TENEBRE

Peter Neal, an American writer of violent horror and thriller novels, visits Italy to promote his latest book, Tenebrae. He is accompanied by his literary agent, Bullmer, and his assistant, Anne. Neal is unaware that his embittered ex-fiancée, Jane, has also followed him to Rome. Just before Neal arrives in Rome, Elsa, a young kleptomaniac, is murdered with a razor by an unseen assailant. The murderer sends Neal a letter informing him that his works have inspired him to go on a killing spree. Neal is soon contacted by Police Captain Germani – a fan of his novels – and his partner, Inspector Altieri.

More killings take place. Tilde, a queer journalist and friend of Neal's who nonetheless considers his novels sexist, is murdered at her home along with her lover Marion. Maria, the young daughter of the owner of Neal's hotel, is hacked to death with an axe after discovering the killer's lair. Neal notices that TV interviewer Cristiano Berti has an unusually intense interest in his work. That night, Neal and Bullmer's assistant, Gianni, go to watch Berti's house. Gianni approaches the home alone to get a better view and witnesses Berti getting hacked to death with an axe. However, Gianni is unable to see the murderer's face and returns to Neal, only to find the novelist unconscious on the lawn.

Germani discovers that Berti was obsessed with Neal's novels and believes the killings will stop now that Berti is dead. However, Bullmer, who is having an affair with Jane, is stabbed to death while waiting for his lover in a public square. Gianni is haunted by the thought that he missed the importance of something he saw at Berti's house. He returns to the house and suddenly remembers that he had heard Berti confessing to his attacker: "I killed them all, I killed them all!" Before Gianni can share this detail with anyone, he is strangled to death in the back seat of his car.

Jane sits at her kitchen table with a pistol when a figure leaps through her window and hacks her to death. Altieri arrives at the house and is killed with an axe to the back. Germani and Anne arrive soon afterward and confront the murderer, who is revealed to be Neal. Upon learning the details of Berti's sadistic murder spree, Neal recalled a previously repressed memory involving his murder of a girl who had sexually humiliated him when he was a youth in Rhode Island. The memory tormented Neal and inflamed his previously repressed lust for blood, driving him insane.

Surrounded, Neal sees that he cannot escape and slits his throat in front of Germani and Anne. Finding the telephone out of order, they go outside to report the incident on the car radio. Germani returns to the house, where he is murdered by Neal, who has faked his death using a trick razor. Neal waits inside for Anne to return, but when she opens the door, she knocks over a metal sculpture that impales and kills Neal. A horrified Anne stands in the rain, screaming.

It is revealed that Peter Neal is the murderer, driven insane by a repressed memory. After faking his death and committing more murders, he is finally killed when a metal sculpture accidentally impales him as Anne re-enters the house.

The ending twists the narrative, showing that Neal, haunted by past trauma and the violence of his own fiction, becomes the very monster he once only imagined. The complex interplay between creativity and culpability is literalized, and his demise—accidental, gruesome, and witnessed by a survivor—completes Argento's examination of fatal obsession and narrative collapse.