Genre: Horror/Fantasy/Thriller
Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer: Abbie Q
Producer: HG Hansen
Based on the novel by Mona Awad
Cast: Kaitlyn Dever, Geraldine Viswanathan, Chandler Riggs, Sammi Hanratty, Christina Ricci, Sabrina Carpenter, Charlie Plummer, Molly C. Quinn, Xolo Mariduena, Kiana Madeira, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Bailee Madison
Plot: At Kissing Peak, Erica (Kiana Madeira) is hot-n-steamy with her boyfriend, Lance (Patrick Schwarzenegger). We hear multiple notification texts till it becomes overwhelming, with the last one being "You're gonna die!" Then Erica breaks her phone screen, picking it up. A sudden sound in the woods is heard. They look up to see someone in a robe with a bunny mask on. Lance honks the horn to scare them. The person positions their head to the side, slowly revealing a knife. Erica becomes eccentric, hinting she knows their situation, but it's too late. Multiple bunny mask assailants rush from the woods at the window behind her. They surround the car stabbing them from all directions. Erica tries to escape as Lance is stabbed repeatedly. But she doesn't get far as the pink Bunny puts a foot on her throat. Erica curses them out, struggling until pink Bunny shows an ax. She begins to aim it like golf put shot which freaks Erica out. But before Erica can curse their names, the ax gets golf swung into her head.
Samantha Heather Mackey (Kaitlyn Dever) has just arrived at Warren University, an experimental writing school on the East Coast, for her final year in the fiction MFA program. She attends a welcome back party with her best friend Ava (Geraldine Viswanathan), a dropout from the nearby art school. She expresses her general disgust with the four other girls in her writing workshop, whom she refers to collectively as the "Bunnies" because this is the pet name each of them has given each other. The Bunnies are wealthy and overly affectionate with one another. Samantha also has specific nicknames for each of the Bunnies: "Cupcake" (Sammi Hanratty), "Creepy Doll" (Molly C. Quinn), "Vignette" (Bailee Madison), and "the Duchess" (Sabrina Carpenter). Samantha does not have any friends on campus, and she alludes to an awkward former intimacy with her thesis adviser, whom she calls "the Lion" (Charlie Plummer).
Samantha finds a note in her mailbox inviting her to a party the Bunnies are throwing called "Smut Salon." She wonders if the invitation is a joke or a mistake and explains that she feels like an outsider because they are the only other students in her workshop class. Samantha chats with a poetry student named Jonah (Xolo Mariduena), also an outcast. He invites Samantha to "hang out sometime," but suddenly, the Lion walks in, and Samantha makes an excuse and awkwardly runs off.
Samantha goes outside to meet Ava, who, she notes, is "militantly anti-Warren." Samantha is uneasy because there has been a spate of violent attacks recently on campus and in the surrounding town, including decapitations. Samantha and Ava go back to Ava's house and practice tango dancing. She receives a text from Cupcake/Caroline, asking if she is coming to the party, and finally decides to go, despite Ava's mild protests. Samantha explains that the Bunnies are critical of her work in class, so she would like to get on their good side.
The Duchess is the unacknowledged leader of the group. She is welcomed into the house by Cupcake and the others. They ply Samantha with liquor and recite erotic poetry. The Bunnies convince Samantha to tell them a "smutty" story, and she responds by describing her high school crush, Rob Valencia, and explaining how they were in a play together in which they had to "die" beside each other night after night.
Samantha wakes up in her apartment with no memory of going home. Before this, she had been sleeping most nights at Ava's. Samantha pieces together the rest of her night, recalling the Bunnies entreating her to go outside and catch a bunny. She had done so, and the Bunny sat in her lap for a moment before scampering off.
After wandering through town, Samantha arrives at the workshop class. The workshop is led by a famous writer named Ursula (Christina Ricci), whom Samantha calls "Fosco" after a character in Wilkie Collins' The Woman in White. Samantha is experiencing a period of writer's block, so she reads a piece she wrote long ago, and for the first time, the Bunnies express admiration for her work.
