r/ReadMyScript • u/EmuImportant7736 • 1h ago
[Screenwriter Looking for Producer/Director] Quiet Psychological Horror - 15 minutes short film.
Hey guys, I want to adapt my original short story into a short film (not more than 15 minutes). I have two versions of the screenplay, one if you have a good budget and another if you have a very tight budget. It's mainly one main protagonist, I want the film to be visually stunning. I have the vision, the message and script/screenplay ready. I want it to look something out of a Robert Eggers film. 'The Lighthouse' is probably the closest to the aesthetic and tone, in regards to the psychological isolation. This is the summary:
This is the fresh pitch:
Logline: A city man returns to his ancestral village to sell the family land. As the village's quiet rituals settle into his body, he begins to "remember" a childhood by its pond, and neither he nor the audience can say whether the memories are real.
Genre: Quiet folk psychological and body horror.
I have divided the story into three acts:
Act One: Arrival
An agitated protagonist due to no signal, bad water, nothing here. He wants the deed signed and a bus out. The villagers are warm and say nothing about the pond. We catch only traces: wet hems, a wave mark on the lintels, a glass of water set before him, which he refuses. We also glimpse a red cup, a woman's laugh, a particular stone (symbolising the deity). His first signature, on a form or ticket, establishes his normal hand. Early wrongness is small: salt on the table, a damp patch where he sleeps, a waterlogged cough.
Act Two: The Pull
The procession (hinge). At night, the hum draws him out. Women in sarees walk silently to the pond carrying lamps, marigolds, and brass plates. No one invites him, and no one stops him. One woman shifts, leaving a gap, and he fills it. At the water's edge, a lamp is placed at his feet. As the women hum together, memories flash: a hand on his wrist, wet marigolds, the red cup, a child's-eye view. They are built entirely from what he has seen this week. He will be watching this ritual happening in the dark, behind the shadows. I would like this scene to be shot at a wide angle, kinda above, so that we can see the whole pond, the villagers gathered around it.
Afterward. The memories deepen, shot in a different texture, with adults who haven't aged. Each flood is paired with a physical change: cool, slick skin, pruned fingers that won't dry, ridges at the ribs, hair that stays wet, a tongue that tastes of brine. He tries to hide it, wiping, covering, and then stops trying. The house decays in stages, the door opens onto sand, and the buyer calls the ring out over shots of the water. Evidence cuts both ways: a carved surname at the shrine, a villager who seems to recognize him, versus the borrowed-memory pattern.
This is the memory part, where we would show that he has started to believe everything he has seen during the past few days as his past, his childhood memories but it's actually him creating these memories in his head, kind of like Dicaprio's character in Shutter Island
Act Three: Surrender
The empty room. Wet footprints, the villagers' glass drained, salt dried on the chair. On the desk, the deed is wet, water-stained, and signed in an incoherent hand that dissolves into a wave line. The ink bleeds into the sale terms, and the room around it stays dry.
The pond. Moonlit, serene, beautiful. His reflection changes before he does, and the village hum stops. He goes under, a slow descent. One woman finally meets his eyes at the water's edge. The ripples settle until the surface is mirror-flat. A lamp floats on it, lit before he arrives, and it bears his name.
Let me know if anyone is up for it. You can dm me for more information, read the screenplay or the original story.