DARK WATERS
Character-driven psychological horror thriller set in a suburban house, with a disturbed female lead and a shocking twist ending, inspired by Henry James' "Turn of the Screw". Two children seem to be haunted by the ghost of their dead mother's secret lover, as seen through the eyes of a young, troubled woman hired as a nanny while their father leaves town on business. Their suburban house evolves into a nightmare world of psychological evil that seems to emanate from the back-yard pool. Hook: is there a ghost in the house, or is the nanny imagining it and going mad?
Julie takes care of two children in suburbia, their father PETER leaving on an overseas business trip for the summer. Their mother was killed in a car accident the previous summer. As Julie is left alone with SEAN (11) and MELISSA (14), two unhappy kids with too many secrets between them, nothing seems normal in this household...
Strange things occur, particularly from the back yard and its "haunted" swimming pool. Sean seems to be tormented by some invisible demon from the past. And people are disappearing: the gardener, the pool man, then a neighboring babysitter. Julie bonds with the two disturbed siblings, determined to learn their secrets and heal their wounds out of newfound love, and to redeem her guilt-ridden past.
As the mystery unfolds, Julie learns the truth about their mother JESSICA's death and her secret affair with violent, womanizing MAX STRYKER, a neighbor with a prosthetic claw-hand. Both died together in the same car accident under sinister circumstances. Max's ghost, or some manifestation of Sean and Melissa's hidden fears, begins to terrorize Julie and endanger both her and the kids.
Julie's live-in nightmare and misguided efforts to save them from a hostile entity culminates in an unexpected twist, where nothing is what it seems in this house...nor in the pool, an ominous epicenter of horror and death.
Coverage excerpt from 2011 Award Winning Scripts Contest Finalist:
"This is a novel and original script, written by a writer who clearly knows how to manipulate the medium in terms of both historical and contemporary mystery thriller film precedents. Scary, inventive, and confident enough to find terror in the mundane details of every-day life, this is a story that produces some genuinely unsettling and hair-raising sequences.
"Water, overall, is both a plot device and a metaphor in the style of Clouzot's Diabolique, a carrier for fear that is utilized with great skill throughout the story. The suspense scenes are inventively realized in an extremely engaging and visceral manner. Even in those scenes in which nothing much visual happens, there are genuine psychological jolts.
"The dialogue, is highly polished, and the kids talk like real adolescents. Julie has some great dialogue, and this overall naturalism contributes to making the story credible and fluid. Julie is a likable protagonist, and the gradual way in which she forms a bond with the kids makes for a story that's easy to identify with and root for the characters in their predicament."
Shailene Woodley
Elle Fanning
The Others
The Innocents
Table Read (Finalist) [2013]
Austin Fest Film (Semifinalist) [2012]
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