Form 02-B · First look briefing · Sample deck on file

Hereditary

A grieving miniaturist builds dollhouse replicas of her own home while an unseen presence rearranges her family inside it, until the house's safest rooms turn lethal.

Poster concept 08

Written by

Ari Aster

Genre / Format

Horror, Supernatural Drama · approx. 118 minutes (118 pages at 1 page/minute)

Setting

Contemporary

Tone

dread-soaked occult horror

By the numbers

156

Scenes

Characters

Locations

Props

Exhibit A — Taglines

> Every door in this house was already locked from outside.

> The grandmother got exactly what she wanted.

> Mother knows. Mother built it. Mother is in the walls.

Synopsis

The Graham family lives in a rustic craftsman house so isolated and exact that it matches a miniature on Annie's workbench. Annie, a miniaturist racing a gallery deadline, has just buried her secretive mother, Ellen Leigh. Her psychiatrist husband Steve holds the household steady; their teenage son Peter drifts through weed and a crush, while withdrawn 14-year-old Charlie clicks her tongue, builds manikins from found objects, and collects things she shouldn't. A sudden, devastating loss splits the family open, and Annie's grief curdles into something stranger: footprints appear in empty rooms, a paint bottle tips itself, and her dead mother stands smiling in dark corners. A warm older woman named Joan, met at a grief group, offers Annie a way to reach across the divide between the living and the dead. What begins as comfort becomes a doorway. As the haunting moves from the workshop into the bedrooms, Annie discovers her mother left behind more than embroidery and locked doors, and the spatial rules of her own home start working against the people inside it. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes that someone planned this generations ago.

Themes

Inherited trauma and predetermined fate

The classroom lesson on Greek tragedy under a chalkboard reading "Escaping Fate" (scene 13) states the rule the whole film obeys: the Grahams aren't choosing their doom, they inherited it. Symbols Annie treats as pre-existing, like the triangle carved into her mother's floorboards, were waiting for her before the story began.

Grief, guilt and blame within a family

The film's engine is who is at fault. The dinner-table eruption (scene 90) detonates the family's blame outright, and the word "blamed" closes Annie's confession at the grief group (scene 22) — guilt passed hand to hand like an heirloom.

Loss of control and the illusion of agency

Annie sculpts her own catastrophes in miniature, reproducing her anxiety at doll scale while a real presence tips her paint and rearranges her figurines. Steve's insistence that the family controls nothing becomes the film's grim thesis once the house itself starts making the decisions.

Maternal ambivalence and the failure to protect

Annie forcing Charlie to the party against the girl's wishes is the choice she spends the film unable to forgive, and her buried admission about never wanting to be a mother surfaces as the haunting closes in.

Occult manipulation and ritual sacrifice

Joan's gentle "JOANIE" welcome mat (scene 84) and her seance are a trap dressed as kindness; the warmth is the lure, the ritual the point.

Scope at a Glance

156

Total scenes

Unique locations

Principal cast

Exterior scenes

Night shoots

VFX/FX scenes

Estimated shoot days

Company moves

approx. 14-18 meaningful moves across 15 locations, heavily anchored to the Graham house

Complexity Read

The real pressure is the haunted house itself — 100 scenes anchored to a single multi-room build that must hold practical fire, ceiling-rig wirework, an escalating fly-and-ant infestation, decapitation and corpse prosthetics, two child-adjacent teen performers, a trained bird, and a snowbound exterior with a treehouse set.

