Lucky Seven Minus X

In a sleepy mountain town preparing for its first film festival, a routine night patrol shatters when detectives Dave Reinhardt and Adele Chow nearly run over a disoriented man staggering out of the woods. The man, Xavier, is trembling, delirious, and insistent: “I’m the only one left.” At the station, his story spills out in fragments. He was part of a seven-member indie film crew recruited by a mysterious Craigslist ad: a director, a male and female lead, a makeup artist, a cinematographer, a screenwriter, and Xavier himself as props master. Each was promised $1,000 and festival exposure. Each was collected in a black van, confined in separate compartments, and deposited at a remote “community house” nestled in the mountains. From there, they were assigned cabins and told to complete a short film in 72 hours. The sponsor remained anonymous. The rules were stranger still. Only the screenwriter possessed the full script. Actors received their own lines, the director was limited to those fragments, and improvisation was not only encouraged but required. The line between performance and reality quickly dissolved, and by the end of filming, ambition, jealousy, and ideology had twisted the collaboration into something deadly. When Dave and Adele investigate, they find the abandoned site exactly as Xavier described — along with four bodies. 2 members are still missing. Then comes the most unnerving revelation: the director, Kate, contacts Dave privately. She admits she survived the massacre, but makes him promise that no one else can know. Caught between duty and obsession, Dave and Adele plunge deeper into the mystery. Is Xavier a traumatized survivor, an unreliable narrator, or the killer himself? Is Kate a victim in hiding — or a mastermind scripting her own ending? As the detectives chase shadows through festival politics, half-truths, and recovered footage, they realize the real horror is not just who died — but who’s still alive, and why. Lucky Seven Minus X blends neo-noir style with psychological mystery, delivering a high-concept thriller that explores the dangerous space where art becomes life, and life becomes expendable.