The Silence of the Lambs turns 25 this month. All this time, you thought it was merely a story about FBI trainee Clarice Starling’s hunt for a brutal serial killer named Buffalo Bill—with help from Hannibal “The Cannibal” Lecter. But the Best Picture winner has a secret: everything in the film is actually part of a plot to brainwash Agent Starling.
It sounds insane without any context, but The Silence of the Lambs is filled with hints if you know where to look, as redditor TuTone Shoes points out (read an extended version of the author’s theory here). What if Lecter and the FBI were actually working together, using cruel and clever deception to make Starling’s mind more suggestible—with the ultimate goal of turning her into a deadly government assassin?
Are we paranoid? We might be. But the clues are there—and you might start to feel a little paranoid, too, after you watch this video.