THE KILLING KIND

Terry Lambert serves two years in prison after being physically forced to participate in a gang rape when the victim, Tina Moore, lies about the nature of the incident. Terry's eccentric mother, Thelma, runs a large Victorian boarding house in suburban Los Angeles, primarily for elderly ladies. Terry and Thelma have a relationship of unusual intimacy. Thelma, an amateur photographer, obsessively photographs Terry, and frames the numerous portraits in the house.

When Terry returns home after the prison stay, he moves back into the boarding house. The day after his arrival, a young woman, Lori Davis, arrives from Arizona and rents a room. Shortly after, Thelma finds one of her beloved pet cats dead. One day at the poolside, Terry pulls Lori into the water after she playfully pushes him in, and becomes aggressive, holding her head underwater. The altercation is witnessed by Thelma, who blames Lori for "leading Terry on," and Louise, a shy librarian who lives next-door.

Later, Terry borrows his mother's car to stalk Tina, chasing her and nearly forcing her off the road. Meanwhile, Louise takes an interest in Terry, and sparks a conversation with him by the pool one night, and makes a sexual advance at him. Louise later claims to Terry that she was not actually trying to seduce him. Terry subsequently visits the home of Rhea Benson, the attorney who failed to get him a reduced sentence. In a deranged state, Terry forces her at knifepoint to ingest a significant amount of alcohol. When she falls unconscious, Terry lights her house on fire, burning her alive.

At the boarding house, Terry gets into another altercation with Lori while attempting to fix her leaking shower head, and strangles her to death in the bathtub. Thelma finds Lori's corpse in the bathroom, and helps to dispose of the body to protect Terry. The two stuff Lori's corpse in a trash can and haul it to a local dump in the middle of the night. However, Louise observes the two moving the trash can and becomes suspicious, calling the police. Thelma puts potassium cyanide into chocolate milk she makes for Terry. Terry, not knowing it is poisoned, drinks, and dies on the sofa as Thelma cradles him in her lap. She takes one final photo of him, and she hears sirens approaching in the distance.

Thelma poisons Terry with cyanide-laced chocolate milk after they dispose of Lori's body, and takes a final photograph of him as he dies, just before the police arrive.

The film’s conclusion sees Thelma turning on her son in a final, chilling act of control and twisted maternal love. The act of poisoning Terry, then photographing his corpse, underscores the perverse intimacy at the film's core—her last attempt to keep him, even in death, as an object under her gaze. The approaching sirens signal the inevitable collapse of their insular, toxic world.