How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates

Jamie Prescott, a PhD candidate at NYU writing a dissertation on the shared structural formulas of slasher films and romantic comedies, attends a speed-dating event at a Brooklyn club called Serendipity with her best friend and roommate, Laurie Hamilton, an aspiring documentary filmmaker. Earlier that day, they watched a news report about a serial killer whose fifth victim, Casey Langenkamp, was found surrounded by rose petals.

Serendipity occupies a converted factory that Jamie and Laurie recognize as Cravin', a club they frequented years earlier. The building retains its mazelike layout of hallways, alcoves, and multiple levels. The event requires participants to surrender their phones and belongings, and the attendant notes the security guard is running late. 10 men and 10 women rotate through 10-minute dates tracked on paper match cards.

During cocktail hour in the basement bar, Jamie bonds with several women, including Colette, Dani, and Jennifer, but receives a cold stare from Billie. Her first three dates disappoint: Drew stares at her chest, Stu gives her the silent treatment after she accidentally calls him Drew, and Lee gushes about another woman. Her fourth date, John, a soft-spoken man with blue eyes, charms her with his attentiveness. Her fifth date, Wes, is muscular, dark-haired, and serious. He opens with "What makes you happy?" and their chemistry is electric until Jamie impulsively jokes about murder. Wes turns guarded and leaves stiffly when the bell rings.

After the break, Jamie's ninth date, Curtis, proves crude and aggressive. As she tells him off, the lights cut out. When they return, Curtis's throat has been slashed. More attacks follow during a second blackout. Four people are dead: Curtis, both bartenders, and the event host, Marion. Eight survivors emerge: Jamie, Laurie, John, Wes, Stu, Campbell (a quiet man scheduled as Jamie's final date), Colette, and Dani. Jamie arms herself and Laurie with broken bottles.

Since there is no exit from the basement, Jamie leads the group up a second staircase to the ground floor. The front doors are sealed by a keypad. The attendant is dead, the phones are missing, and every camera has been spray-painted black. When Stu suggests splitting up, Laurie brokers a compromise: Two groups will search opposite sides of the first level.

Jamie's group finds Billie and Jennifer hiding in alcoves, but Campbell runs off alone. Jamie and Wes follow a trail of blood to two more bodies surrounded by rose petals and connect the petals to the serial killings on the news. Their mutual attraction deepens during the search.

When the groups reunite on the dance floor, only John is waiting; Stu sent Dani and Colette to the basement and went to the mezzanine alone. The group dispatches Wes and Billie to retrieve the others.

On the mezzanine, John says he will investigate a noise and does not return. Jamie goes looking and witnesses the killer, a figure in a pink ski mask with heart-shaped eyeholes, stabbing a man in a hallway. She flees with Laurie and Jennifer to hide in a VIP room. The killer enters, surveys the space, and leaves a red rose and a card reading "Can't you see? You belong to me." Jamie names the killer "Heart Eyes" and theorizes the murders are a twisted romantic gesture.

Wes returns with Billie and Dani but without Colette. From the mezzanine railing, the group sees a heart fashioned from intestines on the dance floor with Jamie's name inside it. Colette's body lies in a booth below, confirming Jamie is Heart Eyes's target. Billie storms off alone.

In the women's restroom, Jamie spots an air vent and determines only Laurie can fit through. She boosts Laurie into the shaft, closes the cover, and lies to the others about Laurie's whereabouts. Heart Eyes enters moments later, but Jamie survives by locking herself in a stall.

Wes proposes triggering a monitored fire alarm to summon emergency services. Challenged by Stu, Wes admits he is a homicide detective suspended from the serial murder case. He attended alone to study the killer's methods. Jamie is stung that their connection may have been purely investigative. The group splits: Stu takes Dani and Jennifer to find the alarm's control panel while Jamie and Wes search a janitor's closet for flammable materials.

Alone in the closet, Wes confesses he forgot his investigative purpose the moment he sat across from Jamie. Their mutual attraction ignites into a kiss and an intimate encounter. They gather a lighter, hand sanitizer, and paper towels, and Wes breaks a broom handle into a sharpened stake for Jamie.

Heading to regroup, they find Stu, who reports Dani was killed. An ax swings from a doorway and kills Stu. Jamie and Wes flee and encounter Jennifer and Billie near the mezzanine stairs. Billie claims to have found an exit, then slashes Jennifer's throat when Jennifer turns away. Billie pulls the pink mask from her pocket, revealing herself as Heart Eyes's accomplice who views Jamie as a rival for the killer's affection. When Wes lunges, Billie slashes his chest. Jamie swings her broomstick stake into Billie's face. Billie slips, tumbles over the mezzanine railing, and dies on the bar below.

Jamie realizes Billie could not have committed all the murders alone, since a killing she witnessed occurred while Billie was in the basement with Wes. She briefly suspects Wes and runs, but soon concludes her fear clouded her judgment. John then appears at the bottom of a staircase, barely injured despite vanishing hours earlier; his wounds were faked with corn syrup. He confesses he spotted Jamie when she first entered the club and decided she was the One. He killed Curtis for disrespecting her, and Billie, whom he met at a cooking class months earlier, served as his accomplice. John frames the massacre as devotion and asks Jamie to say she loves him.

Jamie plays along, then runs and finds Wes. They reconcile. Wes has located six survivors barricaded in a locked office and a camera still functioning above the dance floor. Jamie proposes that Wes lead the survivors to a rooftop fire escape she remembers from Cravin' while she lures John to the dance floor alone.

Jamie descends carrying a knife she found hidden among the stems of a rose bouquet on the body of Campbell, who was killed after running off. John appears on the mezzanine, plays "Love Story" by Taylor Swift, and delivers a grand romantic speech. Jamie provokes him by revealing she was intimate with Wes. The fire sprinklers activate, signaling Wes has triggered the alarm. Jamie draws John close with feigned softness, then drives the knife up under his ribs. She finishes him on the ground, following the slasher rule to always double tap.

Police breach the front doors. Jamie walks out and spots Laurie wrapped in a foil blanket. They embrace, and Laurie tells Jamie, "You're my favorite." Wes arrives, and in a quiet moment, Jamie tells him she thinks she is going to fall in love with him. He kisses her.

Eight months later, Jamie has completed her dissertation, begun teaching film studies, and is attending therapy. She and Wes have moved in with Laurie in a new apartment. Laurie is developing a documentary about the events and dating someone new. Wes has been reinstated as a detective. Jamie reflects that Final Girls, the lone surviving heroines of horror films, and Leading Ladies are not born but made through choices, and that she chose to be both.