This is my third and final film. After 30 years of playing the hollywood game and trying to make it as a screenwriter, I officially retired from the film industry in 2025. But RESTITUTION was released in October 2024, and is what I consider my crowning achievement as a screenwriter. They took my script, they understood the subtext, and they “got” my underlying themes and what I was REALLY talking about and what I was REALLY trying to say.

Is evil inherited, or is it learned? Is evil nature? Is it nurture? Or perhaps a bit of both?

SYNOPSIS

MIA WAGNER is a determined, vengeful woman who was raped as a child while her family was slaughtered. Now, years later, she abducts DARREN GOFORTH, the man who she helped convict once he gets out on a technicality.

Mia takes him to her isolated mountain cabin, the last vestige of her family’s possessions. There, over a long holiday weekend, she plans to torture and kill Darren slowly as RESTITUTION for what happened to her family.

When Darren regains consciousness, he claims he does not know who she is, does not know who he is, and does not understand why she is so angry with him.

What ensues is a tense, suspenseful game of psychological cat and mouse as Mia struggles between her obsession for revenge, and what is left of her humanity. And is Darren truly amnesiac, or is he simply a diabolically clever predator working his own agenda, and playing his own cruel game?

RESTITUTION is a character study and a meditation on the nature of Evil. Is Evil something some of us are born to, or is it a dark path of our own choosing?

RESTITUTION is also a cautionary tale of the insidious nature of vengeance, and how the thirst for revenge can cut us off from our lives. It can twist and transform us into something as bad as that thing we despise, and in some cases, push us into becoming something even more monstrous.

Currently playing on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Tubi TV, Roku TV, and multiple ad-supported Youtube movie channels.