexist, while Susan calls Buchannan, who races to the scene. Leonard and Leslie stab each other repeatedly and voluminously, due to their high psychopath pain tolerance, and land on top of each other. The childhood flashbacks occur but reveal same event. Leslie's older brother receives a handgun as a gift at his birthday party where, his father accidentally shoots Leonard's brother and Leslie subsequently witnesses his father kill himself in the kitchen. The two die from their final stabbings as Buchannan runs in. Both never realizing their connectivity through the dual traumatic event that linked them, and became the cause and resulting effects of their psychopathies.

DARK INERTIA