Scratchbook

Thomas F. Johnson
-LUMIPHOBIA-

-LOGLINE- A female scientist starts work at a dimensional laboratory, a lab filled with a quirky cast of characters but owned by a mystery man with a dark secret and containing a bizarre monster in a leaky prison who wants to drag his secret screaming into the light...

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown” - H.P Lovecraft
“It's never helped, to pretend that these things aren't there, and let them get so strong that they can bite you.”- David Cronenberg
Mystery, madness and mutation. This is a film of slow-burn horror, a mystery that shines like a cold calling beacon, but also a classical monster movie; where beasts show their humanity and men warp into things. It's a film about secrets, and a film about monsters, and a film about those monsters that guard their secrets.

THE TONE:
This film is to bring the raw shocks of modern micro-budgeted films like The Babadook, It Follows and Paranormal Activity to an update of the classic monster-movie format, a creature feature with unending tension and unease, but while at the same time bringing the badass creature-action and subtle subversiveness of classics like Alien; Gremlins or Return Of The Living Dead, with the greatest of all horror tricks, that of antici-

OUR PLAYERS:
-Doctor Jane- An inquisitive young woman. She is quiet, but very strong, with an assertiveness that is a refusal to be knocked down, and an intense curiosity and desire to discover the truth.
-Mr. Rocky- A mysterious man, with a temperament like a pillow containing a brick, with a hot temper beneath an icy; almost clinical exterior, something like a dark mirror to Jane. Runs the lab, alternates between treating his employees very well when things are going as planned, and treating them with abusive; almost illegal; practices when they defy him.
-Helen Burns- Friend and eventually romantic interest for Jane. Sweet, kind, enthusiastic and chipper, tho a bit of a slob. Is sick with a disease that may not be a disease at all...
-R. Mason- An unsettling young man, with a look of premature age on his face. He is excessively submissive and lickspittle-y, especially towards Mr. Rocky, and may have a dark connection with The Creature
-Miss B-An unpleasant woman who wears her contempt for others on her sleeve, despite being far less smart than she thinks she is. Does most of the dirtiest work for Mr. Rocky, has kind of a crush on him, though he personally cannot stand her. IS incredibly horrible to Dr. Jane, due to the fact that she sees her as a threat.
THE CREATURE- An enigmatic bestial thing like a rabid sunbeam. Her behavior is often interpreted as pure viciousness, but could very well be out of fear and confusion, due to the unknown circumstances of her “creation”, Really, really hates Mr. Rocky specifically

THE PLACE: A science lab, cold, eerie, and sterile, with a huge inter-dimensional stabilizer machine that dredges up the lower berths of the cosmos for man and must be manually-operated from inside, and with a strange boiler-meets-computer-like contraption meant for keeping something locked up. To be shot in a singular location with minimal sets constructed.

-pation

THE WINDING OF THE WORLD:
Have you seen Ghostbusters? Read HP Lovecraft? The short answer, if you have, is that it shares the cosmology; but in case you haven't, the core idea is that what we know of reality is only but a single layer upon an endless catacomb of layers; and our world is just one colour on the spectrum of madness. Reality spirals downward into stranger things, other worlds (Or perhaps other angles of ours) , and as humanity touches them, through scientific technologies, it can touch them back and change them.

THE STORY:

-ACT I-
	Our main heroine, JANE comes in to work at the lab, just at the momen't they're caging something up, setting up the dynamics for the rest of the film as Jane meets with R MASON. He introduces her to the other folks in the lab, while talking up the strange owner/funder of the lab, MR ROCKY, warning her not to pry to much with him or to rely on him. He also warns that there is one door that must not be entered, a door to which Mr. Rocky very tightly controls access to.
	A few days go by with a disquieting aura when, one day, Jane comes into work early one morning to see a strange man, using some sort of fantastical device to subdue a thing she only sees the horrible luminescent hands of, clawing out of the remnants of that door. He subdues the creature, notices that someone is watching him (Though he doesn't know who) and flees.
	During working hours, Jane begins asking around the lab about the man, finds out it's Mr. Rocky, and starts to learn more about the man and his mysteries.. She begins snooping around in the files on various experiments and employees, and finding various bits of data “missing,” along with certain employee logs.
	Around the door, she spots a strange phenomenon, spreading and destroying the material like fire; but looking like nothing so much as slowed shockwaves of light. MISS B comes by with a device, snuffs the phenomenon out. She gives Jane a death glare, says “Tell no-one” and leaves.

