In the 2018, middle-aged author Bret Easton Ellis is driving through Los Angeles with his partner, Todd, when he spots middle-aged Susan Reynolds, a figure from his high school years. It nearly makes his heart stop, and, in fact, over the years, while attempting to write the story of his high school years, he’s become stricken with fear, one time landing in the hospital with a panic attack. But at present, he’s ready to finish his story about the infamous serial killer, The Trawler, who haunted his senior year at Buckley, the posh L.A. private school for teens from famed and moneyed L.A. families.
The killer murdered and/or attacked several people he knew, amongst them the handsome Thom Wright, a school football hero whom the closeted young Bret secretly pined for; Susan, the gorgeous golden girl of the school and Thom’s girlfriend; Debbie Schaffer, Bret’s playfully sexual girlfriend; Ryan Vaughn, a football playing friend of Thom’s whom Bret also pined for; and Matt Kellner, a handsome stoner and loner.
In 1981, Bret, like most students attending Buckley, comes from fabulous wealth, with their parents rarely home given their busy lives. As for Bret, he’s happy in his new relationship with Debbie, who’s devoted to her horse, Spirit, and the daughter of Hollywood mega-producer, Terry, whom rumour has it is gay. Bret’s and Debbie’s best friends include Thom, a handsome football player who’s long been coupled with Susan, the school’s blonde golden girl; and Ryan, also football player and close friends with Thom.
Yet Bret has secrets. He an anxious pill popper, sometimes popping multiple Xanax or Quaaludes a day. Moreover, he’s gay, and for some time, has been secretly hooking up with Matt, a lone wolf who barely interacts with anyone at school. Bret regularly meets to have sex with him in the pool house of Matt’s palatial family home. Moreover, Bret fantasizes about Thom and Ryan, and once rubbed Ryan’s thigh in a darkened movie theatre – and Ryan didn’t stop him from doing so, as he’s also gay and closeted. They even shared a kiss. But Ryan isn’t yet ready to take it any further.
As the summer ends, Bret grows weary of his sex rendezvous with Matt, one day calling it quits, at least to himself, though as he leaves Matt’s pool house, he notices that Matt’s fish tank is empty. Matt doesn’t know what happened to them and notes that his cat is missing, too. Come the start of senior year, everyone at school notices the arrival of new student, Robert Mallory, who transferred from the East Coast. After his mother’s untimely death, he says, he moved over the summer to live with his paternal Aunt Abigail in L.A. Everyone’s warmed by Robert’s ingratiating manner and his movie star good looks, including Bret. And yet something about Robert makes him do a double-take. He’s seen Robert before. Then it clicks. One year ago, while attending a movie by himself, he saw an incredibly handsome guy walk into the theatre to his seat, a guy Bret assumed was a UCLA student. But he now realizes it was Robert.
Yet when Bret asks Robert about this, Robert denies it was him. Bret knows he’s lying and now is determined to find out why. Robert, he realizes, has secrets of his own, and is painstakingly acting the role of a cool, chill guy. This was the same summer, he recalls, when there was an abductions in L.A. They went on to include the young JULIE SELWYN, and later, Katherine Latchford and Sarah Johnson. All of them, investigators note in local newspapers, were soon discovered dead with “matching mutilations.”
Much later, the slayer’s M.O. becomes clear. He first stalks his victims; breaks into their homes and rearranges furniture, hangs up random posters, some with pentagrams drawn on them; repeatedly calls them, remaining silent except for heavy breathing; kidnaps their pets; then at last abducts his victims, and leaves their corpses to be discovered by authorities, their bodies savagely chopped and re-arranged, with their slain pets sewn to their genitals or left at their homes. The killer is soon dubbed “The Trawler,” a reference to a fishing vessel. But at first, the L.A. populace only know about a series of home robberies, and a local, would-be Manson-like cult called Riders of the After-Life.
Soon after, at Buckley’s, everyone is alarmed when the school’s Griffin mascot statue is desecrated. Blood is splattered at its base, while decapitated fish heads are pasted onto the statue, creating what look like female breasts and a penis, while part of a wig is used to create pubic hair. As for Bret, he’s concerned that Robert seems interested in Susan, though she appears oblivious to his gazes. More concerning, he spies Robert having what looks like a mild argument with Matt. Unnerved, Bret follows Robert in his car at school day’s end – only to have Robert abruptly turn and start following him. Trying to act innocent, Bret goes to the local Galleria mall, as does Robert, where Robert feigns surprised to run into him.
