A woman who makes other people’s problems disappear by rewriting their digital lives is forced to turn those skills when her family’s social standing is threatened—becoming the most dangerous version of herself: someone willing to manipulate reality to keep her world intact. Arsonist is character‑driven psychological thriller about control, class anxiety, and the stories we construct to survive.

SYNOPSIS:

ARSONIST opens on a grid of Cleveland surveillance feeds — traffic cameras, school systems, timestamped footage — all monitored and manipulated by Jackie Germaine, a poised, affectless woman whose job is to erase problems before they become consequences. Jackie’s life appears immaculate: a polished home, a corporate husband, a daughter applying to an elite private school. But beneath the surface, Jackie quietly edits timestamps, deletes records, and weaponizes digital traces to maintain her family’s standing.

When her daughter’s school application falters, Jackie blackmails the Head of Admissions with a compromising video she’s archived. At the mall, she scans neighbors like data points — flagged for affairs, tax issues, NDA violations. Every interaction is leverage. Every secret is currency.

The equilibrium shatters on Thanksgiving. At a crowded holiday dinner, a drunken flirtation between two members of the friend group spirals into accusation, confusion, and police intervention. Jackie films the arrest, disables a neighbor’s phone remotely, and forwards incriminating footage to an unseen contact. As the scandal detonates through the family, Jackie remains eerily calm — orchestrating the narrative from behind her screens.

By morning, she is monitoring hospital feeds, police intake footage, social media posts, and traffic cameras. She deletes medical notes, rewinds timestamps, and studies Claire — the woman at the center of the accusation — like a specimen. Jackie’s interventions are small, precise, devastating.

ARSONIST is a psychological thriller about the machinery of erasure in a declining America — a portrait of a woman who believes she can control every variable, and the quiet, terrifying violence required to maintain the illusion of a perfect life.