A Serial Killer’s Guide to Life 2019

Lou Farnt, Katie Brayben, is a meek young Englishwoman with poor self-esteem who endures the stern, emotionally abusive rule of her mother, Maureen Farnt, Sarah Ball, at home. In search of something better, she clings to a string of self-help gurus, drawn in especially by the hard-edged philosophy of Chuck Knoah, Ben Lloyd-Hughes, whose promises of literary and personal breakthrough feel tailor-made for her.

At a different self-help event, Lou glimpses a middle-aged woman who seems to appear and vanish in the same instant. She later meets this mysterious figure, Val Stone, Poppy Roe, who presents herself as a transformative guide who believes Lou would be an ideal pupil. Invited by Val, Lou travels to a caravan park to join her mentor on a research-driven tour of various healing methods.

Despite Val’s flattering attention, Lou initially struggles to break away from the security of home, where her mother’s nagging voice still resounds. Yet the lure of new horizons and a chance to rewrite her life nudges her forward, and the two set off in a car to visit different self-help gurus. A radio broadcast briefly reports a murder at a caravan park, a grim omen that threads through their unsettling journey.

Val radios Lou sporadically to reassure her mother that she’s safe, and their first stop is a wilderness retreat led by Tomiwa Edun as Ben. There, Lou endures rough tasks—tree hugging, camping trials, and an odd evening of Welsh-song entertainment performed by another attendee—before Val hustles her out at dawn. The next morning, the camera reveals the brutal aftermath: Ben and the retreat’s other participants are found dead, their heads crushed.

The duo then moves to a “sonic vibration” retreat at a large house run by a husband-and-wife team. Val is the driving force behind the retreat, and soon the wife is murdered in front of Lou, who watches in shock as the husband fights to escape. Val overpowers him, and Lou, driven by fear and a need to survive, ends the man’s life and they flee in the couple’s minivan, leaving a scene of confusion and panic in their wake.

As news reports flood in about the continuing string of killings, Lou and Val debate where this voyage will lead them. Val tries to push Lou toward killing again, even urging her to finish the job—yet Lou resists, and Val calls her the best student she’s ever had in a breath that lingers long after she stops speaking.

Their daybay includes a visit to a laugh-therapy workshop, where Lou and Val murder the participants, a stark illustration of how far Lou’s perception of reality has shifted. A visit to a birth-memory guru triggers a disturbing flashback for Lou: a memory of killing her mother surfaces, intercut with Val murdering her own mother, amplifying the sense that Lou’s path is entangled with a violent fantasy.

The pair finally reaches Chuck Knoah’s estate. Knoah, now a broken figure amid a messy divorce and stalled momentum with his publisher, seems delighted at the prospect of their alleged memoirs—until Val shoots him mid-conversation. Lou retaliates by stabbing Val, who had earlier attempted to frame Lou with an unexpected police call. The struggle ends on a cliff edge, with sirens and a helicopter closing in. Val is stabbed by Lou, who then stabs herself as they tumble to the grass. When the police arrive, Val appears to have vanished, leaving Lou standing alone in the aftermath.

The film closes with a return to the opening image: Lou strolling outdoors, earbuds in place, listening to a Knoah lecture as the scene cycles back into the past, leaving the audience with a chilling sense of cycles unbroken and truths interrupted.