Exposé 1976

Paul Martin is a novelist who rents a secluded cottage in the British countryside to finish his latest project, a deliberately pretentious sex romp. He is haunted by recurring paranoid nightmares, has recently split up with his girlfriend, Suzanne, and struggles to find the right words to complete the manuscript. To help with the typing and organization of his pages, he hires Linda Hindstatt as his secretary.

Their first encounter takes place at a railway station, where Linda is briefly intimidated by a pair of youths, Big Youth and Small Youth. Paul steps in to intervene, delivering a decisive battering to the troublemakers and setting a tense, uneasy tone for the household that will follow. Once they settle into the cottage, Linda wanders into a field and the two youths return to the foreground of the story, assaulting her. Linda fights back with ruthless resolve and shoots them both with a shotgun, asserting control in a moment of stark, violent retribution.

Nightmares persist for [Paul Martin], and his romantic advances toward Linda are met with rejection. Linda begins to insinuate herself more deeply into the running of the house, displacing the long-standing housekeeper, Mrs. Aston. When Mrs. Aston returns in the dark of night, she is found murdered, her throat slashed, and the atmosphere in the cottage grows increasingly charged with suspicion and dread. With the manuscript taking shape, Linda’s influence over the arrangement intensifies, while Paul quietly wrestles with the bizarre and unsettling dynamics unfolding around him.

As the tension mounts, Paul invites Suzanne to come back into the fold, only to have Linda seduce her. The combination of seduction, manipulation, and shifting loyalties drives the drama toward a dangerous climax. The unraveling sequence culminates when Paul, possibly targeted by Linda, crashes his car into a river after the brakes appear to have been tampered with. Suzanne is later murdered in the shower by Linda, and the entire situation erupts into a pandemonium of violence that leaves little behind but a trail of ruin and fear.