The Date

Indie singer-songwriter Grey Kessler suffers anxiety over having released a successful album and feels pressure for a successful follow-up. She also takes medication to try to stop dreams of herself as a wolf, and she appears to have other medical issues too, though her doctor can find nothing physically wrong. A reclusive music producer, Vaughn Daniels, once a famous boy-band singer in the '90s, invites Grey to his remote mansion to write and record her second album. Grey's girlfriend, a painter named Charlie, learns Vaughn was tried but not convicted for murdering a singer named Greta. Despite misgivings, Grey accepts Vaughn's offer, and Charlie accompanies her. As the creative process continues, Grey becomes more obsessive and begins ignoring Charlie's concerns. Vaughn pushes Grey, urging her to dredge up her darkest impulses for her songwriting. He taunts Grey's veganism, gives her absinthe to drink, and pushes Grey to complete a song that he says his wife, who had died by suicide, had started. Grey begins to crave and eat meat, and she falls deeper into a personal abyss. But her songwriting and performing improve. Charlie, seeing the darkness overtaking Grey, wants them both to leave, but Grey refuses and Charlie leaves alone. Grey finds herself transforming into a werewolf. Later Grey confronts Vaughn, who reveals that he too is a werewolf, and Grey is his daughter. He wasn't certain before this, because her mother, Greta, whom he had shot and killed in self-defense, had told Vaughn, who was gone for months at a time with his band, that their baby had died. Meanwhile, Charlie decides to return for Grey but gets stuck in snow. Grey completes her album and tells Vaughn she is leaving, that she will not end up like him. Vaughn sends his housekeeper, Vera, to bring Grey back and locks her in the recording studio to complete her transformation. She wakes after blacking out back in the guest room, having showered off a lot of blood. Running out to the road, she finds Charlie dead. Returning to the house, Grey gets the gun and aims it at Vaughn, accusing him of killing Charlie. Vaughn helps her see that it was she who killed Charlie, but he assures Grey they are far from alone in the world. Vaughn begins to transform into a werewolf and Grey kills him with the gun. The scene returns to Grey's doctor's office as he shuts her file and suggests she's been hallucinating. Later, Grey sings her song "Bloodthirsty" on stage, but there is no audience. Grey remembers or imagines leaving the mansion, bloody from having savaged Vaughn.