[4] The film stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou, and Jeremy Strong, and follows a fishing boat captain who is approached by his ex-wife to murder her abusive new husband.

One day, Dill's ex-wife Karen tracks him down and begs him to save her and their young son, Patrick, from her new, powerful but violently abusive, husband Frank.

It soon becomes apparent that Dill is a character in a computer game Patrick created, based on his father, John Mason, a U.S. Marine Corps Captain who was killed in Iraq in 2006.

As Dill carries out the objective, Patrick summons up the courage to confront Frank in real life and stabs him in the chest with a knife that belonged to his father.

[6] On January 28, 2017, it was announced that Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway would star in a "sexy noir" film, Serenity, which would be directed by Steven Knight from his own script.

[11] By July 2017, confirmed cast included McConaughey, Hathaway, Clarke, Hounsou, Diane Lane (replacing Thurman), and Jeremy Strong.

"[19] Some of the film's stars, such as McConaughey and Hathaway, were reportedly upset because Aviron pledged to put up a promotion and advertising campaign commensurate with a 2500-screen release.

[2] In the United States and Canada, Serenity was released alongside The Kid Who Would Be King, and was initially projected to gross around $7 million from 2,561 theaters in its opening weekend.

The website's critical consensus reads, "A high-concept mystery with a twist, Serenity isn't what it appears to be at first—unfortunately, it's also not anywhere near as clever or entertaining as it thinks.

[22] Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com gave the film one star, calling it "terrible and insane" and writing: "Similar to Collateral Beauty and The Book of Henry—recent dramas with esteemed casts that went off the rails in enjoyably awful ways—Serenity is the kind of bonkers movie that truly must be seen to be believed".

[26] The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy wrote, "Actors can usually have fun with such melodramatic roles, but Knight's stratagems serve to straitjacket the cast more than liberate it to diminishing returns as the climax remains an elusive vision on the horizon.

[27][28] In his review for The New York Observer, Rex Reed stated that "The new year is not even a month old, but a hunk of junk called Serenity already qualifies as the worst film of 2019" and that "[a]t the critics' screening I attended, the audience was reduced to hysterics".