“Dig Two Graves” is a psychological thriller set in the typically bleak winter of upstate New York. It’s an account of hidden rage and misguided affection, a classic, dark example of the consequence of seeking revenge.

Men’s State Penitentiary - rural Massachusetts: Convicted murderer, Hollis Thaggard - attending church services, meets the visiting Christian ministry’s piano player, Eileen Jarvis. They become very close - Eileen quickly becomes Thaggard’s lifeline to surviving his prison sentence. The ritual bus trips, devoted visiting hours, and even “en masse” penitentiary weddings, are the meat of this underground world of women who love incarcerated felons.

Meanwhile, in Albany, New York, detective Vassilikos reopens a six-year-old case of the multiple murders of the local Bradshaw family. He contacts Benjamin Bradshaw, 24, a music teacher and musician in a fusion-metal rock band. He is the only surviving member and witness to the crime. It seems the District Attorney, to insure re-election under his “hard nosed against crime” campaign, is extraditing Thaggard back to New York to stand trial for these murders. First, because the death penalty has since been reinstated in New York and also because Ben, who had been abusing drugs after his family’s murder and was considered an unreliable witness, is now clean and can serve the DA’s purpose. Ben is uninterested, angry that he is asked to be a witness in the trial. He says that he “has moved on with his life and cannot go back there”. He does not want to testify. Complicating things further, is a rekindled relationship with Gina, his teenage sweetheart at the time of the murders, who is also subpoenaed to testify.

As Eileen’s relationship with Thaggard develops, the first of the story’s major twists occurs: after one of Eileen’s visits to Thaggard in prison, Eileen returns to her VW van, and undresses. In an alarming reveal, she removes her glasses and contacts, then her wig. She takes off her bra along with its prosthetic breast forms and her fanny pad. A penis flops down between his thighs. The meek and religious Eileen is lean, muscular Benjamin Bradshaw. Ben has assumed this identity in his plan to get close to Thaggard, have a private conjugal visit and inject him with a drug that will put him into fatal cardiac arrest. Ben’s plan goes perfectly until he is led into a larger meeting room to discover five other couples there as well. Thaggard’s imminent move has interfered with their hopes of having a conjugal visit. Ben cannot be alone with Thaggard, and so isn’t able to kill him. Ben’s plan is further ruined when Thaggard is then taken to New York to stand trial.

Ben has no option now but to become a willing witness in Thaggard’s trial, forcing him to continue his complex double life and his world of subterfuge. At the trial he has to bear witness to the gruesome facts of the night in question and his horror at reliving it. As the trial unfolds Ben is pulled between his potential new family with Gina and her son and his excruciating need to eliminate Thaggard and satisfy his obligation to avenge the deaths of his family. Ben’s anguish, as he seemingly vacillates between the two, is mirrored in Thaggard’s despair that his crimes, now so fully exposed, will drive away the only person whom he has ever trusted himself to love.

Ben’s seeming indecision as to whether or not to take the stand and his subsequent unsatisfactory and problematic testimony turns out to be part of his overall plan to do away with Thaggard his own way.

In a raging snowstorm of epic proportions, a crescendo of emotional agony and physical savagery for both Thaggard and Ben ensues and Thaggard meets his fated death at the hands of his victim who was once his lover. Ben’s satisfaction is short-lived when Vassilikos unravels the deception Ben so craftily concocted. But Vassilikos, witnessing the life Ben could have with his new family and feeling that ultimately real justice has been served, chooses not to arrest Ben. Ultimately, Ben is left with his physical freedom but in the final moments of the film, he realizes that the bonds of emotional torment will haunt him the rest of his days and that the notion of revenge can never be fulfilled.