Tell-Tale is a 2009 science fiction horror film^[2] inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1843 short story "The Tell-Tale Heart". It is directed by Michael Cuesta and stars Josh Lucas, Lena Headey, and Brian Cox and is produced by Tony Scott and Ridley Scott.^[3] A man's recently transplanted heart leads him on a frantic search to find the donor's killer before a similar fate befalls him.^[4]

This plot summary may be a hook or written as if for a listings magazine. (February 2024)

In Providence, a husband and his wife die in a botched robbery; we see flickers of his last memories. His heart goes to Terry Bernard, a single father raising a girl with a rare degenerative disease. After the operation, Terry has flashes of memory from the last moments of the dead donor's life. Then, he recognizes one of the donor's killers and follows him into an alley. Within days, Terry becomes an unwilling avenger, with a police detective on his trail. Meanwhile, he begins a romance with his daughter's doctor, his moods complicated by memory flashes, the donor's deepening presence in both Terry's mind and body, and the unexplained bond among the donor's killers.

The film received a DVD and Blu-ray Disc release on 25 May 2010.^[8]