"Cape Fear" Trivia Quiz

Answer: Roadkill

The Gardner family, Harry and Doris and their daughter, Alma, make the drive from New York City to Provincetown, Massachusetts. By the time they get close to hitting Cape Cod, Harry and Doris are almost shaking with excitement over their trip. Alma, meanwhile, counts roadkill from the backseat; they pass nine dead animals on the same stretch of road before they come across the dead deer in the middle of the highway. On close inspection, Harry finds the creature dead from a nasty gash in the neck.

There's nothing to be done about it, however. They pile into the car and keep on their way. They don't notice as the deer is dragged off the road when they drive past.

Answer: Schoolteacher

The Gardners arrive at their home away from home, an old house near the water's edge in Provincetown's village. They're greeted by Martha, who looks after the house for the Browns, upon their arrival, and she cheerily brings them inside. Alma tells her parents that the house looks haunted; the inside doesn't do much to dispel the thought.

Harry is in town to use the house as a base for his writing ventures; as a screenwriter he seeks inspiration from Provincetown in its off-season. Doris, meanwhile, is pregnant. Normally a schoolteacher, she hopes to use the house to wind down; the Browns have given her free reign to decorate the house based on her interior decorating Instagram posts (within a budget, of course). Alma brings her fiddle in from the car while Martha warns the family not to go swimming near the seals (not that they would; it's too cold), not to leave the windows open during a nor'easter, and not to try to imitate a Boston accent. She hands over the keys and heads on her way.

Harry heads to the market to grab supplies while Doris unpacks.

Answer: Tuberculosis Karen

It being the off-season, Harry is quick to find that Provincetown is quiet during his first walk through its streets. He heads to the grocery store and fills his cart but finds his first sign of life, a woman named Karen who angrily warns him off, urging him to leave town. The store owner sends her off, referring to her as 'Tuberculosis Karen'; she doesn't necessarily have TB, but she is a bit crazy and she smokes three packs a day. The store owner, who appears to be Martha's brother, tries to assuage any worries by offering to order any fancier foods for Harry, but the polite gesture can't pull Harry's attention away from Karen, still watching from outside.

In the house, Harry takes a seat at his laptop while Doris unpacks her design supplies and Alma practices her fiddle. Doris excels in her rehearsal, but neither Harry nor Doris can break free of their creative blocks, both becoming immensely frustrated. Harry has to ask his daughter to stop (much to her dismay as she wants to grow up to be first chair in the New York Philharmonic) and Doris takes her out for a walk.

Answer: Provincetown is boring

Doris and Alma wander through Provincetown and head through the local cemetery musing on their new, temporary home. Alma asks her mother if she likes it there, but Doris is more at home in the bustling city. It's good to get a break, Doris reminds her daughter. As they walk through the gravestones, they see a man watching and hastily make their way home. By the time they arrive they're in a full-on sprint to get inside. They're fortunate to get the doors looked before their pursuer can reach the house.

Harry and Doris talk to Police Chief Burelson about the man who tried to attack their family, but the chief isn't too fussed. In the off-season, most crimes in Provincetown are opioid-related, and more than likely the man was trying to scare them and little more. Doris worries that the man's attitude might be a symptom of lyme disease, a common disease, she says, afflicting the coast's population. Burelson, however, says the man is probably just a weirdo; they're safe in Provincetown.

The Gardners decide to stay. They simply have too big an opportunity to waste it.

Answer: A shark

Harry heads back to the house to Google the region. Discovering that a family of five was murdered in nearby Truro the previous winter, he feels it's important to be prepared for anything. Upstairs, Alma wakes up to the sound of someone throwing stones at her bedroom window. When she looks outside she sees three men standing outside looking up from the street; they look like the man who chased her and her mother the previous day. Harry considers calling the chief, but Doris reasons that she wasn't helpful the first time.

That night, Harry pours himself a glass of whiskey before sitting back at his laptop. He falls asleep on the couch without putting a single word to his new script.

In the morning, Harry goes out for a run along the beach to clear his head. It's there that he comes across two dead bodies, both disembowelled, washed up on the shore. Harry wonders what could have caused such brutal wounds; the forensic analyst on the screen suggests that it might have been a great white shark, but he'll know more after the autopsy.