Atmosphere

This is a film that opens by lying to you about what it is. The camera glides across a craftsman's workbench of handmade dollhouses until a miniature teenage bedroom dissolves, seamlessly, into the real room where Peter sleeps, and from that first cut the rule of the whole movie is set: there is no safe distance, no outside vantage from which to watch. You are inside the dollhouse. The Graham house is rustic, two-story, snowbound, isolated, and identical to the model on Annie's table, which means the wide shot of the real home and the close-up of the carved figurine carry exactly the same temperature. The light is cold and even, household and clinical, the kind of daylight that flattens grief into chore. Rooms are tidy. The dread does not come from shadow. It comes from order, from a triangle violently carved into the floorboards of the grandmother's stripped room that Annie treats as if it had always been there. The pace is deliberate and downward. Scenes hold past the point of comfort, then hold longer. A funeral whippoorwill flaps out of the rafters and fixes its gaze on Annie mid-eulogy while, below, an old woman covertly streaks oil across the corpse's lips, and the film simply lets both things be true without flinching toward explanation. The structural shock of the picture, the highway, arrives without score and without mercy: Peter swerves around a deer carcass at eighty, Charlie's head goes out the window for air, and a telephone pole takes it clean off. He does not look back. He turns the mirror away and drives home with the body. The morning after, Annie's cheerful goodbye in the driveway curdles into a single offscreen scream, and the film never recovers its breath, nor wants to. What a viewer carries out a week later is not a jump but a feeling of being arranged. The poltergeist beats are quiet and tactile: a paint bottle tips itself over near Annie's hand, a candle re-lights, an upturned glass slides across the dining table while Annie's voice goes out of her and Charlie's comes back, blind and accusing. The horror is administrative. Someone built this. The miniatures keep editing themselves to match a fate already decided, until Steve finds a headless figurine in Peter's clothes and a bloodied Annie kneeling in the model attic, prophecy delivered in balsa and paint. The Greek-tragedy lesson under a chalkboard reading Escaping Fate is not a wink; it is the operating instruction. Annie's confession circle revolves around one held word, blamed. Steve's whole worldview collapses into one flat sentence about having no control over anything, the ceiling could fall and who would they blame. Hold these images and you have the film: a sigil necklace fingered compulsively in a parked car, a shoebox of decomposing animal heads buzzing with flies in a freezing treehouse, ants crawling over a severed head on a roadside, a Post-it that just says KEEP WORKING above unfinished miniatures, a single window glowing in a moonlit house that looks exactly like a model of itself. The last shot is the first shot's promise kept: the real house composited down into its own dollhouse, the camera finally allowed outside, far too late.

Tonal Descriptors

01clinical dread02airless03funereal04meticulous05inherited06doll-house uncanny07slow-burn08grief-sick09ritualistic10helpless11arranged

Reference Points

Diane Arbus portraiture

the unflinching frontal stare at the off-kilter and the grieving, faces held too long until ordinary people look like specimens.

Gregor Schneider's Haus u r

a domestic interior rebuilt as a trap, rooms that look normal but are secretly engineered, for the house-as-mechanism feeling.

Stanley Kubrick's symmetrical, dollhouse framing

centered, doll-eye compositions and slow gliding moves that make a home feel like a model someone is looking down into.

Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son

the family as the site of devouring inheritance, parental love and annihilation in one image, for the maternal-horror register.

Practical-miniature craft of model-makers

real handmade dollhouse detail at macro scale, so the dissolves between model and world are seamless and the tactility is genuine, never CGI-smooth.

The flat institutional light of a hospice or funeral home

even, sourceless, unglamorous interior light that denies the audience the relief of expressive shadow.

Music & Sound

The score should refuse melody almost entirely. This is a film of room tone and infestation, and its sonic identity is dissonant texture rather than theme: held strings that never resolve, low brass swells that read as pressure rather than music, and long stretches where the most important sound is a fly. The buzzing is structural. It escalates across the picture as the hidden attic corpse decays, from a single insect on Annie's face to a horde released when she pulls the hatch rope, and the sound team should treat that infestation as a slow crescendo the audience registers before the characters do. Against that, Charlie's tongue-click is the film's leitmotif, a small dry tic that migrates from a living girl to an empty back seat at a red light to the corner of Peter's dark bedroom, each repetition colder than the last. Let silence carry the catastrophe. The highway decapitation should play with almost nothing scored, only road noise, the swerve, the impact, the door-alarm dinging as the car idles into the driveway with Peter walking stiffly inside. Save the swells for the supernatural set-pieces: the dining-table seance where Annie cries out in Charlie's voice, blind, "Why are you scaring me?!" before Steve breaks the trance with a glass of water; the climactic combustion where the only musical idea allowed is faint, repetitive, war-drum percussion thumping from the unseen drum circle in the woods. That subdued drumming is the cult's sound, and it should arrive like a heartbeat the house cannot stop. Elsewhere, give weight to physical objects: the scratch of a pencil drawing itself down the hall, the clang of snapped piano wire, the flat reality of a paint bottle tipping over with no hand near it. Where music does score, keep it acoustic, abraded, and unresolved, never gothic-organ camp. The funeral organ is the one diegetic cue, and it should sound ordinary, a real chapel, which makes the lip-oiling ritual underneath it more obscene. The closing coronation, worshippers crying out the single word "Hail!", wants ritual percussion and the human voice, no synthetic sweetening.

