Submission Synopsis

Some Fresh Hell
by John Newman

Length:
123

Genre:
Horror

Comparisons:
Psycho, Exorcist, Sixth Sense

Sentence:
A man whose life has been crippled by the brutal events of his childhood is forced to kill in self-defense, reawakening the forces of evil that have swirled around him all his life.

Logline:
The host of perversities that Daniel Bantree's parents concealed beneath a veneer of religious fanaticism cost his Mother her life and his Father his sanity.  Forty years later Daniel is still torn between facing his past or leaving it behind forever.

When Daniel is forced to kill in self-defense, that choice is taken out of his hands as he unleashes the dark forces that have haunted him since childhood.

Synopsis:

In a manner similar to Hide and Seek and The Sixth Sense, Something Old… provides subtle hints that things are not quite what they seem.  For the protagonist of Something Old..., Daniel Bantree, this is bad news indeed, because things appear to be grim enough as it is.

Daniel was orphaned at age six when his parent’s passion for both religious fanaticism and sexual perversity resulted in his Mother being brutally slain and his Father committed to an insane asylum.

Forty years later, Daniel has returned to his childhood home (now transformed into a tawdry boarding house) and works at the same factory that once employed his Father. Daniel calls this coincidence and tries to live as quiet a life as possible; for most people, however, this would suggest that Daniel is unable to resist the pull of something old…something evil.

As much as Daniel may try to shut out the outside world, reality begins to derail him.  He dreams of the night his Mother was killed and shortly afterward witnesses a murder; this in turn, forces Daniel to kill the murderer in self-defense.  From this point onward, events begin to snowball, suggesting that Daniel is once again at the mercy of a force that he can barely understand.

Daniel saves his pretty co-worker (and upstairs neighbor) from an abusive relationship, only to have her reject him and slip back into her self-destructive ways.  Daniel’s Father regains coherence after a forty year catatonic haze and makes it clear that he expects his Son to follow in Father’s footsteps.

The upstairs neighbor disappears leaving only a crime scene awash in blood, and…there’s the old lady across the hallway who, although she seems to strike a sympathetic chord in Daniel’s desolate existence, also may exist solely in Daniel’s own mind.

As the story unfolds, the question begs to be asked, “How much of evil is within, and how much without?”

Budget:
Low-to-Medium

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