The Clovehitch Killer is a 2018 American coming-of-age thriller film directed by Duncan Skiles and written by Christopher Ford. It stars Dylan McDermott, Charlie Plummer, Samantha Mathis, and Madisen Beaty. The film is set in Kentucky and was also shot there. It premiered at LA Film Festival on September 22, 2018, and received a limited theatrical release on November 16, 2018, distributed by IFC Midnight. The film was mostly inspired by the story of real life serial killer Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer. Plot 16 year-old Tyler Burnside lives with his devout Christian family in the small remote town of Clarksville, Kentucky. The town and its residents are haunted by the memory of the Clovehitch Killer, an infamous serial killer who bound and strangled 10 known female victims before apparently disappearing 10 years earlier. Tyler takes his father's truck one night to see a girl, who finds a bondage photograph between the seats. When word of the photo spreads among the other teenagers in Tyler's church and scout troop, they ostracize him, believing him to be a BDSM fetishist. Tyler, meanwhile, begins to wonder if his father, family man and community leader, Don Burnside, could have something to do with the Clovehitch Killer. Tyler investigates Don's private shed and finds a hidden compartment containing bondage magazines, along with a Polaroid photograph of a beaten and bound woman. Fearing that his father might be the killer, Tyler befriends a teen outcast and amateur Clovehitch historian named Kassi and asks for her help. Kassi is initially skeptical, but they link the photograph to a known Clovehitch victim, find blueprints to a BDSM dungeon in the shed, and when Tyler explores his house's crawl space, he finds a box containing the drivers licenses of the known Clovehitch victims and three other women, as well as more polaroid photographs of beaten and bound women. Don, now suspicious of Tyler's behavior, takes him camping. To explain the evidence Tyler had uncovered, Don says that the Clovehitch Killer was Tyler's vegetative uncle Rudy, who became paralyzed after the guilt drove him to a suicide attempt. Don says he kept the evidence in hopes of one day giving it to the victims' families. Tyler accepts the explanation, and the two burn all the evidence. Tyler ends the investigation, although Kassi remains unsatisfied with Don's story. Don surprisingly allows Tyler to attend a scout leadership