Soundtrack References

There Will Be Blood · 2007

Jonny Greenwood

for the abrasive, sawing string clusters that function as dread-pressure rather than melody, scoring inevitability instead of emotion.

Under the Skin · 2013

Mica Levi

for the queasy, detuned strings and inhuman textures that make a quiet room feel predatory.

The Witch · 2015

Mark Korven

for the bowed nyckelharpa, atonal choral shrieks, and folk-occult restraint that build a ritual world without a single comforting note.

Sinister · 2012

Christopher Young

for the buried, processed drones and sudden ritual-percussion stings that weaponize household quiet.

Color Palette

Bone Daylight#D8D6CE

the flat, even household light of the workshop and the funeral chapel, where grief is lit like a chore and nothing hides in shadow.

Snowfield Grey#AEB4B8

the muted blue-grey of the snowbound Graham house and the woods where Charlie sleepwalks coatless toward a ring of torches.

Miniature Balsa#C49A6C

the warm wood and paint of the dollhouse miniatures and the treehouse, the craftsman's tone that turns sinister once the models start editing themselves.

Candle Sodium#E3A33B

the amber of the two heaters glowing in the treehouse and the black-candle flame of the seances, the only warmth and never a safe one.

Combustion Red#8E1B14

the dry blood of the Sigil painted on the attic ceiling, the red cloaks of the worshippers, and Steve igniting into a screaming ball of flame.

Similar Moods

The Witch · 2015

the same slow-tightening folk-occult dread, a family destroyed from inside by an inheritance it half-invited, set against cold rural isolation.

Rosemary's Baby · 1968

the polite, smiling conspiracy of older neighbors closing around a vulnerable person, horror delivered as warmth and tea.

Don't Look Now · 1973

grief as the engine of the supernatural, a couple unraveling after a child's death while the camera withholds and rhymes images toward a fated end.

The Vanishing · 1988

the chilly, methodical sense of a predetermined outcome, dread that comes from order and inevitability rather than shock.

Scenes

1INT

MORNING

pp. 1-1

WORKSHOP

uncanny calm

The camera glides across meticulous handmade dollhouses until a miniature teenage bedroom dissolves into the real room where Peter sleeps, the model and the world becoming indistinguishable.

Characters: STEVE; PETER
Props: dollhouses; miniature craftsman home; black suit and tie
Wardrobe: Steve in a black suit
VFX/Stunts: Seamless miniature-to-live-action transition
Notes: Opening shot establishes the dollhouse motif; the house seen is identical to a miniature. Max the dog introduced.
Camera: Slow lateral dolly across the miniatures, pushing in until model dissolves into the real room
Lighting: Soft cool morning light, single window source, flat and even
Mood: Uncanny calm

2EXT

pp. 2-2

GRAHAM HOUSE - SAME TIME

grief-numbed

A wide reveals the snow-blanketed house identical to the miniature, the camera booming down past a looming treehouse to find Annie hollowed out in the parked car.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Props: sigil necklace; family car
Wardrobe: Annie in all black; Annie wearing a delicate necklace bearing an ornate sigil
Notes: House revealed identical to the opening miniature. Treehouse introduced fifteen feet up an oak. Annie compulsively fingers the sigil necklace.
Camera: High wide crane booming down past the treehouse to settle on the car
Lighting: Flat overcast daylight, snow-bounced and shadowless
Mood: Grief-numbed

3EXT

pp. 2-2

TREEHOUSE - SAME TIME

concealment

Steve finds Charlie asleep on the freezing treehouse floor, who lunges to snap shut a secret shoebox the instant she wakes.

Characters: STEVE; CHARLIE
Props: drawing pad; shoebox
Wardrobe: Charlie in a parka and pajama bottoms
Notes: Charlie's protective secrecy over the shoebox planted early.
Camera: Medium two-shot, low angle from the hatch toward the girl
Lighting: Cold raking daylight through plank gaps
Mood: Concealment

