Need a new backstory for my lead character, please help!

make him a war veteran, that suffered, and had an abusive wife that finally made him snap...

or make his wife try and give him drugs, that he reacted badly on and killed her...

these ways, it's not just black and white, but actually both faults... so he has more to work with.. that's what i would seek in his back story... a dilemma...

Well in all fairness, I think that's a good back story in and of itself. I can see how it resembles "Another World", but that was still very different. No one was drunk and it was the young teen's fault, not that dad.

But, if you want to make it completely different and interesting, I would consider having them get stranded on a boat, only to have him eat his wife for food. When he finally gets rescued, he claims that she died of dehydration and that he had to dump her body because the smell was too rife. Throughout the movie you could cut back and forth from the present to that incident. You might even be able to put a supporting character in there, in which that supporting character knows the truth but is also omitting it because he doesn't blame him for doing it.

And if you want to make this story talk about his own problems....Well, make it to where they got stranded on the boat because of whatever flaw he had. Anger issues? Had a fight while steering the boat into unknown territory or have him break something important for getting back. Alcoholic? Have him get too drunk and fuck up causing them to be stranded.