Pet (film)

Plot

Seth is a shy man who works at the local Animal Control department. He has developed an obsession with Holly, a waitress he saw writing in her journal on the bus one day. Seth asks security guard Nate for advice, and Nate tells him to be confident and approach her. Seth extensively researches her online profiles for information and tries to ask her out at the diner, but his attempts at confidence come across awkward and she rebuffs him. At home, Holly talks about the encounter with her friend Claire, and takes a drunken phone call from her ex Eric, who cheated on her.

Holly receives a large bouquet of roses at work the next day, and assuming they are an apology from Eric, goes to visit the bar where he works. Seth, who has been following her, confronts her outside, leading to a physical confrontation when he refuses to accept her rejection. Eric beats Seth up, but Seth is able to steal Holly's journal. He spends the next several days reading every detail. As his performance slips at work, Seth discovers a trapdoor to a room in an abandoned wing of the animal shelter, where he sets about constructing a steel cage. He follows Holly home, breaks into her apartment, and kidnaps her.

As she comes to in the cage, Holly vows to survive, speaking to an image of Claire. Seth informs Holly that he loves her and has imprisoned her to "save" her. He reveals that he has heard her talking in both her own and Claire's voices, and that he knows the truth: Holly discovered that Eric had slept with Claire, and confronted her about it during a car ride. An angry Holly continued accelerating the car until they were hit by a truck. Although injured, Claire was alive until Holly stabbed her in the eye with a long glass shard; Claire's death was attributed to the crash. Since then, Holly has committed a series of gruesome murders and written about them in her journal. When Seth realized the stories were real, he formulated a plan to save Holly to prevent her from hurting anyone else, claiming that he finally felt a purpose in life.

Over the next several days, they engage in psychological mind games against each other, as Holly begins to slip details to draw Seth in. Seth maintains that Holly committed the other murders from guilt of not being caught over Claire, but Holly counters that she kills simply because she enjoys it. A suspicious Nate follows Seth, and discovers Holly. During a struggle, Seth ends up stabbing him. Desperate to avoid detection and at Holly's urging, he smashes Nate's skull with a cinder block and dismembers and disposes of the body by feeding it to the dogs and burning the rest.

Seth invents a story to explain Nate's disappearance, but this only makes the police suspicious of him. With time running out, Holly convinces him that he can save her if he proves his love to her by cutting off his finger. He does, but this leads to Holly grabbing his knife and threatening to kill herself if he doesn't release her. She says she finally believes that he loves her before slitting his throat.

Some time later, Holly is back together with Eric, and the "fictional" events from her journal are being published as a book. Holly finds evidence that Eric has been cheating again, but declines to kill him. Instead, she travels to a warehouse, where it is revealed that Seth is kept in a cage, still alive but horribly mutilated and tortured; he has "saved" her by allowing her to take out her murderous impulses on him instead.

Production

It was announced in August 2015 that filming had begun with actors Dominic Monaghan, Ksenia Solo, Jennette McCurdy, and Nathan Parsons.

Screenings

The film premiered at the March 2016 South by Southwest Film festival.

Release

Pet was released in theaters on December 2, 2016. It is the lowest grossing theatrical release of 2016 with a total gross of just $70 from one theater. It is currently available on DVD and VOD.

Reception

Reviews for Pet have largely been negative. Rotten Tomatoes awards the film a 45% score. Many reviews noted implausible twists with Screen Anarchy saying "Without spoiling anything more, the twists push past the merely unlikely into a strange minefield of 'what in the world?'" and RogerEbert.com saying "The rank, idiotic implausibilities continue to mount..." The Hollywood Reporter gave the bottom line of "This graphically violent horror thriller features too many plot twists for its own good."