Butterfly Kiss 2006

Eunice, a bisexual serial killer, moves through the bleak motorways and desolate lanes of Lancashire in a search that centers on a mysterious woman named Judith. At each filling station she questions the staff, always testing whether the cashier is the woman she seeks by asking if their name is Judith. When a cashier tells her she is Wendy, Eunice kills her and steals the name badge, turning the moment into a ritual of erasure and identification as she drives on. The journey feels less like travel and more like a rite, a cold procession along the grey arteries of the region.

Her search eventually leads her to Miriam, who offers hospitality after Eunice drifts outside to pour petrol over herself, a gesture that hints at a longing for cleansing or punishment. At Miriam’s apartment, where her invalid grandmother lives, Eunice unveils a bundle of letters she claims were written by Judith, a prop that lends an unsettling weight to her hymn-like repetition of a truth she insists on believing. In the apartment, Eunice strips away her clothes to reveal chains, piercings, and tattoos and recites a religious poem as she undresses, turning vulnerability into an unsettling performance. The encounter with Miriam turns intimate, but Eunice departs the next morning, leaving behind a taunting message on the mirror in toothpaste: “your not Judith.”

The path becomes more tangled as Eunice accepts a ride with a delivery driver named Tony, whom she murders during sex and steals his van. Miriam, determined but compromised by fear, follows with Mr. McDermott, an acquaintance of Tony’s, whom she trusts to help her reach Eunice. The two eventually catch up in a forest where Eunice reveals Tony’s corpse, and Miriam agrees to help hide the evidence—though Eunice quietly slips away to a nearby restaurant, where she meets a waitress named Angela and invites her to join the table.

Miriam’s sense of safety frays as Eunice returns, and the two sleep in the stolen van before continuing their journey. They encounter two hitchhikers, a man named Gary and his 12-year-old daughter Katie, and decide to take them toward Morecambe, with a detour to an amusement park along the way. While Eunice is away, Miriam discovers Angela’s body in the car’s boot and insists that Gary and Katie be turned away. When Eunice spots Katie sitting alone later, she sends Miriam to fetch Gary, only to leave Eunice alone with her once more. Katie disappears momentarily, then reappears in the back seat, terrifying Miriam. A tense confrontation on a bridge over the motorway sees Miriam urging Eunice to keep Katie safe, but Eunice explains that she could not kill Katie because Katie refused to look at her. With a mix of defiance and despair, Eunice curses a God she feels has abandoned her, while Miriam insists she will stay and help her. Eunice coldly counters that such help may be impossible.

A truck stop encounter with a philosophical driver named Robert adds another layer to their journey. Eunice uses humor to put him at ease, then invites him to join the two women in their bed. Miriam hesitates, but Eunice commands her to participate as the night unfolds. When Robert begins to have sex with Miriam, Eunice returns and bludgeons him to death with a stolen headlight, stealing his lorry. At another filling station, Eunice asks once again if the cashier’s name is Judith. When the answer is yes, she kisses the cashier; the woman, shocked, claims she has no idea who Eunice is. The moment triggers a volatile outburst in Eunice, and Miriam intervenes to separate them.

Mr. McDermott re-enters the story as a provocative figure, a masochist who pretends to offer Eunice a form of solace. The three check into a hotel, and while Miriam goes out for food, McDermott and Eunice begin to connect in the shower. Miriam returns to a scene she interprets as a threat, and she ends the moment by killing McDermott with the shower hose. Eunice calmly notes that both women are now in hell, and the car becomes a space of torment as Miriam is pressed to accept the consequences of their actions. Amid this turmoil, Miriam finally identifies the song Eunice had been seeking—“World In Motion”—which she initially misremembered as a love song, a detail that exposes the gap between Eunice’s myth and the ordinary world around them.

The revelation of Judith’s elusive identity deepens the sense of ritual without resolution. Eunice reveals a desire to transform Judith into a religious sacrifice, a plan that drifts toward a final, fatal form of ritual. On the road to a remote coastline, Miriam becomes a witness and participant in a sequence that strips Eunice of her defenses and leaves Miriam with the burden of choosing between complicity and mercy. As the sun rises, Eunice’s longing for absolution pivots toward a stark, radical act: she and Miriam drive toward the sea, Eunice shedding the chains that symbolize her punishment, and the two walk into the surf. In a moment that fuses devotion and ruin, Eunice’s voice rises in a biblical recitation, and Miriam carries her beloved’s body away in a Pieta-like embrace as the tide covers the shore, signaling an end that is both bleak and solemn.

your not Judith

In the end, the film leaves a quiet, haunting impression about guilt, faith, and the costs of living with memories that refuse to fade. The atmosphere lingers—the cold air, the engine’s hum, the light at the filling stations, and the unspoken questions about who is being punished and who is granting mercy. The narrative unfolds with an unflinching, steady cadence, inviting reflection on mercy, monstrosity, and the fragile boundaries between salvation and damnation.