The List

For thirty-four years, homicide detective Jack Mercer has lived by one rule: knowing a man is guilty means nothing unless you can prove it.

Then his own mind begins betraying him.

At sixty-one, Jack is still one of the best homicide detectives in the department, able to walk into a crime scene and notice details younger detectives overlook. But subtle lapses—lost moments, tremors, flashes of confusion—send him to a neurologist. The diagnosis is devastating: Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rapidly progressive and fatal neurological disorder. There is no cure. Within months, Jack may lose his memory, judgment, coordination and eventually his ability to recognize the people he loves.

Jack immediately retires, telling almost no one the truth—not even his daughter, Emily. Instead, he quietly puts his affairs in order, arranging for his pension, investments, house and remaining assets to pass to her.

Then he descends into his basement and opens the boxes containing the cases that have haunted him for decades.

Five men.

Five suspected killers Jack remains convinced escaped justice.

Vincent Rourke, acquitted of murdering his wife after evidence was suppressed because of Jack's own mistake.

Calvin Briggs, whose murder prosecution collapsed after a key witness disappeared.

Dr. Aaron Vale, a respected surgeon Jack believes murdered his mistress.

Raymond Pike, suspected of murdering a teenage girl.

And Leonard Shaw, linked in Jack's mind to two killings years apart.

With little life remaining and even less faith that the justice system will ever touch them, Jack creates the list.

Before his mind disappears, he intends to finish what the law could not.

He begins with Rourke. After carefully studying the man's routines, Jack discovers another frightened woman in Rourke's orbit and convinces himself that nothing has changed. Using everything he learned during three decades investigating murder, Jack enters Rourke's home and kills him while leaving almost nothing behind.

The homicide falls to Jack's former protégé, Detective Maya Torres, the woman he trained and who has become nearly as good as he once was.

Jack next targets Briggs, but the controlled execution he planned becomes a brutal fight. Jack kills Briggs with a tire iron—and realizes too late that a security camera may have recorded him.

As Maya discovers that both dead men once walked away from murder prosecutions investigated by Jack, suspicion begins turning toward her retired mentor.

Meanwhile, Jack's disease accelerates.

Loud noises trigger violent involuntary jerks. His coordination deteriorates. He forgets simple tasks. He begins seeing and hearing people who aren't there—including Rourke, Briggs and Jack's late wife, Sarah.

Jack starts leaving himself notes and voice recordings:

TRUST THE NOTES.

DO NOT TRUST MEMORY.

When he sees Sarah, he records a reminder that she died years ago.

The man who spent his career trusting observation and evidence can no longer trust his own senses.

Then Jack discovers something that shakes the moral foundation of his crusade: Briggs' supposedly murdered witness, Terrence Boyd, may actually have survived.

For the first time Jack wonders whether certainty made him dangerous long before the disease did.

Then an anonymous caller tells him:

Two down. Three to go.

Someone knows about the list.

Soon afterward, Raymond Pike is murdered.

Jack wakes the next morning fully dressed, with dried blood on his clothing, twenty-seven unexplained miles on his car and a recording made during the night containing Pike's name and what may be a gunshot.

Jack remembers none of it.

Now the murderer becomes the detective.

Jack begins reconstructing his own missing hours as though investigating a suspect. Every clue seems to point toward him—until physical evidence suggests someone may be deliberately exploiting his deteriorating mind.

At the same time, Maya investigates Jack and discovers another disturbing connection: Jack's longtime friend and former partner, Captain Daniel Holt, buried an old report in which Pike claimed Holt had been at the scene of the teenage girl's death and was romantically involved with the girl's mother.

Jack digs deeper into another name on his list, Leonard Shaw, and makes an even more disturbing discovery.

Shaw may have been innocent all along.

Years earlier, Jack dismissed evidence that contradicted his theory because he had already convinced himself Shaw was guilty. When Jack finally confronts Shaw and admits he was wrong, he is forced to face the terrifying question beneath his entire crusade:

If he was wrong about Shaw, who else might he have been wrong about?

The distinction Jack once lived by—knowing isn't the same as proving—has become the judgment against him.

Emily eventually learns about her father's illness and realizes that his financial preparations were his way of quietly saying goodbye. Maya, too, discovers the truth about Jack's CJD—and then learns something worse.

Jack admits that he murdered Rourke and Briggs.

Before she can decide what to do with him, Jack finds another page in his notebook.

A sixth name has appeared.

MAYA TORRES.

The handwriting looks like Jack's.

He cannot remember writing it.

Terrified of what his future self might do, Jack records one crucial instruction:

Maya Torres is not your enemy. Trust Maya.

Jack and Maya reluctantly combine their investigations and uncover the truth.

Holt discovered Jack's diagnosis and recognized an extraordinary opportunity. Once Jack began killing the men on his list, Holt could murder Pike—who knew the truth about an old cover-up—and make Jack believe he had done it during a period of cognitive collapse. Holt planted Pike's blood, manipulated Jack's movements and ultimately added Maya's name to Jack's list when she began getting too close.

At Holt's isolated hunting cabin, Jack and Maya confront him.

Holt admits that Pike never murdered the teenage girl. Her death resulted from an altercation with her mother—Holt's lover—and Holt covered it up decades earlier. When Jack's vigilante killings created the perfect camouflage, Holt used his dying friend as the fall guy.

A violent confrontation erupts.

Gunfire sends Jack's neurological symptoms spiraling out of control. He can barely distinguish reality from hallucination. Maya becomes Sarah. Holt becomes Rourke. The dead surround him.

Then Jack sees his recorder.

PLAY FIRST.

His own voice tells him:

Maya Torres is not your enemy.

Jack focuses long enough to shoot Holt before Holt can kill Maya.

Holt survives.

Jack tells Maya to finish him.

She refuses.

Holt will be arrested, charged and tried.

Because that is how justice works.

It is the final lesson the student returns to her teacher.

Jack confesses to the murders he actually committed and acknowledges that his certainty became more important to him than the evidence. His disease progresses rapidly.

Weeks later, Maya visits Jack in a secure care facility.

He no longer recognizes her.

Seeing her badge, he asks whether she is a cop.

A homicide detective, she tells him.

“Any good?”

“You taught me.”

Something seems to flicker inside him.

“Then you're probably pretty good.”

Maya opens the leather notebook that started everything. She finds her own name, tears out the page and puts it away.

Jack looks at her.

“Was I working a case?”

“Yeah.”

“Solve it?”

Maya moves her chair beside the man who taught her everything she knows.

“We did.”

Producer Note:

THE LIST is a contained, character-driven R-rated psychological crime thriller built around a powerful lead role for a veteran actor in his late 50s to 60s, with a substantial female co-lead and limited dependence on expensive action, visual effects or large-scale locations.

The film combines the ticking-clock neurological deterioration of a psychological thriller with the investigative propulsion of a homicide mystery, continually forcing the audience to question whether Jack's memories, perceptions—and even his guilt—can be trusted.

At approximately 115 screenplay pages, The List offers a streamer-friendly, mid-budget package with a trailer-ready hook, strong actor showcase, escalating suspense, moral complexity and an emotional ending—a murder mystery in which the detective, the suspect and one of the killers are all the same man.