-ACT II-
	Jane takes a sample of “burnt” material to one of the scientists she thinks she can trust, by the name of HELEN, for analysis. As they talk and meet up to discuss the issue, they really hit it off, and begin falling more and more in love. But, Helen seems to be sick with a mysterious illness, getting worse and worse as time goes on.
	We lead to a flashy setpiece in a dimensional research machine, where the scientists all don their suits and regulate and shift the internal conditions of the machine from the inside; in addition to capturing samples of the fauna of the dimensions. A larger, more dangerous beast comes in, with the scientists mobilizing to subdue it, but with ultimately one man coming in to save them, Mr Rocky. Though he does save Jane from mortal peril, he brutally crushes the beast after it is rendered harmless.
	Meanwhile, more of the “brightwaves” are showing up and spreading, and concerned whispers are spreading through out the laboratory, with lots of pressure from Mr. Rocky to stop them at their “source”. Jane is searching for data files, which she finds on Helen's computer thanks to her backing-up and never clearing anything, and finds out about a mysterious missing employee, with a very personal relationship to Mr. Rocky.
	A few days later, Mr, Rocky calls Jane into his office, for a “talk,” which quickly becomes revealed as an ultimatum, as he at once seductively and predatorialy tells her to mind her own business, looming over her like a shrike on a tree. But, this “talk” is soon halted when the message comes in from the intercom: THE CREATURE IS LOOSE
	A being of predatory flesh and brutal light, she comes, tearing a bloody swath through the laboratory even as they use their suits and tools to confront her. While the others crumple like tissue paper under its assault, it is Jane who fights hardest and ends up getting the most licks on the creature. But, after the creature snatches Helen and tries to take her to the dimensional research. Jane yells “LET HER GO!” when she confronts The Creature at the heart of the machine, it...
	Backs down, drops Helen, and looks with puzzled, sad eyes. And then Mr Rocky comes and brutally stuffs her back into a strange container with his device, and gives them both a look of death.

-ACT III-
	A few days later, Mr. Rocky calls Helen into his office. He asks a few questions about her illness, which leads to the reveal, that The Creature was once his metally-ill lover, who he tried to “dispose of ' using the dimensional machine, but who survived and came back changed. And Helen is on the way to becoming something like her.
	Jane finds the secret out at the same time through searching into a flash drive she stole from Mr. Rocky's office. But, for Helen, it is too late. She is knocked out and dragged off to the machine to be “disposed of”
	Mr. Rocky succeeds at this foul deed, but not before Helen stabs him in the eye and the hand with a concealed knife; “infecting” him with the machine's “light”. And then Jane finds out. She weeps and takes the knife. The knife twistedly glows with dimensional power.
	Suddenly, Mr. Rocky calls a conference of a few of the scientists closest to him over the intercom. Jane comes too, in the hopes of killing him in revenge for Helen. At the conference Mr. Rocky states that they must die, for they know too much. The massacre starts just as the creature breaks down the door; shatters her “cage” and the dimensional machine goes haywire.
	Jane goes for Mr. Rocky's throat before The Creature attacks Mr Rocky while in the middle of his massacre, and during their tussle, he increases further in power and starts to win, as the battle spills out from the conference hall, to across the lab's corridors, to the dimensional machine, with the scientists caught in the crossfire, along with another strange beast stalking in the shadows, pursuing Jane for an unknown reason
	Stuck in in the heat of the battle between the two titans she looks for an opening to attack. Mr. Rocky (Or rather, the thing he has become) looks at her and runs towards her and his Creature, trying to kill the both of them.
	The Creature is ruthlessly ripped open by Mr. Rocky in the end, but Jane gets in the final blow in Mr Rocky's neck, and he falls apart into gooey glowing sludge while pathetically swearing hatred against Jane. But then, the other creature attacks, and it is revealed...
	It's Helen, mutated by the light she's fallen into. And as they re-unite, a portal open sup at the center of the machine and they look into it. They hold hands together.
CUT TO BLACK

-Final Story Notes-
*Helen and Jane's relationship is intended to be a blossoming romantic one, and thus should be written as such as to leave no doubt in the viewer's mind that this is so; even if the words “gay” or “lesbian” are never uttered.
*The Creature's personality must most definitely come off in both the script and the performance/design, as the best movie monsters are defined by their personality, and she has a personality full of anger and vengance, but also of desperate loneliness and sorrow.
*R Mason and Miss B are the main scientists working for Mr. Rocky other than Jane and Helen that actually get some characterization. Mr. Mason is slightly pathetic, and he knows it, wishing he could have saved his sister (Who also happens to be the woman who became the creature) and suspicious of Mr. Rocky's role in her death, but so spineless as to be unable to do anything about it. Miss B is the main minor-antagonsitic-force aside from Mr. Rocky and The Creature, doing what Mr. Rocky says to do (usually bad things) without knowing why in the hopes that he will love her (Though he only regards her as a tool). They both die at Mr. Rocky's hands at the final massacre.