ExTerminators 2009

Alex Alex is laid off from her job and comes home to a painful sight: her husband is with another woman. The shock of the betrayal spirals into a tense moment at a local store, where she ends up in a brawl with a man and lands a punch that changes everything. A judge sentences her to twelve months of anger-management therapy, a decision that pushes her into a shared classroom with other women trying to navigate their own frayed lives. In this crowded room she meets two women who will shape the years ahead: Stella, who has just rammed her car into her husband’s store during a messy divorce, and Nikki, who has literally cut her husband’s clothes to pieces because he wouldn’t bother taking them out of the dryer. The encounter sets up a tenuous alliance among them as they try to steer through their own storms with humor, grit, and a sense of camaraderie.

Stella wastes no time offering Alex a way to stabilize her life: a job as a tax accountant at her ABC Pest Control company. The arrangement seems straightforward on the surface, but the workplace introduces a new layer of complication. A tax auditor from the IRS, known as Hutt, makes a pass at Alex, forcing a dramatic and memorable rebound when she dumps hot coffee on his crotch. The incident propels Hutt into a broader investigation, and he begins to scrutinize Alex for possible tax evasion or other financial misdeeds, turning a personal betrayal into a professional threat.

Meanwhile, the trio frequent a local bar where life and danger intersect. Kim Kim from anger management reveals that her husband Rick is abusive, and she worries for her safety. When Rick shows up at the bar and slaps Kim in front of everyone, the friends follow Rick and make matters worse by tailing him, ultimately causing his car to crash off a cliff. The dramatic end to Rick’s life is staged as if it were an accident, and the trio decide to keep what happened quiet. The following day, Kim thanks Stella and slips them a sizable $10,000 she had saved for a future escape, recognizing that she won’t need it anymore. With Rick’s blood-alcohol level at a lethal point, the case is effectively closed, at least on the surface.

The police begin their interrogation, but the women manage to keep their stories straight. The detective on the case, [Burke], is an old college classmate of Alex, and Danielle Danielle, another anger-management patient, shares details about her own husband’s affair. Hutt continues to document their conversations, capturing crucial moments of the group’s evolving dynamic and adding pressure from an outside investigator. Alex runs into Burke again at a store, where he quietly confesses that he has harbored a crush on her from their college days, and they start dating, despite the tangled history surrounding Alex’s life and the barbed web of secrets she is weaving.

As the romance develops, Alex hides the truth from her anger-management class by claiming her new boyfriend is a postman. The St. Patrick’s Day celebrations at the bar provide a flashpoint: a drunken patron molests several women, and Nikki retaliates by setting his shirt on fire. The confrontation intensifies the tension between Alex and Nikki, especially as Hutt records their conversations, threading the surveillance into the film’s escalating stakes.

Alex learns that Danielle’s husband has died, and she visits Burke at the police station, where she glimpses a map of the town’s crimes and recognizes the name Steven Cantor in connection with an anger-management session. The revelation deepens the sense that the anger-management circle is not as isolated as it seemed, hinting at a larger pattern of manipulation and control at work beneath ordinary lives. Stella and Nikki confront Alex about becoming involved with a detective instead of clinging to the safety of a predictable postman relationship, and Stella confesses that she’s being audited, asking for Alex’s help with the accounting.

Alex agrees to assist and produces the relevant tax records for Hutt to review. The investigation uncovers a troubling pattern: the homes ABC Pest was supposed to service never had genuine pest problems, pointing to a deliberate scheme that could implicate multiple people and raise serious questions about motive and opportunity. The trio’s plan to clean the slate unfolds over time as they navigate fear, guilt, and the pressure to protect one another.

One year after finishing anger-management classes, Alex graduates and ultimately decides to come clean to Hutt on camera. In a calculated turn, she laces his water with arsenic, causing his sudden death. Nikki and Stella help Alex erase the physical and digital traces tying them to the crime, and the ensuing police effort hinges on the discovery of private files into which Hutt had harassed various women over the years. When the case closes, the trio has not only survived but has reshaped their lives in unintended and lasting ways.

In the end, Alex chooses a new path: she marries Burke, moving beyond the tangled web of deceit that defined much of her life. ABC Pest scrapes by as ABC Catering is formed in its place, signaling a shift in business and life for the central characters. Stella begins dating the Police Chief, while Nikki continues to respond to cries for help in her own distinctive way, often finding herself drawn to women facing turbulent marriages and seeking what she calls “a little help” in their darkest hours. The story lingers on the idea that loyalty among friends—and the willingness to take risks—can redefine a life, even when the path is paved with difficult choices and hard lessons learned in anger, love, and survival.