Loosely based on Edgar Allan Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart", Tell-Tale sets a dark tone right from the start. Terry (Lucas) is the single parent to his small daughter Angela, who is stricken with a disease that threatens to calcify all her tendons, rendering her unable to function (and no, it’s not called boneitis). Horrible, huh? Adding insult to injury, Terry has life-threatening heart problems.

Normally I'd start moaning about forced empathy, but for all the heavy-handedness, these conditions are handled with impressive finesse, woven directly into the story. Angela's doctor, Elizabeth (Headey), has bonded closely with her patient and reserves a portion of that love for her father. All appears to be shaping up for the makings of a fine Lifetime Channel movie about second chances when Terry is rushed to the hospital in need of an immediate heart transplant!
o sooner does his new ticker get plugged in than the nightmarish visions of his own grisly demise begin. Feverish dreams then turn to flashes of past life as he walks into the proximity of a specific person, triggering an impulse toward bloody vengeance that will not be ignored. The previous owner of his new heart wants payback, and he'll take control of this new machine he's attached to to get it.