4INT

MORNING

pp. 2-5

FUNERAL HOME - CHAPEL

unsettled mourning

A whippoorwill flaps out of the rafters and fixes its gaze on Annie mid-eulogy, while below an old woman covertly streaks oil across the corpse's lips.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; CHARLIE; PETER; LARGE WOMAN; MIDDLE-AGED BLONDE MAN
Props: open casket; blown-up photo of Ellen Leigh; eulogy loose-leaf page; sigil necklace on corpse; drawing pad; bottle of oil
Wardrobe: Charlie in an oversized black dress over her pajama bottoms; Ellen's corpse wearing a necklace with a delicate sigil ornament
VFX/Stunts: Trained whippoorwill flying into chapel
Notes: Ellen Leigh's funeral. The smiling blonde man (later a Paimon cultist) stares at Charlie. The lip-oiling ritual is the first occult clue. Charlie's tongue-click tic established.
Camera: Wide chapel master with the bird's eyeline cutting down to Annie
Lighting: Dim amber chapel light, warm pools over the casket
Mood: Unsettled mourning

5INT

pp. 5-6

CAR (MOVING) - LATE AFTERNOON

uneasy return

Driving past a gathering of deer, Annie confesses the funeral-home bird felt like her mother while Charlie tenses and clicks her tongue over a chocolate bar.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER; CHARLIE
Props: chocolate bar
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Nut-allergy setup with the chocolate bar. Peter's resentment of Annie shown. Deer motif begins.
Camera: Tight interior coverage, over-shoulder favoring the mother, deer visible past the glass
Lighting: Fading blue dusk through windows, low warm dash fill
Mood: Uneasy return

6INT

EVENING

pp. 6-6

GRAHAM HOUSE - FOYER

intrusion

The family enters a dark, seemingly vacant house to the sound of scurrying feet, and Steve notices mysterious dried footprints across the foyer.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER; CHARLIE
Props: boots
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Off-screen scurrying feet and unexplained footprints suggest an unseen presence in the house.
Camera: Wide foyer shot, low angle following the footprint trail away from the family
Lighting: Low ambient dusk, single warm spill from the open door
Mood: Intrusion

7INT

EVENING

pp. 6-8

WORKSHOP

domestic strain

Annie paints a doctor figurine into a miniature hospice tableau of her dying mother while Steve quietly sets a pill beside her, which she downs without a word.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: miniature hospice; small doctor figurine; magnifying eye-glasses; pill; glass of water; laptop; exhibition poster PDF; moving boxes marked Mom's Things
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Gallery exhibition deadline established (six and a half months). 'Mom's Things' boxes introduced. Annie's medicated routine shown.
Camera: Close over-shoulder on the miniature, husband entering soft in background
Lighting: Tight warm work-lamp pool, surrounding dimness
Mood: Domestic strain

8INT

NIGHT

pp. 8-9

PETER'S BEDROOM

wary distance

After tender goodnights, the loaded tension between Annie and Peter lingers, and once she's gone Peter climbs out to lock his door.

Characters: PETER; STEVE; ANNIE
Props: guitar; muted TV; paintbrush; miniature prop
Wardrobe: Annie wearing magnifying eye-glasses
Notes: Mother-son tension; Peter locks his door.
Camera: Static medium, doorway in deep focus, boy foreground
Lighting: Cool TV flicker and weak lamp, deep shadow
Mood: Wary distance

9INT

NIGHT

pp. 9-11

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM

maternal dread

Among Charlie's handmade manikins, Annie spots a word like 'Satony' carved into the wall behind the bed as Charlie asks who will take care of her when Annie dies.

Characters: ANNIE; CHARLIE
Props: handmade human manikins; small statues; drawing pad; casket caricature drawing
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Carved word 'Satony' planted (later a Paimon invocation). Charlie says grandma wanted her to be a boy. Charlie's fear of abandonment.
Camera: Medium two-shot on the bed, carved wall just over Annie's shoulder
Lighting: Single warm bedside lamp, heavy surrounding shadow
Mood: Maternal dread

10INT

NIGHT

pp. 11-11

WORKSHOP

apparition

Annie flicks off the light and freezes as her dead mother stands smiling motionless in a dark corner, vanishing the instant the light snaps back on.

