Bad Decisions in Good Lighting

Think Gone Girl meets (500) Days of Summer… if Summer had a Saturday Night Special and a vendetta. Bad Decisions in Good Lighting is a twisted dark comedy where love turns lethal, obsession gets poetic, and movie references double as murder notes…. a tragicomic spiral into obsession, identity, and the myth of perfect connection. Trent is a cynical film critic with a Blockbuster-era DVD collection, a barely-running Pinto, and a lifelong allergy to emotional stability. When he meets Mariska—magnetic, impulsive, and just the right kind of wrong—it’s lust at first fight. Their whirlwind romance blurs into chaos: alleyway makeouts, bar fights, robbery as foreplay, and a suicide pact that leaves Mariska hospitalized and Trent reeling. Months later, just as Trent starts rebuilding his life and maybe opening his heart again, accidents start piling up. A toilet narrowly misses crushing him. His car explodes. A rock-climbing rope mysteriously snaps. He swears he’s being targeted, but even his best friend—an overworked attorney—thinks he’s just paranoid and spiraling from heartbreak. Then Trent finds a body in his trunk. Now he’s on the run, trying to stay alive long enough to figure out who’s framing him—and why. All signs point back to Mariska. But she’s gone underground, leaving behind only burner numbers, a cryptic smile, and maybe a few more tricks up her sleeve. As Trent spirals deeper into the noir-ish nightmare of their broken love, he’s forced to confront how much of the madness is hers—and how much of it he secretly invited in. Equal parts romantic comedy and stalker thriller, Bad Decisions in Good Lighting blends the manic energy of a relationship that should’ve ended with brunch into a deadly cat-and-mouse game littered with movie references, dead bodies, and questionable moral choices. It’s Gone Girl for the film bros, You for people with Letterboxd accounts, and a pitch-black ode to the kind of love that burns too hot not to explode.