Ashes
Ashes
Feature Screenplay, 96 pages
Horror, Suspense/Thriller
Written by Paul Knauer
| Score: 59.49 |
| 4 Reviews |
| Score: 59.49 4 Reviews |
ParanormalPsychologicalRuralThrillerTime Period: PresentStory Location: USASpecial Effects: Minimal SFXTarget Audience: Adult | Teenagers | Young Adult
Active ✔ PDFIn a desperate bid to escape her abusive boyfriend, a woman rents a house in the country--only to find it inhabited by the manipulative spirit of a murderer with a seemingly impossible request: go back in time and stop me from killing.
Ashes is a semi-contained psychological horror/thriller set primarily in small-town Kansas--with a majority of the scenes taking place in and around a farm house.
Style? Think, Blumhouse. Scary. Snappy. Tight. Strong female lead, strong opposing forces. A twist here. A turn there. A third act race to the finish.
The project was loosely inspired by the "In Cold Blood" murders made famous by Truman Capote. It centers on themes related to control and manipulation, with inter-woven challenges for the main character, Anne, a 26-year-old woman fighting to leave her abusive, manipulative boyfriend behind. As she looks to wrest control of her life from Brax, her boyfriend, she finds herself living with the murderess spirit of Percy G. Jones. Percy has been "stuck" in the farmhouse for the past 60 years after being hanged in the basement for the murders of the family that used to live in the house. Obsessed with the number five, Percy needs to kill one more person in order to find peace. But, what he'd really like is for Anne to help him go back and NOT kill the four people in 1965. "It can be zero, or it can be five. There is no peace otherwise." He KNOWS she can help him, he explains, because he saw Anne try to intervene when he first committed the killings. She has a gift, he explains, and he needs her help.
(Ashes has a limited cast and only a handful of locations. )
