Fixation plot

The film opens with the murder of a young woman in her bathtub after an unknown man lets himself into her house and brutally kills her.

The focus then shifts to a women called Rachel Gellor (Kate Winslet) sitting in a coffee shop and reading a newspaper article written by her. The article is about the murder of a young woman in her London house where she was brutally murdered in her bath.

Rachel is investigating a series of murders around London for her newspaper column. The 12 victims are all single women living alone who were viciously killed by a mysterious attacker. As Rachel investigates deeper into the murders of the women, she begins to see a pattern in the way that the murders are conducted. The murderer seems to have a ‘fixation’ for targeting single vulnerable women in their own homes using a knife.

She visit’s the crime scenes of the murdered women to gather more information.

During the course of her investigation she begins to notice a mysterious man crossing her path. Later that evening she receives a phone call from her close friend, George Baker, (Brad Pitt) who is acting as a policeman whilst investigating further into the murders undercover. He gives Rachel intelligence from the police investigations that the victims had received an unexpected visit from a man checking their gas meter the day before they were murdered. This man is suspected to be linked to the murders.

As Rachel puts the phone down she remembers that a man had come to check her gas meter only the day before, and she realizes that the re-occurrence of the mysterious man that day was not a coincidence. At that very moment she hears the click of her front door opening and the creak of a footstep on her porch.

Rachel panics and hides in her wardrobe. She silently waits as her attacker creeps up her stairs in search for her. She can see him move around her room through the cracks in the wooden wardrobe door. The man moves around the house, searching for her, whilst she nervously hides in the cupboard. After a while the cupboard doors fly open revealing the murder brandishing a knife. Rachel grabs one of her shoes and stabs the heel into his eye whilst trying to make a quick escape.

However, on her way down the stairs the murderer grabs her hair, viciously wrenching her towards him. She turns to see his eye dripping with blood as he drags her up the stairs.

He locks her in the bathroom, giving him time to aid his wounded eye before carrying on with the murder. He begins to tell her random facts about his identity through the bathroom door. He tells her that his name is Darren Brown and he lives with his girlfriend Charlotte.

Inside the bathroom Rachel smashes a shard of mirror to use as a weapon. When the murderer opens the bathroom door they both engage in a bloody wrestle. After a lengthy brawl Rachel manages to break free, as she stabs the mirror into the murderer’s thigh. She grabs her keys and stumbles out of the house, with a wound to her leg.

She gets into her car and turns the ignition on. When the headlights turn on they reveal the murderer standing in front of the car, grasping the knife. As he bounds towards the car, Rachel runs him over. She breaks into hysterical giggles and tears with a sigh of relief.

The focus shifts to Rachel sitting in a hospital bed. Her friend George walks in with a glum look. He reveals that the man she identified as the murderer cannot be right. Darren Brown died 50years ago, after hanging himself whilst serving a prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend Charlotte.

However, when George shows her a picture of the deceased Darren Brown, she shrieks with horror, as it is the same man who attempted to murder her that very night before.