Chris Smith needs money. And fast.

He’s deep in debt to the wrong people. His mother has thrown him out. The drugs he was counting on to save him have disappeared.

So Chris finds another way out.

His mother has a $50,000 life insurance policy with the money set to go to his younger sister, Dottie. And Chris knows a Dallas detective with a second profession: Joe Cooper. Contract killer.

The plan is simple: kill his mother, collect the insurance and pay Joe.

There’s just one problem: Chris doesn’t have the money to pay Joe upfront. So Joe proposes another arrangement - and suddenly the cost of the deal becomes far more personal.

As one compromise leads to another, the Smith family finds itself trapped inside a deal it can no longer control. What began as a way out spirals into sex, money, betrayal and violence, as each of them finds a reason to accept something they once might have thought unthinkable.

Tracy Letts’ Killer Joe is a brutal, darkly funny thriller about desperation, family and the stories we tell ourselves to justify what we do, and asks "who do we become through the wrongs we accept"?