Since the party, Samantha has not seen Ava. She returns to the pond on Warren's campus, where they first met, but Ava is not there. Ordinarily, there is a swan in the pond, but today, when Samantha visits, the swan is missing, and there are dozens of bunnies on the lawn. She continues to see bunnies around campus, and one day Jonah sees her talking to one. He asks her if Samantha would like to go for a drink but declines. She witnesses a bunny get hit by a car, and another one speaks to her, addressing her by name.
Samantha recalls her hometown, named for its waterfall, "Falls of Falling." She remembers writing stories in the hair salon where her mother worked. After her mother died when Samantha was 13, her father sunk all their money into real estate development and quickly lost it. He is currently hiding from some powerful men to whom he is in debt. Samantha texts Ava but gets no response. Instead, she receives messages from the Bunnies inviting her to another party. Samantha decides to go to the tango class she and Ava ordinarily attend.
Samantha confronts Ava about her silence at a tango class. When she tries to apologize for going to Smut Salon, Ava insists she is not angry. They quarrel, and Samantha walks away after receiving another text invitation from the Bunnies.
Samantha arrives at Creepy Doll/Kira's house, and Cupcake/Caroline invites her inside, informing her that the party is prom-themed. The women discuss their various prom experiences and ask Samantha for more details about Rob Valencia while plying her with drinks. The Bunnies go upstairs, and Samantha chats with the men in attendance at the party. Their responses to her are bizarre and stilted. Suddenly, she hears screaming coming from upstairs. The Bunnies return, accompanied by Rob Valencia. He asks her to dance, and she agrees, but he begins chewing on the corsage on her wrist as they are dancing. She asks him to stop, but he will not, so she slaps him. Rob Valencia starts screaming and saying terrible things about Samantha. Then his head explodes.
Samantha wakes up in Kira's house. Kira gives her some pills, ostensibly for her hangover. The Bunnies and Samantha go to a workshop, where Samantha receives overwhelmingly positive critiques from her new friends.
The Bunnies take Samantha to a frequent cafe that sells mini versions of every type of food imaginable. They insist she only thinks she saw Rob Valencia's head explode. They tell her they admire her work and invite her to join them in a collective project THe Bunnies are working on, which they refer to as a "hybrid." Samantha checks her phone and sees she still has no response from Ava. She agrees to join the Bunnies.
The Bunnies and Samantha return to Kira's house and go into her attic. There is a book and a box in the middle of the room, a toy bride figurine covered in "what looks like dark red nail polish," and something covered in a red velvet cloth. There is an ax in the corner. Cupcake/Caroline removes the cloth to find a bunny underneath. They each don a rabbit mask and give one to Samantha. They chant, the light goes out in the room, and the Bunny explodes. Samantha screams. There is a knock at the door. Cupcake/Caroline answers and returns with a man with a harelip. The Bunnies try to talk to the man, but he only screams in response. Despite her protests about her role in this ritual, Kira gets the ax and hits the man with it, killing him. Next time, the Bunnies discuss what they can do differently to make a better man. Three attempts later, they have created a gorgeous man who speaks charmingly to Samantha. Her shock begins to subside, and she feels overwhelmingly blissful.
Samantha and the Bunnies are on the lawn at Warren, hugging each other tightly. Samantha has begun calling all women "Bunny" instead of their usual nicknames. Samantha is approached by Jonah, but she ignores him. The women continue to hold their Workshop/conjuring rituals to create Hybrids out of bunnies. The ones that do not turn out well are either axed or driven far away and shoved out of the car. The women gather at the Mini cafe and discuss their future workshops plans. The drugs have made Samantha wholly committed to the Bunnies and their nefarious deeds. The Bunnies walk through town to visit Pinkberry when suddenly Samantha is grabbed from behind and pulled into an alley.
