The Beautiful Dark

In a small town in the Midwest, high-school principal Nancy Weller's life is turned upside down when her 18-year-old son, Jacob, fails out of college and returns home. He's angry, moody and unwilling to do anything except sleep. A past suicide attempt has Nancy on edge that Jacob might try to hurt himself again. She's devastated to learn that Jacob, living on his own at college, stopped taking his psychiatric medication and now refuses to go to therapy. Enlisting the help of her ex-husband, Tom, and her younger son, Charlie, she's determined to get Jacob back on track, whether he likes it or not. Nancy bargains, coerces, pleads, even tears down his bedroom door to get his attention. She finally convinces Jacob to enroll in community college and do something productive with his life. From this deceitful calm, however, Jacob's former girlfriend from college shows up, and Nancy makes a startling discovery: Jacob didn't fail out of college; he was kicked out for writing a graphic play about an on-campus killing spree, carried out by a young man who sounds eerily like her son. As the evidence mounts against Jacob, Nancy is forced to confront her darkest fear: Is her son capable of the unthinkable? And can she stop him before it's too late?