The Confession (Elevated Horror/Drama/Thriller)
A shy eight-year-old Catholic girl commits a petty crime to have a
Alice is taken in by her GRANDMOTHER, a kindly but superstitious widow who, despite her better judgment, still clings tight to her Catholic faith. Fire and Hell then become the leitmotifs throughout the story.
During school the next spring, Alice falls in with her classmate, BOBBY, a battered child, abused at home by his shady immigrant stepfather. Bobby acts out his rage by killing small animals, stealing, and generally acting the bully/know-it-all. Just not to Alice. Bobby sees Alice as a person just like him, even though she protests she’s not.
During school one day, Alice is told by her gruff, controlling third-grade teacher, SISTER MARY AGATHA – under penalty of “burning in the flames of Hell” – that she must have a sin to confess to her Priest, or she’ll not be permitted to participate in First Holy Communion ceremonies.
Alice, being only eight, has no sin she can think of, so Bobby helps her out. He suggests she consider “the big three,” killing, lying, or stealing. One afternoon, Alice steals a plastic doll head from a local merchant as her sin. She is then beset by night terrors featuring the DEVIL, and continual thoughts of burning in the fires of Hell because of her petty crime.
The story concludes during the Church’s annual talent show fundraiser, where Bobby and Alice inadvertently start a raging fire in the show’s prop room, and one of the children perishes.
"The Confession" is a hybrid take on the notions of "elevated horror" and dark drama. The screenplay asks: "What really scares adults?", and answers: "Ignorance, lies, superstition, cultural conformity, unkindness masquerading as piety, and cruelty to children."
A drama with strong female leads, “The Confession” is set before Vatican II, when the Catholic Church still behaved as it did in the 1500s, with an overlay of all the attendant superstitions, racism, vice, and cultural inhibitions of post-World War II America.
The Devil's Advocate (1997)
The Omen (1976)
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