When a young gay man rents an apartment in a house where an eccentric scientist lives with her daughter, who has an odd relationship with the poison plants in their garden, he must resist taking part in their murderous designs or lose control of his life completely.

SYNOPSIS:

In this loose adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic 1844 short story “Rappaccini’s Daughter,” now set in contemporary Los Angeles, John Wood (24) rents the third-floor apartment of the house where Amelia Davis (61) lives with her daughter Stella (19). Amelia is glad that John is gay because Stella, a “legendary beauty,” is off limits, as is the garden of unusual plants, agaves in particular, behind the house. John, however, can’t curb his curiosity, and he spies on Stella as she talks to and caresses the garden’s plants and as he breathes in the garden’s stifling air. His straight friend Peter Baglioni (27) also takes an interest—in Stella especially. When a “suitor” visits Stella and disappears, John and Peter agree to investigate.

John meets Stella, and she and her mother agree that John is different from most men, toward whom they feel a general animosity. A budding friendship doesn’t stop John from spying. He sees creatures die from the garden air that seems to make Stella thrive; he concludes that the garden is somehow poisonous to all but Stella. Meanwhile, Peter learns about Amelia, or Dr. Davis, a scientist who did life-saving research on agaves but was expelled from the scientific community for developing poisons. John acclimates to the garden air, and his friendship with Stella grows as they take walks and discuss his suspicions, about which Stella is direct. Amelia has raised Stella to be poisonous and help her destroy men, an endeavor that John may now join, starting with his abusive ex-boyfriend Larry (32). John agrees. In the ensuing murder spree, which includes Larry and other men, John learns about how Amelia and Stella compost victims’ bodies, and he explores the feelings that link their complete devotion to one another and to the garden that they care for and that cares for them.

When, weeks later, Peter pays another visit to John’s apartment, Amelia and Stella treat him as if he will be the next victim. Moments before Peter succumbs to the garden’s poison, John rescues him, angering Amelia, who explains that she has “made” John into Stella’s companion, and, like Stella, he can no longer survive without the garden’s poisonous air. Peter comes back with an antidote to the poison that he believes will set John and Stella free. Amelia tries to stop Peter and John from using it, and in a struggle, she dies falling down the stairs. Stella is distraught, but she agrees to try the antidote with John during one last walk in the garden. They take the antidote simultaneously. It is effective for John, but the poison is too much a part of Stella: the antidote kills her. The loss of Stella, his love for whom transcended romance, crushes John, and Peter practically has to drag him away from the garden that is once again poisonous to him. As Peter calls for an ambulance, John mutters “Everything is poison,” spiraling into grief.

_Agave Agape_ was a quarterfinalist in the TSL Free Screenplay Contest, 2022, a quarterfinalist in the Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards, 2022, a quarterfinalist in the ScreenCraft Horror Screenwriting Competition, 2022, and a semifinalist in the Other Worlds FF / Under Worlds FF, 2021.