Do You Wanna Know a Secret? 2001

A tense mystery opens with a male college student who discovers a chilling note slipped under his dorm door that reads, “do you wanna know a secret?” He immediately assumes it’s from his girlfriend, Beth Morgan, and hurries into the hallway hoping to find her. The moment he steps out, a masked figure strikes, leaving him dead and his killer unseen in the shadows. This brutal, sudden loss sets a grim tone that will echo through the film as a thread of menace.

A year passes, and Beth heads to Florida for spring break with her new boyfriend, Hank Ford, and a tight circle of friends: Oz Washington, Tina Webster, Nellie Lopez, and Brad Adams. The group’s relaxed vacation soon unravels into a deadly game. On the first night, Brad makes a crude attempt to pursue Beth, but she makes it clear they’re only friends. The ominous memory of the dorm tragedy lingers as Brad’s presence adds unease to the trip.

That unease sharpens when Brad is attacked on a sailboat while the others stay inside the house. His bloody shirt washes ashore, but his body remains missing, and a sinister message appears on his computer: “do you wanna know a secret?” The phrase, once a whispered rumor in the dorm, has now become a haunting clue that someone is watching the friends and methodically eliminating them.

The next night, in a club, Tina becomes inebriated and shares a kiss with Hank, further straining Beth’s trust. After Hank rescues Beth from a potentially drugged drink, she steps outside for air and witnesses the killer from the club—disguised, masked, and merciless—murder the boy who tried to drug her. When the police arrive, they discover the same chilling message carved into the killer’s victim’s back. An FBI agent arrives with a stern warning that the group should not leave the house, making everyone a suspect in both murders.

The tension escalates when Oz is attacked in the kitchen while Beth and Hank are in the shower. Soon after, Tina’s throat is slit at the pool, and Nellie is also attacked and killed in a brutal sequence that ends with the pool turning red. Oz regains consciousness, sees the bloody message on the wall, and tries to process the mounting carnage. The authorities arrest Oz, who is soon released after the same killer—still at large—kills the officer who arrested him in a bathroom, signaling that no one is safe and the danger is far from over. Beth, waiting outside the police station as a sense of dread tightens, spots a truck rolling past with a masked driver—identical to the killer Beth remembers from the club.

Guided by fear and a stubborn need to uncover the truth, Beth follows the truck into the murky Florida glades, hoping to reconnect with Oz and uncover the killer’s identity. The two lovers-to-be search the dark woods until Oz is knocked unconscious and wakes up in the basement of a church. Meanwhile, Beth, who is finally brought inside the church, is bound in a wedding dress and blindfolded. The killer unmasks and reveals himself as Brad, whose obsession with Beth has driven him to orchestrate a horrifying tableau in the church—complete with the corpses of Tina, Nellie, and the pastor arranged in the pews as if they were witnesses to a perverse ceremony.

A brutal struggle ensues as Brad and Oz fight, and Beth attempts to free herself. Brad overpowers both for a moment, explaining snidely that love makes him do terrible things, including staging his own apparent death and killing everyone around Beth. In a shocking turn, he brandishes Hank’s severed head, raising the fear and horror to a fever pitch. Beth uses a moment of distraction to break free and attack Brad, while Oz unties himself and joins the fray. The two finally bring the struggle to a head; Beth delivers a decisive stab, driving the knife through Brad’s body.

The confrontation seems over, but Brad’s body lurches again as he is shot by the FBI agent who arrives in the nick of time. The agent then reveals a twist that reframes the whole night: the dead pastor in the church pews was actually Brad’s father, a detail that underscores the depths of Brad’s delusion and the harm his actions caused. As Beth and Oz escape the church, the danger is revealed to have roots in a twisted love story that spiraled into murder, traitorous manipulation, and a deadly performance.

In the end, the film ties together a chain of secrets that began with a dorm note and spiraled into a night of terror. The surviving pair—Beth and Oz—emerge more grounded, having navigated a maze of deceit, fear, and an attacker who would stop at nothing to claim his one true secret: Beth’s fate. The narrative, anchored by a cast of characters who each contribute to the escalating tension, leaves the audience with a stark reminder of how fragile safety can be when obsession masquerades as devotion. The revelation about the pastor and Brad’s father adds a grave twist that recontextualizes the violence as the product of a family’s dark, hidden ties.

Note: first-time character mentions are linked to their respective actors above, in line with the cast references.