Samantha is confronted by Ava, whom she barely recognizes. Ava explains that she has been worried because Samantha disappeared and refers to the Bunnies as a "cult." Finally, Samantha remembers Ava and follows her out of the alley.
Ava and Samantha go to a diner, and Ava explains that she had not seen Samantha in weeks, then spotted her once on campus with the Bunnies and called her name. When Samantha did not respond, she called out "Bunny!" and all five women turned. Samantha vaguely remembers the weeks of conjuring rituals and the Hybrids. Ava tells Samantha she is thinking of leaving town. The Bunnies arrive. Ava claims she rescued Samantha from a "wolf boy" in town and then leaves. The Duchess/Eleanor follows her outside and says something that Samantha cannot hear. Ava departs, Jonah arrives, and Eleanor and the Bunnies peel off in Eleanor's car. Jonah asks Samantha if she needs a ride somewhere.
Samantha asks Jonah to drive her around, and they stop at the bus and train stations. She is looking for Ava, but she does not tell Jonah this. They talk in the car. Jonah explains that he stayed on campus over summer break because he'd have difficulty maintaining his sobriety if he had gone home to Alaska. Samantha admits she was also in town during the break because she had nowhere to go. Samantha tells Jonah about her mother's death and her father's absence. He invites her over for tea, but she asks him to drive her somewhere else.
They arrive at Eleanor's house. Samantha sees a stag outside. She is angry and plans to know what Eleanor said to Ava at the diner. Instead, Samantha is immediately pulled back into their circle when they ask her to lead the Workshop/the ritual for the first time. They hug her, and she forgets all about her original plan. During the ritual, the Bunnies tell Samantha to focus on an object of her desire. She mentally cycles through all of the men she has ever been attracted to. She also thinks of Ava. The Bunny at the circle's center does not explode as it usually does during the ritual but simply hops off. The women believe the ritual must have failed. Vignette/Violet (Bailee Madison) leaves, then call back to the Bunnies/Samantha outside. They all tumble out of Eleanor's house and see a man sitting at the bus stop across the street.
The Bunnies and Samantha cross the street to talk to the man. They ask if he saw a rabbit nearby, and he sardonically says he did but that it got hit by a car. The bus arrives, and he boards it.
Samantha sits in her last workshop class with Ursula/Fosco. The Bunnies arrive, and the Duchess/Eleanor suggests they do a final writing exercise about their concept of "home." Afterward, at a party celebrating the end of the term, Samantha approached the Lion, asking her to come to his office.
Samantha meets with the Lion. He tells her he is concerned that she has not given him any new material for her thesis, and she makes excuses, then lies about having to catch a plane to go home.
Samantha returns to her apartment and stays there for days, overcoming illness and depression. She looks at pictures of the Bunnies on vacation on their social media accounts. She leaves the apartment and tries to get to Ava's house but cannot remember it.
Samantha goes to the grocery store on Christmas Eve and imagines a conversation with Ava in her mind. She sees the man from the bus stop outside the Duchess/Eleanor's house and watches as he shoplifts several food items. She runs into Fosco/Ursula, who (clearly pitying Samantha for having nowhere to go over the holidays) invites her for a Christmas party.
Samantha goes to the party at Fosco's and discovers she is the only one besides Fosco's husband and Jonah. Samantha is resentful of the pity invitation, and Fosco mentions a complaint Samantha made about the Bunnies excluding her in the previous term. Samantha realizes that one of the caterers at the party is a Hybrid, one of the Bunnies' failed experiments. She makes an excuse to leave. Jonah offers to drive her home, but she declines.
Samantha boards a bus, and the Hybrid from the bus stop boards at the next stop. They talk amicably, but Samantha is overwhelmed by the sense of danger he exudes. When he exits the bus, she follows.
She loses the man while walking through the town's streets but discovers she has found Ava's house. She knocks and shouts for Ava, who finally comes out and lets her in.
Ava removes the braids the Bunnies put in Samantha's hair, and they begin to return to their old patterns of friendship. Samantha starts writing again.