Answer: The Muse

When Harry returns home from his run he doesn't tell Doris about what he saw. Instead, he asks her to go to dinner with him at what might be the only open restaurant in town. He calls Martha in to babysit; she's happy to provide the favour. The problem emerges when Doris, experiencing nausea, throws up in the other room. She reasons that it's a bit late in the pregnancy for morning sickness. Harry urges her to lay down; she pushes him to get out anyways and bring her some red meat. After he leaves, she spends her time looking up lyme disease on Google.

And so Harry heads to The Muse, the local restaurant, and sits at the bar. One of the locals, Mickey, comes on strong, hitting on Harry at the bar while he waits for his table. When he finally gets his seat, he sits back and listens to a younger gentleman and an older woman duet to "Islands in the Stream" while a live pianist plays to the otherwise quiet dining room.

Harry calls Doris to check in and while she goes to bed, she doesn't see that the men have returned to the street outside...and there are more of them.

Answer: Erotica

Harry, sitting quietly at his table, receives another drink from the singing couple and joins them at their seat. They introduce themselves as Austin Sommers, a playwright and recipient of three Tony Awards and a Peabody, and Sarah Cunningham, perhaps better known in erotica literature as author 'Belle Noir'. Both authors have been coming to Provincetown to write every winter for years; they find it inspiring and the accolades they receive are worth the effort. They both assert that Harry's writer's block won't last. It never does in Provincetown.

Their conversation is interrupted when TB Karen comes into the restaurant searching for food scraps. She sees Harry at the writers' table and reminds him to leave as fast as he can; his drink partners are just as bloodthirsty as the rest of them. As she's led out of the establishment the others toast to Harry's muses, wherever they might be.

That night, when Harry returns home, he checks in on his wife and daughter and makes a hot mug of tea. He's about to drink it when he finds that the window is open. Harry shuts it and returns to the kitchen only to be attacked by one of the men his wife and daughter have been seeing outside. Almost inhuman, it winds around to bring Harry to the ground but when Harry manages to wrap his hands around a fallen end table he's able to use the broken furniture to smash the man's face in.

Answer: Mickey

In her more luxurious house, Belle Noir spends a night with Mickey, from the bar. She offers to pay him a great amount to stay, but he resists until she raises the price to $200. Taking a razor blade from off her necklace, she cuts into his arm and, revealing her sharp teeth, feasts on his blood.

TB Karen rises from the shadows behind The Muse and roots through the trash for scraps. When her cell phone rings she picks up nervously. She begs the person on the other end-- she can't do it. The voice tells her she only has three hours.

At the Gardners' house, the police come in to take the body of the home invader. Chief Burelson asks Harry to come by to give a statement the next day, but she feels that they will have no more trouble for the evening. Harry is most concerned, however, that the man who came in was interested in ripping his throat out; he didn't seem like a thief or an addict.

When the police leave, Harry and Doris vow not to tell Alma. They agree that they need to leave the next day though Doris starts to think about the job she came to Provincetown to do.

Answer: Black

Karen arrives at Belle's seaside house and is let in immediately. The trade is made even though Karen is apprehensive. Belle tosses the drugs on the floor and Karen trades the baby for the packet before running out into the night.

The night passes without event otherwise, and when morning breaks, Harry packs his things. Alma says that she doesn't want to leave, but the previous night's events convince Harry there's no other choice. That's when he gets a call from an unknown number. It's actually Austin, inviting him over; he's up on Miller Hill and he has just the thing to cure Harry's writer's block. This is enough to convince him.

Harry arrives to find a massive wood mansion just outside of town, and when he steps in, Austin offers him a drink. Harry doesn't want to waste time, however, so Austin gets to the point-- he has a pack of pills for Harry and all he needs to do is take them. That's it. While the pills have no name, they are the definitive cure-all for his troubles. Austin was like him, a small-thinker, but one year he came out to Cape Cod on request of a writer friend and was handed the exact same pills. They work.

Answer: Ursula

It doesn't take long. Austin knows how writers think and he knows what they want, and they can fill the hole in his soul. Harry tosses the pills on the table and says that he's not interested in taking anything he can't come back from. Austin asks him one more time and places the pills into his jacket pocket. Take one, he says, before Harry departs.

Austin returns to the house to receive another call from his agent, Ursula, and let he lets her know his plan to leave. She doesn't take that answer well; he needs to finish the rewrites of his pilot no matter the cost. If he wants to continue being a professional writer, she says, he needs to create something new, right now, or he won't recover from it.

When Harry hangs up the phone, he finds the pills in his pocket. He doesn't think twice, this time, before taking one, and he doesn't see his daughter watching from the stairs as he does.