Under Bret’s questioning, Robert claims he knows of Matt because his Aunt’s ex-boyfriend used to work with his dad — then he walks away, gazing through the window of a pet store, thereafter seemingly stalking a group of girls. At school, Bret learns from Susan that principal Dr. Croft had privately asked Susan to help Robert fit in at school, revealing that before he came to L.A., he’d been institutionalized at a facility in Jacksonville, Illinois. Bret chalks this up one more strange lie of omission from Robert, whom he’s sure is crazy – but Susan says Bret’s the one who’s acting crazy these days, since Robert told her he’d followed him in his car.
Later visiting Matt to learn more about his relationship with Robert, Bret notices a new poster on the wall of the pool house – there’s a small pentagram drawn in the corner – and that Matt is visibly shaken. He wants Bret to stop calling him and hanging up and sneaking into the pool house and rearranging the furniture, but Bret insists he’s not doing so, instead warning him to keep his distance from Robert.
Shortly after, at a lavish party in town, Bret, Debbie, Thom, Susan, Ryan and Robert mingle, and Robert privately questions Bret, wanting to know why he had a falling out with Matt. Bret’s stunned that he knows about him and Matt, and later shocked to be nearly accosted by a hippie from the Riders of the After-Life cult in the men’s room. Becoming more paranoid about Robert given the spreading news about more female abductions and slayings – which are perfectly timed to Robert’s arrival – he tries to ignore these thoughts and spends the following weekend at his house with Ryan. Unbeknownst to anyone, they enjoy drugs and sex over two nights. Bret reveals that he thinks everyone is getting a bit too close to Robert, but Ryan merely thinks he’s a nice guy.
The next week, Bret notes that Ryan doesn’t acknowledge him or their weekend together – it’s as if nothing ever happened. But Bret is more unnerved by the press, which now identify the slayer as “The Trawler.” Robert next confronts Bret, wanting to know why he’s bad-mouthing him to Matt, Thom, Ryan and Susan, which only convinces Bret that Robert is both the slayer and paranoid. Matters turn grimmer when Matt is reported “missing” by his parents RONALD and SHEILA. Then it’s reported that his backpack is found at a State Park and his blood-soaked car ominously returned to his home. His bloodied body is next found in the pool; his beheaded cat crucified to the pool house wall. Police report that Matt went on a drug binge, had a psychotic break, killed his cat, then himself.
Bret is deeply shaken, knowing that Matt was paranoid by what was happening in his life the last time he saw him. When he visits his parents, he’s shown crime scene photos of Matt’s body by Father Ronald – the autopsy showed that he’d ingested his fish – who’s convinced that his son was kidnapped by a psycho, then slain. And Bret’s convinced that the psycho is Robert. Bret needs more proof, and so again begins following Robert, this time in his mother’s Jag so Robert doesn’t know it’s him, tracking him to his Century City condo building, and later, to an abandoned Mulholland Hills house with a “No Trespassing” sign. Now Robert realizes that this is where Matt was kept by Robert when Matt went “missing,” along with his other victims.
Come Homecoming, Susan’s and Tom’s relationship becomes strained, which Bret notices Robert is observing closely. Bret is now convinced that Susan is cheating on Thom with Robert. At the same time, Bret gets a call from Terry’s assistant; Terry wants to have a meeting with Bret at the Beverly Hills Hotel about writing screenplays, as he’s heard from Debbie that he’s a writer. When Bret shows up, he’s led briskly to Terry’s private bungalow, where, after pretending to listen to Bret pitch a story, Terry roughly takes Bret to his bed. Bret goes along with it numbly, and afterwards, is urged by Terry never to tell his daughter Debbie or his wife. All the while, Bret senses that something’s not right – as if he’s being photographed by someone just outside the bungalow.
With yet another girl reported missing in L.A., and with The Trawler now sending frightening letters to the press and taking credit for the slayings, Bret learns from Debbie that Susan is concerned about Robert’s drinking, since he’s taking Thorazine, an anti-psychotic. He also learns from Thom that that Robert thinks someone is stalking him and following him in their car. Days later, when Thom travels east to look at colleges, Bret takes off to Palm Springs, where – just as he thought – Susan is hooking up with Robert. Susan spots him in a restaurant and privately begs him not to tell Thom. Bret agrees, but only if she doesn’t tell Robert that he’s in Palm Springs. Returning home, he’s shocked to find a cassette anonymously left for him, and when he plays it, he hears Matt, strung out on drugs, pitifully wailing for help, forced to ingest what sound like his fish.
