Feature. 94 pg. Horror/Sci-Fi by Matt Brookens
Soon to be a dramatized Radio Play
LOGLINE
Hunting for a serial killer, a small town deputy finds her estranged husband, friends and family under the power of an evil entity living deep in the Oregon backwoods.
“Sharp Objects” meets “The Crazies.”
Theme: The hate you use as a weapon will destroy you too.
BRIEF SYNOPSIS
Cottage Grove, Oregon is a quaint slice of Americana about to be ripped apart by mass psychosis and murder.
Headstrong, big-talking deputy, Casey Rilo (30s), and her partner are ambushed by a serial killer deep in the forest by Crater Lake. Her arm is broken. Her partner is drowning. Casey has one fleeting chance to defeat their monstrous assailant. But when she faces him, her courage vanishes. Casey runs for her life, leaving her partner turned lover to die at his hands.
When the serial killer escapes jail, Casey still wonders how they could have acted alone. And why are trusted loved ones like her estranged husband Mike and frenemy, Morgan lying to her?
Haunted by guilt and determined to find answers, Casey begins a perilous unofficial investigation. Does all this have something to do with her recurring nightmares – the ones with a pale figure in the forest, beckoning her back to where her partner died? Why has her beloved father gone missing? With her ten year old son sleepwalking and Mike becoming increasingly violent and paranoid, Casey defies her police chief and seeks clues in dangerous places. She builds a complex psychological profile of the perpetrator.
As Casey digs deeper, a sinister conspiracy reveals itself. With new information from her dead partner’s wife, a biology expert, Casey discovers her friends, family and most of the town have fallen under the control of a toxic Cordyceps infection. The fungus eats the weak and manipulates the rest to do its bidding. This intelligent mutation manifests itself as a hallucinatory pale figure to command its minions to bring it victims to eat– ingesting the “useless”, making “drone” slaves out of the weak and “soldiers” out of the strong. The fungus has created a cult of followers and calls itself “The Source.”
Now, with her young son in the clutches of The Source and it’s figurehead, the serial killer, Casey has to take on her former community. She has decided, “No more running.”
