Dave Elliott

After seven months have passed without a culprit in her daughter's murder case, Mildred Hayes makes a bold move, painting three signs leading into her town with a controversial message directed at Bill Willoughby, the town's revered chief of police. When his second-in-command Officer Jason Dixon, an immature mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement is only exacerbated.

The plot concerns two documentary film students who travel to a small, isolated town in the middle of nowhere to film a documentary about murders that occurred there. Soon they are stalked by someone who is afraid the students are getting to close to a close guarded secret in the town that led to the murders.