[Amy Christine]

Amy Parker’s Terrifying Monster

What I learned doing this assignment: That my monster needs a more concrete mythology. I also need to think more carefully about the rules it has.

1. My monster appears to be a very old woman, but is really a supernatural creature possessing her body. Think ancient demon.
2. Their Terror: every time the current body it is in begins to rot, it traps a group of young people somewhere they can’t escape like an airplane and forces them to choose one of their own for it to possess. It reveals the darkest secrets each person is hiding to help them decide. It also manipulates their minds, amping up their fear by choosing one of them at a time to do something awful to themselves like pull out their own teeth. It turns up the paranoia so that people begin being violent with each other. It feeds off this fear and paranoia.
Their Mystery: How can the group of teens avoid sacrificing one of their own? Is there a way to stop the creature before it can possess someone new and/or crash the plane?
Their Fear-Provoking Appearance: The old woman’s body is decaying rapidly. Her teeth are rotting. She has a certain stench. Her bowels let loose toward the end. She appears to defy gravity and can crawl across the plane’s ceiling.
Their Rules: the creature can’t pick its new body. The humans have to do this. It will die if it stays in a dead body. Any person it possesses becomes part of it, living with it in every new body it possesses next.
Their Mythology: it is a demon that survives by possession as it was cast out of hell and is no longer immortal. It feeds on fear and paranoia and loves to play games.

[Amy Christine]

Horror Screenwriting Course
Lesson One Assignment

I watched the movie Final Destination. I chose it because it is one of the inspirations for my project.
The Concept: What if you had a premonition of your own death and thwarted it? What if this messed up Death’s design and now it is trying to fix the problem? When Alex has a vision of the plane he’s on crashing, he, several of his classmates, and one of their teachers get off the plane and thwart their own deaths, but it turns out you can’t cheat Death. It will just keep coming for you until you die. Alex and the others must figure out if there is a way to keep avoiding their own demises or succumb to Death’s design in terrifyingly brutal ways.
Terrorize the Characters: Alex, the main character is constantly feeling Death’s presence in the breeze blowing through his room and in momentary glimpses of impending doom. Soon nothing about his or his friends’ lives is safe. Every room they enter, every street they walk down is fraught with peril. It’s as if Death is toying with them, leaving little clues concerning its next attempts at ending their lives, just enough to scare them, not enough to prevent them. It plays on fear of flying, suffocation, being trapped, dying, and being disbelieved by everyone—seen as paranoid.

Isolation: In the opening plane crash sequence there is literally no escape, but after, while the characters are free to roam the real world, no place is out of death’s reach so nowhere is safe. This creates the isolation. The characters are being stalked by death and it has no limits to where it can go.

Death: The deaths are all creative and brutal and involve a series of linked actions reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine in the way they operate. Water pooled on a bathroom floor provides a slippery surface to propel one character into a tub where he grabs a clothing line to keep from falling and manages to get it wrapped around his neck. Shampoo and conditioner is upended in the process, creating another slick surface in the tub so the boy can’t get purchase and essentially hangs from the line and strangles to death. Each death is built up with these chain reactions so the audience can see it coming and the tension is high.
Monster/Villian: Death itself. Intangible, supernatural, unbeatable. It is the ultimate monster and it comes for everyone at some point so there is literally no escape just reprieves.
High Tension: The sense of impending doom is pervasive. From the creepy objects in every setting; puppets/figurines, books with “death” in the title, a song played over and over by an artist who died in a plane crash, an unnatural breeze, everyday objects that are inherently dangerous: kitchen knives, gas stoves, electrical cords, water, clothes line, etc. Between these things and the sound track, the audience is constantly on edge.
Departure from Reality: windows shut on their own. Electrical wires seem to chase people, water turns direction abruptly—all of it is not realistic and defies natural law. Also the way people die is extreme and far-fetched.
Moral Statement: You can’t cheat death. Sooner or later, it comes for us all. It doesn’t matter what kind of person you are.
This was an excellent movie that stands the test of time. So many tiny details were infused into it: The imagery in the opening, the John Denver song, coincidental number alignments. And it takes situations we face every day and plays on our inherent fears about them.

My Project:
Concept
Flight 171 (adapting from my novel of the same name)
A group of college students board a plane for a spring ski trip and are confronted by a creepy old woman on board who renders everyone on the plane unconscious except for the students. Turns out she’s a supernatural creature inhabiting a human body. The old woman’s body is now failing and it needs a new body to possess. It wants one of the students to possess next. They must pick who before the flight ends or she’ll crash the plane and everyone will die.

Terrorize the characters: This concept plays on the fear of flying, the fear of being taken over or possessed against your will, the fear of old age and all the physical horror attached to it, the fear of enclosed spaces, and the fear of dying—or worse, being trapped alive inside your own body powerless to control it.

Death: The old woman will cause the deaths of several of the students to demonstrate how serious she is. She will manipulate their minds to make them harm themselves. Most of the characters will survive. One will be possessed and forced to share their body with the creature.
Monster/Villain: A supernatural creature inhabiting an old woman’s body. It’s failing so it is literally starting to rot over the duration of the flight. She can manipulate people’s wills, defy gravity, force the plane to crash with her mind and force the passengers into unconsciousness. She also knows all the students’ worst sins and exposes them one by one on the in-flight entertainment system.
High Tension: It’s an enclosed setting—an airplane—with no escape. The students’ sins play out one by one for all to see which ups the tension between them because their sins involve wrongs done to each other. The old woman is rotting and becoming grosser and scarier.
Departure from Reality: supernatural monster with unnatural powers.
Moral Statement: Are you willing to sacrifice someone else to survive? How do you decide what sins are worthy of death or worse? If you take revenge in an extreme way can you live with it?

[Amy Christine]

Hi everyone. I have co-written one script so far and am also a published author of five novels in the thriller/horror genre. I’m hoping to sharpen my horror skills to enhance my novels and to help me start writing my own horror scripts as well as script adaptations of my novels. Something unique about me is that I once checked my daughter out of high school to attend an exorcism with me in the name of research.

[Amy Christine]

I, Amy Parker, agree to the terms of this release form.GROUP RELEASE FORM
As a member of this group, I agree to the following:
1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.
2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.
I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.
3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.
4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.
5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.
6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.