A few months have passed. Samantha thinks of the Bunnies less frequently, though she still has nightmares about the conjuring rituals. One night, Samantha and Ava are sitting at the kitchen table when Samantha hears a creaking sound upstairs. She asks Ava about it, and Ava responds that it is probably Max, the lodger who moved upstairs when Samantha disappeared with the Bunnies. Max comes downstairs, and he is the man from the bus stop. He kisses Ava.
Samantha, Ava, and Max eat a dinner of rabbits, which Max has prepared. Samantha receives a text message from the Bunnies and ignores them. Ava tells Samantha that Max is working on a performance piece at Warren. Max makes several romantic comments to Ava that Samantha recognizes as quotes from her own journal entries about Ava.
Samantha sneaks into Max's room and discovers a note featuring her email address and password, along with those of the Bunnies, Fosco, and the Lion. She finds Max's phone and scrolls through romantic/sexual text messages from the Bunnies. On her own phone, she receives an email from Fosco, alerting her to an "Emergency Mandatory Workshop" at 5 p.m.
Samantha goes to the workshop, where Fosco/Ursula claims to have received an email stating that she needed help on her thesis. The Bunnies each arrive by themselves, holding a white box. They all look distraught and disheveled, and each reads a piece featuring a romantic storyline. They heckle and sneer at each other. Each white box turns out to be a reference to the nickname Samantha has given them (a cupcake, a doll, a handful of words from a magnetic poetry set), but when it is the Duchess/Eleanor's turn to read, she claims to have brought the wrong piece.
Samantha returns to Ava's house and demands Max tell her what he did to the Bunnies. Max refuses and goes back to working in Ava's garden. Samantha tells Ava the truth about Max, but Ava misinterprets her, believing she is talking about a fictional piece she is writing. Samantha lets her believe this.
Samantha returns to Warren, having received a message from the Lion to meet him in her workshop room. The room is pitch dark, but she hears his voice calling. She recalls her last meeting with the Lion before they stopped seeing each other socially, in which she had broken down in tears about her past and the state of her life. Suddenly, Samantha feels a hand covering her mouth. She tries to scream, but the sound is muffled. She faints, and she is tied to a chair when she comes to. Two figures stand before her, crude representations of the Lion and Fosco/Ursula. They read from "My Sad Girl Novel by Samantha Mackey" and mock her. They threaten her with an ax, and then the Lion chokes her until she faints again.
Samantha comes to, still tied to the chair. She is untied by a janitor, who believes she is participating in a performance piece. Samantha returns to Ava's but then runs to Max's room. She discovers him sitting on the floor with the swan from the pond, dead with an ax in its side. Max grabs the ax and runs out of the room. Max's face shifts to look like Samantha's own face, like the Duchess/Eleanor's. She recalls her mother telling her that she needed to "stop pretending" as a child. She then remembers the day she met Ava at the pond and realizes that Ava was never there and has never been there. Samantha has imagined her all along.
Samantha follows Max to Eleanor's house. They argue outside about Ava, and Max puts down the ax. Samantha picks it up and opens Eleanor's door. She enters and finds the Bunnies are all waiting for Max. They make snide remarks about Samantha, but they all rise and run outside when Max is outside the window. Samantha follows and watches as they quarrel with each other over him. Max looks at Samantha, willing her, she believes, to hit him with the ax. She takes the ax and strikes him. He shapeshifts, turning into a stag, kicking the Bunnies one by one. Then he wanders off. Samantha drops the ax.
Samantha attends graduation at Warren. The Bunnies are there, wearing neck braces and casts. They claim they suffered a "Book arts accident." The Lion tells Samantha he enjoyed her thesis. Samantha recalls returning to Ava's (empty) house and burying the dead swan in the garden. Now, she returns to the pond where she first conjured Ava into being. She is approached by Jonah and the two talk about graduation and the future. Samantha is touched when Jonah calls her his friend. She watches a swan glide over the pond and invites Jonah to come home with her.
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