Continuing to track Robert – to his Century City condo and the Mulholland house – and noting that a strange van is sometimes following him, Bret next boldly confronts Robert, wanting to know why he taped his abduction of Matt, and why he was institutionalized. Robert is taken aback, just as they’re interrupted by the arriving Ryan. The next day, Robert’s Aunt asks Bret to meet her in private. At a restaurant, she expresses her concern for Robert and hopes Bret can help. Robert was indeed in that movie theatre where Bret had spotted him while visiting L.A., but the family wanted this to be kept secret given Robert’ troubled background, since he’d briefly been dating Kahty Latchford, the Trawler’s very first victim.
Previously, Robert had been devastated by his mother Carol’s death – she’d fallen down a flight of stairs, though there were rumours that she’d been pushed – and was later institutionalized after he overdosed, in an apparent suicide attempt, upon being accused by his stepsister of sexually molesting her. Moving him to L.A. was meant to be fresh start for Robert, though now, as Abigail insists, Robert is deeply fraught, convinced that he’s being followed. The Mulholland house, she mentions, is for sale by her and her husband, and Robert merely keeps some things there. She begs Bret to keep an eye out for Robert, as she’s deeply concerned for his mental state. But for Bret this only confirms his worst fears. Working out a timeline, he easily connects Robert to all the slayings.
Shortly after, at one of Terry’s lavish Hollywood parties, Bret and his friends arrive, as well as Robert, and Bret rebuffs private advances from Terry, who next tries and fails, as Bret observes, to flirt with Robert, much to Robert’s ire. Then everyone hears sudden screams; Terry tumbles down the stairs, lands with a crack, his bone gruesomely piercing through his leg. Seriously injured, he’s rushed to the hospital. For Bret, it’s too much of a coincidence; Robert tried to kill Terry in the same way he killed his mother. Yet there are more screams from Liz, his wife, crying out that Terry’s a no good “cocksucker.”
Later, unnerved that Debbie has been anonymously gifted with a poster, he meets with principal Dr. Croft, trying and failing to convince him that Robert is The Trawler, but Croft is more interested in talking about Terry and Liz, the later who says she has damning proof of Terry’s sexual relations with Bret, having hired a private investigator to follow her husband and take pictures. Croft further mentions that Robert told him that Bret was also intimate with Matt. Rattled, but determined to implicate Robert, Bret sneaks into the Mulholland house, goes to the basement and finds cages to transport animals in the, pet food – and an ominously locked door. Shortly after, Debbie’s horse Spirit, is found brutally slain.
The next day, Bret again accuses Robert of being The Trawler, but to no avail. Even worse, Debbie, who’s begun to complain about hang-up calls and her room being re- arranged, is delivered pictures of Terry and Bret having sex and now wants nothing more to do with Bret. As for Thom and Susan, she finally admits that she’s been seeing Robert and they break up. Thom is devastated. For his part, Robert next visits Bret at his home, hoping to get him to stop accusing him of being a killer, then makes an amorous move. Bret is excited – and Robert coldly stops short, since all along, he’s known Bret was a “faggot” who’s just wanted to have him. He takes off, leaving Bret humiliated.
As for Susan, she’s at home alone waiting for Robert to come over when she’s suddenly attacked by a butcher-knife wielding MASKED MAN, who slashes her breast. Breaking free and calling Thom when she can’t reach Robert, Thom races over – also finding himself slashed by the Masked Man, who then takes off. A horrified Robert next arrives, alerting the police. Bret soon learns about this – along with the horrifying news that Debbie has gone missing. Now determined to confront Robert once and for all, Bret grabs a knife, races to Century City and boldly faces Robert, who also wields a knife, accusing Bret of being the psycho who’s been calling and following him.
In a knife-slashing battle, wherein Robert jumps from the balcony to the balcony below, and Bret follows, Robert jumps again, this time to his death. Thereafter, Debbie reappears, as she’d merely been visiting a new ROCKER BOYFRIEND. For his part, Bret is deemed a hero in the press given his story to police – along with his timeline of the slayings matching to Robert’s whereabouts, and the damning evidence found in the Mulholland House, including evidence found in the locked basement room indicating that the victims had been kept there.
But just as quickly, yet another Trawler victim is kidnapped and slain, and the Trawler sends a letter to the press, mocking them for defaming Robert, who was no killer, but their unwitting “God” whom they wanted to protect. He had no idea they were charting his every move from their van, that they used the Mulholland basement, and give further proof to at last decisively prove that Robert was innocent. Now Bret is a loathed outcast, while Susan now wonders if it was Bret who attacked her that fateful night. Later achieving fame as an author, with The Trawler never captured, Bret tries to put the past behind him, but upon seeing Susan in 2028, he’s now ready to tell his story at present.