Blood Simple:
A Synopsis

by a former student

Ray and Abby are driving down a barren road during a rainstorm in the middle of the night. The only lights are headlights of passing cars and a car behind them. Abby and Ray drive to a motel and spend the night together. They are awakened by the ring of the telephone. Ray answers, hangs up, and tells Abby it was Marty, her husband.

The Private Investigator who had been following them in the car shows Marty photographs of the two in bed. Marty is disgusted that the Investigator takes pride in his work and forces him to leave. That night, Ray arrives at his bartending job where we learn that he is employed by Marty. Ray quits his job and Marty threatens to shoot him if he ever returns to the bar.

Abby moves in with Ray hoping to start a new life. Marty, however, breaks into Ray’s apartment and drags Abby outside by the throat. Abby fights back by kicking him in the groin and breaking his finger. When Ray comes out of the house holding a revolver, Marty drives off.

Marty hires the Private Investigator to kill them. While the Investigator is on the job, Marty takes a fishing trip to create an alibi. The Investigator returns to Marty’s bar with Abby’s revolver and a photograph of Abby and Ray’s bodies scattered with bullet wounds. Marty secretly takes the photograph from the Investigator and places it in his safe, pays the P.I. ten thousand dollars, and gives him a case of fish he caught from his trip. The Investigator counts the money – and then shoots Marty, the only person who knew he was hired. Just when the Investigator thinks he left the scene untraceable, the camera reveals his engraved lighter under the fish.

Ray arrives at the bar to pick up his paycheck and finds Marty’s body slumped over in a chair and Abby’s revolver. Thinking she has committed the crime, he cleans the office and puts Marty’s body in the backseat of his car. While on the highway, Ray hears a noise behind him. Marty is alive! Panicking, Ray stops the car. Marty has opened his door and is crawling on the highway. With too much oncoming traffic, Ray can’t run him over without being seen. He throws Marty back into the car and drives to the middle of a field where he digs a hole and buries him alive.

The Investigator is flipping through doctored photographs of Ray and Abby’s bodies with wounds and realizes that Marty stole his photograph and replaced it with a bathroom sign. He also realizes he left his lighter in his victim’s office.

Ray returns to his apartment, frustrated with Abby for having to clean up her "unfinished business." Fuming, Ray leaves without telling her what he has done. Since Ray came home with blood on his shirt, Abby assumes he and Marty got into an argument and decides to go to the bar. Moments before she arrives, the Private Investigator is attempting to break into the safe to take back the photograph that Marty stole. Abby finds the bar rummaged through, dead fish on the desk, and the safe’s door dented. The Investigator is hiding in the closet, observing Abby’s moves.

Next we see Abby washing her face in her apartment. A noise interrupts her. She looks into her bedroom and finds Marty sitting on her bed, telling her he loves her and warning her "He’ll kill you, too." He then leans forward and vomits blood. Abby immediately awakes from her nightmare and goes to Ray’s apartment. Ray tells Abby he found her gun at the bar and that Marty was alive when he buried him. Abby runs out of the house in confusion and shock.

At the bar, Ray opens the safe to find the doctored photograph of him and Abby together, dead. Then Ray notices the same car that has been following him from the beginning -- it is the Private Investigator.

When Abby arrives at her apartment, Ray yells to turn the lights off. While Abby demands that Ray tell her what is going on, we look through the scope of the Investigator’s rifle across the street. Ray is shot in the back of the head. Abby throws her shoe at the light bulb to break it. When she hears someone enter, she locks herself in the bathroom -- still not knowing who killed Ray. She climbs outside to the next windowsill and hides in the room. As the Investigator searches the bathroom, he reaches his hand into the next window. Abby slams it on his hand and stabs the hand with a knife, pinning it to the windowsill. Unable to move, the Investigator shoots his gun through the wall, punches a hole through, and pulls out the knife. Abby has taken the revolver from Ray’s hand and waits outside the bathroom door. As the Investigator’s shadow approaches the door, Abby shoots. She yells, "I’m not afraid of you, Marty!" The Investigator laughs and says, "Well, ma’am, if I see him, I’ll sure give him the message." The film ends with the Investigator lying under the bathroom sink waiting to die, watching water collect on the pipes waiting to drop.