Patient 29

DELILAH, tall, alabaster face, long strawberry hair, and her lover, Olin, live in a small American community of expatriates with four other men. Arriving in 1972, they revel in the fact they managed to steal millions from a Boston bank and got away with it. A wanderer, Delilah, while aimlessly walking along a dangerous cliff on Hestur Island soon after she arrives, is found and taken to the psychiatric hospital on the island. Dr. PETR RASMUSSEN assesses she is not well and requires rigorous therapy and various drug treatments. After intense instances of harassment and mental abuse, she escapes from the asylum.

In 1975, there is a quiet feeling and invigorating solitude that defines the Faroe Islands. That’s until a small raft washes up on the shore of Sandoy Island with an emaciated being; unconscious and ravaged from a horrid storm. Delilah; long dress flowing, watches as the raft settles. Delilah and Olin bring the withered survivor to their large blue cottage near the coast. Not sure what to do with him, Delilah tries to nurse him back to health.

The Survivor, the victim of a terrible plane crash en route to France, is a bounty hunter looking for stolen money from a bank heist. Not knowing his name or how he got there, he disappears which creates a problem for Delilah and friends. Before the survivor vanishes, he shows Delilah an FBI badge but claims it doesn’t belong to him and he doesn’t know how he got it. When two of their group ends up murdered, Olin believes it must be The Survivor doing the killing. Conrad Bennett, a retired FBI agent from Boston, now living on the island with Helga, his Faroese wife, becomes paramount in trying to solve the murders. He teams up with the Chief Constable, Noah Hansen to unmask the killer.

The community is on edge with a supposed killer aimlessly roaming around the island. What complicates the situation is a brutal murder close to the psychiatric hospital that appears it could be have done by a patient; when questioned by Bennett, Dr. Rasmussen is adamant that’s not the case, but his explanation seems suspicious.

When Delilah is alone and not expecting it, The Survivor visits her. She immediately wants to know why he is killing people and he adamantly denies it. In the course of the conversation, she believes they know each other from a past life. Thinking back, she realizes they were in the same psychiatric hospital together. Before she can address The Survivor again, he’s gone.

When The Survivor unexpectedly visits Helga in her cottage while Conrad is not there, she realizes the survivor is Patient 29 who she knew when she was an administrator at Bedminster Psychiatric Hospital in Boston. She tries to find out why he came to the islands, they talk briefly, and then he quietly disappears.

Speculation abounds as to who the killer is, as other members of the group are killed. Delilah is miraculously spared. Rasmussen tracks Delilah down in the blue cottage and after a brief discussion, kidnaps her and takes he to the psychiatric hospital where he threatens to keep her there forever.

Noah Hanson receives a call from a doctor in Holland that warns him that Dr. Rasmussen is not who he says he is, but rather a murderer that vanished from Holland several years earlier. Armed with this knowledge, Conrad confronts Rasmussen about the allegation, and he angrily dismisses it.

Rasmussen has a psychotic break at the end. After killing his nurse, he then attempts to kill Delilah before he is attacked by Conrad. Knocking Conrad out, he grabs Delilah and takes her to the cliffs where he can finish what he started.

Finally, after snooping around and realizing most of the bank robbers are dead, Patient 29 gets the money he unwittingly came for, and Delilah kills the serial killer, Petr Rasmussen, by sending him careening over the same dangerous cliff she had wandered on three years earlier.