HellBent 2005

On the night before Halloween, a gay couple is brutally murdered when a bare-chested killer wearing a devil mask appears and uses a sickle to decapitate them, setting a brutal tone for what follows. The story centers on Eddie, a police technician, who works alongside his sister, a police officer, and who spends Halloween handing out flyers about the recent killings while donning his father’s police uniform for a costume. During his rounds at a tattoo shop, Eddie crosses paths with Jake, a connection that quickly pulls him into a night of danger and desire.

As the evening unfolds, Eddie reunites with his friends—Chaz, Joey, and Tobey—and the group heads to the West Hollywood Halloween Carnival. They pass by the murder site, where the devil-masked killer reappears, and the friends taunt him, misreading his presence as a chance for a predatory encounter. The carnival itself buzzes with activity, masked revelers and music filling the air, but the tension never quite lifts. Eddie spots Jake entering the same carnival space, and he steps away from the crowd to reconnect with him. In the meantime, Joey, who has long harbored a crush on a man he admires from afar, makes a bold move toward his crush in one of the dance venues, only to be cruelly rejected. Chaz offers some consolation and accompanies Joey to a restroom, where a moment of misfortune—accentuated by ecstasy—foreshadows the violence to come.

In the bathroom, the killer emerges from a stall and kills Joey, taking his head as a trophy. The danger intensifies as Chaz moves to another dance venue, where the killer catches up to him on the dance floor. In his drugged state, Chaz is unaware of the lethal threat closing in as the killer slashes his torso and then decapitates him, all while the surrounding crowd continues to dance, unaware that a grisly act is unfolding as part of a Halloween spectacle. Tobey, intoxicated and feeling ignored in his Halloween drag, notices the killer still carrying Joey and Chaz’s heads inside trick-or-treat bags. He pursues the killer, who remains unfazed. After briefly removing his drag, Tobey is confronted anew by the killer, who ends Tobey’s life with a decisive strike.

Eddie ultimately finds Jake and the two of them head toward the first dance venue, only to discover it closed in the wake of the murders. Jake climbs a tall chain-link fence to retrieve his motorcycle, and Eddie follows. On the motorbike, Jake tries to maneuver around and circle back toward Eddie. The killer locates Eddie inside the closed venue and launches an attack. Eddie manages to seal himself in a shallow chain-link enclosure, but the killer’s blade slashes toward him, with the tip of the scythe nicking Eddie’s glass eye. Jake arrives with a police officer, and the killer temporarily retreats.

Back at police headquarters, Eddie and Jake give their statements. Jake learns that Eddie hoped to join the police force like his father, but his dream is compromised by the loss of an eye in a training accident, leaving him with a glass eye and thus unable to enlist. The two return to Eddie’s apartment, where they share a moment of intimacy. Jake even handcuffs Eddie to the bed to search for condoms, a provocative turn of events that is interrupted when the killer strikes again, stabbing Jake and leaving him for dead. Eddie frees himself as the struggle continues, and Jake unexpectedly strikes the killer with a baseball bat, buying Eddie a chance to tend to his injuries. Eddie tries to call for help, but the killer disables the phone, forcing the two to retreat into Eddie’s bedroom and lock themselves in.

In a tense sequence, the killer hammers at the door as Eddie retrieves his father’s gun and extra bullets. With Jake in danger, Eddie pushes him onto the fire escape and prepares to shoot. The killer breaks through, and Eddie fires, first grazing Jake due to his lack of depth perception, then firing again to strike the killer in the forehead. Jake is carried away to a hospital, and Eddie promises to be there when he wakes up. Eddie’s sister taunts the fallen killer, but Eddie realizes the man is not finished. In a final, chilling moment, the killer opens his eyes in the hospital room and grins, revealing that he has Eddie’s artificial eye clenched between his teeth, a cruel reminder that the danger may not be over.