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After a family, hunted by killers, hide in a small town, and re-open an old movie palace, as their pursuers close in, their fear awakens something worse lurking within the theater itself, and in a single night of relentless horror they find their survival depends on them alone.
SYNOPSIS:
Corporate Accountant JASON BRADLEY-ROSS, discovering his boss’s ties to the mob and learning that he had been keeping the public side of his employer’s double books. turns State’s Evidence, cooperates with the FBI, and, before we open, has testified at his boss’s trial.
But even before the trial is over, mere days after her testimony, a key witness is murdered. And then, while he and his family are still sequestered away, Jason’s house is burned down.
So, Jason, wife, LAUREN, and their children, CHRISTOPHER and C.C., are secretly relocated to Amenity, Kansas. However, aided by certain “official” sources and some clever “social engineering,” as the family arrives in the town, the killers begin hunting them.
After scoping out the town, they head over to a park before meeting the movers at their new house, an old Victorian on a tree-lined street a few blocks from downtown. There, they meet GAVIN MACAULEY, a retiree, and they begin a friendship.
Jason had been placed by the Feds in a large theater chain’s corporate administration, but only after he re-opens the Jupiter, a shuttered old movie palace which had served Amenity for more than 75 years. Unknown to the family, as we learn in the early pages, the “Jupe,” built when Amenity and the valley population was much larger and the town’s textile mills still operated, rests on a site with a “past”.
Now, with the prospect of a large auto plant coming, the Kansas City-based theater chain intends to re-open the Jupiter, prior to eventually converting it into a state-of-the-art multiplex. Until then, it will still run the old fashioned way, with film reels alternating between two projectors.
RUDY GOULEE, the Jupiter’s former projectionist, takes the family on a tour, revealing all of the spooky old venue’s secrets: a couple sub-basements for heating and storage, dressing and rehearsal rooms, the projection booth, and the attic crawlspace above the false ceiling over the main floor. He trains Jason on film projection, and as the family’s refurbishing begins, the old theater starts to come back to life.
But fear of discovery stalks them…
…and, in particular, as they settle into Amenity, Lauren is haunted. Their fear has awakened something within the Jupiter itself, something worse than their human pursuers, something ancient, terrible. It’s something which begins to feed off their slowly mounting fears, first in their dreams, and later, in... other ways.
Opening day approaches, which Jason intends to serve as the start of a shakedown run before the “Grand Re-Opening” on Halloween weekend. After a disturbing and unexplainable incident during an Open-House he throws for the small town, Jason ends up alienating the locals and is forced to draw staff from the greater area surrounding Amenity. For the Halloween Grand Re-Opening, he plans for a huge horror marathon, advertising across the entire valley, and pulls out all the stops to make it great.
Serving as projectionist until he can train up a replacement, Jason closes the theater at the end of one night not long after they’ve opened. From the projection booth, he sees a bizarre figure down on the main floor near the stage staring at him in the booth. But when he goes to throw “the person” out, he finds nothing, only to see it appear up in the projection booth window where he had been. He hunts through the Jupiter without result, so he locks up and walks home through the darkened town.
The rest of the family experiences bizarre things, as well. One night, Lauren is awakened from a deep sleep to find that Jason is not yet home, and finds her neck wrapped in film, almost strangling her. Hysterical, she tea it off and leaps out of bed. The film leads out the door. She then discovers that daughter C.C. is missing. Frantic, she traces the film down the stairs. She finds it leads further, under the basement door, and down, into the darkness of the cellar. Her calls to C.C. to no avail, she overcomes her fear, grabs a flashlight, and follows it down the steps, where the film winds around the huge old furnace, and leads beneath the door to an old canning pantry converted from an even older coal bin. Standing there barefoot, she feels something at her feet, looks down, and sees dark liquid gushing out from under the door. She screams.
Arriving home, Jason, hears it and comes running down the stairs. He pulls open the pantry door only to find the empty film reel lying among the broken jars of several “canned” fruits and the tail of the film she had followed.
Other weird and disturbing events pile up, one after another. One night, C.C. is drawn alone to the theater eventually to be found by Jason in the seats staring at the empty screen. Then, Chris attempts suicide.
And, a thousand miles east, now having located them, their pursuers set out for Amenity.
With the staff fully in place and trained up, the Jupiter opens its doors for its Grand Re-Opening. Hundreds of teens from all over the valley have arrived to see the all-horror triple-bill on the Jupiter’s huge screen.
But that night, as the horror films reign, and a violent storm rages, Jason and Lauren are forced to preside over a tremendous tragedy: in a strange trance-like unison, 43 kids jump off the balcony to the seats below. Pandemonium! Hours later, after the last ambulance has left, Jason goes to enlist Gavin’s help. And heading home, Lauren and the kids discover their house vandalized, apparently by the town, now angry over the tragedy. With nowhere else to turn, in the middle of the night, Lauren heads back to the Jupiter, and begins to set up in one of the sub-basement rehearsal rooms, intending to call Jason once she has the kids bedded down.
Needing to understand it all, Jason and Gavin go to the only place open at the time, the truck stop outside town, just off the Interstate. But, unknown to them, two late-model SUVs with East Coast plates had arrived ahead of them, and six newcomers to Amenity are seated at two tables within earshot. Surprised at their amazing luck after spotting Jason, they get up and leave to make their plans
The presence within the Jupe, sated, now, with the family’s fear, able to manifest physically, begins to stalk Lauren, Chris, and C.C. in the Jupiter. At the truck stop, after coming to a decision, Jason and Gavin head back to Amenity.
And in a harrowing night of horror, Jason, his family, and Gavin finally confront both their human pursuers and their fear-sated demon, loose and hunting them within the Jupiter Theater. #
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Sounds interesting, Lee Matthias! And I like the title! I think your logline needs a better flow, and I think the end is vague. Here's a logline suggestion (part of one): After getting relocated to a small town, a family being hunted by killers re-opens an old movie palace and _______ (the story goal) ___________ (the stakes).
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Maurice is right. The current logline is incorrect grammar. I wonder - do the killers encounter the supernatural thing in the theater?