The movie opens with Wilfred James in a hotel in Omaha, Nebraska in the year 1930 where he plans to write a confession to a crime that he committed eight years earlier in 1922. The movie then backtracks to the year 1922, showing Wilfred living on his family farm in Hemingford Home, Nebraska with his wife Arlette and teenage son Henry. Arlette has recently come into an inheritance in the form of a parcel of land. While she wants to sell the land and move to Omaha, Wilfred is strongly opposed to this idea. He is attached to the farm and detests city life. With neither of the pair willing to budge, Wilfred considers taking a drastic step. He hatches a plan to murder his wife and enlists his son Henry to help with the plot. The pair goes through with the murder, with Wilfred cutting Arlette's throat with a butcher's knife. Despite being able to stay on the farm, things do not turn out how Wilfred had planned.
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