How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates

A horror scholar and her best friend walk into a speed-dating trap

Jamie Prescott is a PhD candidate at NYU writing her dissertation on the parallels between slasher films and romantic comedies.

A horror scholar and her best friend walk into a speed-dating trap

Jamie Prescott is a PhD candidate at NYU writing her dissertation on the parallels between slasher films and romantic comedies. Her best friend and roommate Laurie—a documentary filmmaker who expresses affection through handshakes and brutal honesty—drags her to a monthly singles event. Earlier that day, a news report about a fifth Brooklyn serial killer victim, found surrounded by rose petals, scrolled across their TV, barely registering. The event lands them at Serendipity, a former warehouse club they frequented in college, now redecorated in oppressive crimson velvet across three labyrinthine floors. At check-in, phones, purses, and watches are confiscated to encourage authentic connection. Ten women settle into the basement bar while ten men wait on the mezzanine. The host briefs them: ten-minute dates, move when the bell rings.

A Jeffrey Dahmer reference kills the chemistry with bachelor number five

After three forgettable dates, Jamie sits across from John. He is cute in a Bill Pullman way: floppy hair, warm blue eyes, a soft closed-mouth smile. He listens, asks good follow-ups, makes her blush. Something easy and warm hums between them. Then Wes takes the seat, and Jamie's compass spins. He is muscular where John was lean, intense where John was gentle. He asks what makes her happy; she says movies. They discover shared ground—he loves Miss Congeniality, she loves Saw—and the chemistry crackles until Jamie jokes that the worst-case scenario for speed dating would be murder. She spirals into a monologue about serial killers who target daters, complete with jazz hands on the word. Wes goes stone-faced and leaves the instant the bell rings.

Lights drop, four people die, and the date bell rings Jamie's ninth date, Curtis, is a textbook creep—vodka Red Bull, sleazy pickup lines, and a conviction that every unimpressed woman is a bitch. She tells him to shut his mouth. The lights cut out. In total darkness, a wet slicing sound ripples through the basement bar. When the lights return, Curtis still sits across from her—but a red curve grins open across his throat, blood pouring down his collar. Both bartenders are dead. The host lies facedown in a booth with a knife in her back. Four murders executed in seconds of blackout. Jamie hides under the table, grabs a broken Kahlúa bottle as a weapon, and gives Laurie a smaller one. Eight daters survive in the basement: Jamie, Laurie, Wes, John, Stu, and three others. The speed-dating event has become a slasher…