Tomorrow Night 1998

Charles, a misanthropic and obsessive owner of a photography shop, leads a solitary life and quietly sustains a private, unsettling habit by sitting in a bowl of ice cream at night. When a flood of unclaimed prints accumulates, he begins phoning customers to remind them to pick up their photographs, turning a routine duty into a strange ritual of connection.

One of these customers is Florence, Martha Greenhouse, an elderly woman tormented by her gambling-addicted husband Joseph Dolphin Lester. She longs for her son Willie, Greg Hahn, who joined the army two decades ago and has not received any of her letters; in truth, he is the unwitting target of a long-running cruel joke by the Army mail-room workers who have withheld his mother’s correspondence for years.

Charles, seeking companionship, sets his sights on Lola Vagina, Heather Morgan, a boldly sexual prostitute, only to find her too extroverted for his cautious sensibilities. When he learns that the last two unclaimed packages belong to Florence and another anonymous customer who won’t answer the phone, he makes a personal delivery to Florence to return her photos.

Meeting Florence, Charles is drawn to an extreme neatness and order that mirrors his own compulsions, and he returns the next day to propose marriage. Florence explains that her husband would never consent to a divorce, so Charles asks to speak with him. That night, Lester, who has just won a horse race, is attacked and killed by a pack of wild dogs while walking home with his winnings.

Charles and Florence marry. After a honeymoon in Florida, Florence discovers Charles still sitting in ice cream and is repulsed, but she agrees to let him stay on one condition: they adopt a son. They welcome Clean, a teenage African-American delinquent, into their home, and soon Willie returns home to join the new family as well.

That night Florence confesses she has never been happier; the next morning, Charles asks for a divorce, only to learn that Florence has died. He leaves, and Willie becomes Clean’s new father figure as life at the shop resumes its strange rhythm.

Charles returns to his storefront, where he finds the last package from a nameless customer. He attempts to call the sender again, but the number is not listed. Opening the envelope, he uncovers a sequence of photographs of random places and people. He stops at a photo of himself inspecting the images, and the next shot shows his own dead body shortly after. The film ends on Charles’s terrified gaze, punctuated by the distant, echoing laughter of Lester and the sound of a dog’s growl.