Characters: ANNIE; ELLEN
Props: box of bottled oils and herbs; Memories photo album; Notes on Spiritualism hardback; miniature of Annie breastfeeding
Wardrobe: Ellen wearing the same outfit as the funeral
VFX/Stunts: Apparition appearance and disappearance of Ellen
Notes: First clear apparition of Ellen. The breastfeeding-rivalry miniature foreshadows the grandmother's claim on the children.
Camera: Wide static, deep corner held in shadow, mother small in foreground
Lighting: Near-black, faint hallway spill, apparition self-pale
Mood: Apparition

11INT

pp. 11-12

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - MINUTES LATER

withheld fear

Annie nearly tells Steve she scared herself in the workshop, then swallows it and turns off the lamp into a held, lingering kiss.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: bedside lamp
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie keeps the apparition secret from Steve.
Camera: Tight two-shot on the pillow, lamp at frame edge
Lighting: Warm bedside lamp fading to moonlit blue
Mood: Withheld fear

12INT

pp. 12-13

HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM - NEXT MORNING

morbid fixation

A pigeon slams into the classroom window and snaps its neck, and amid the children's excitement Charlie's eyes coldly fix on the scissors on the teacher's desk.

Characters: CHARLIE; TEACHER
Props: upside-down quiz; small manikin made of found objects; scissors
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Pigeon striking window and breaking its neck
Notes: Charlie's special-needs class. Pigeon death and the scissors she will steal set up the next decapitation motif.
Camera: Over-shoulder past the girl toward the teacher's desk and scissors
Lighting: Flat overhead fluorescent, cool and even
Mood: Morbid fixation

13INT

DAY

pp. 13-15

HIGH SCHOOL CLASSROOM

thematic foreshadow

Under a chalkboard reading 'Escaping Fate,' Mr. Davies argues that the oracle left Heracles no choice, while Peter, oblivious, stares longingly at Bridget.

Characters: MR. DAVIES; PETER; BRIDGET; SMART-ASS STUDENT; STUDENT #2; STUDENT #3
Props: copy of The Women of Trachis; smartphone
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Greek-tragedy classroom lesson on inevitability and lack of agency directly mirrors the film's fatalism. Bridget introduced as Peter's crush.
Camera: Wide classroom, slow push toward Peter's eyeline to Bridget
Lighting: Soft window daylight, warm and naturalistic
Mood: Thematic foreshadow

14EXT

DAY

pp. 15-16

SCHOOLYARD

ritual instinct

Charlie calmly snips off the dead pigeon's head with the stolen scissors, pockets it, then locks eyes with a sentimental old woman watching from beyond the fence.

Characters: CHARLIE; PETER; OLDER WOMAN
Props: dead pigeon; scissors; chocolate bar
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Pigeon decapitation
Notes: Charlie begins collecting severed heads. A watching old woman (cult member) gazes at her. Peter's 'No nuts, Charlie' refrain.
Camera: Low medium on the girl, watching woman soft in deep background past the fence
Lighting: Flat cold daylight, overcast
Mood: Ritual instinct

15INT

AFTERNOON

pp. 16-16

PSYCHIATRIST'S OFFICE

contained frustration

Steve absorbs an agitated patient's circular despair with superhuman, stifled patience in his sparse leather-chaired office.

Characters: STEVE; PATIENT
Props: notepad; leather chair
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Establishes Steve as a working psychiatrist.
Camera: Static wide two-shot, symmetrical across the office
Lighting: Soft natural afternoon light, low contrast
Mood: Contained frustration

16INT

DAY

pp. 16-16

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP

creeping obsession

Annie paints a tiny laptop displaying 'Discernment of Presumed Apparitions' inside her miniature, art and obsession folding into one another.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: laptop; miniature laptop; Graham house model
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie researches apparitions and reproduces her own anxiety in miniature.
Camera: Macro on the miniature laptop, artist soft behind
Lighting: Soft directional daylight on the model
Mood: Creeping obsession

17INT

DAY

pp. 16-17

ANNIE'S MOTHER'S BEDROOM

encroaching wrongness

Annie freezes in the doorway of her mother's stripped room, eyeing a large triangle violently carved into the floorboards.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: stripped bed; bookshelf; framed family photos; carved triangle in floorboards
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The carved triangle (pointing northwest) is a recurring Paimon symbol. Annie treats it as pre-existing.
Camera: Wide from the doorway, triangle on the floor in lower frame
Lighting: Cold flat window daylight, dust-hazed
Mood: Encroaching wrongness

18INT

pp. 17-17

TV ROOM - MOMENTS LATER

suspicion

Annie interrogates the family about who opened the grandmother's room, and Peter coldly insists she'll never find him in there.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER; CHARLIE
Props: TV; coat
Wardrobe: Steve still wearing his coat
Notes: Nobody admits opening the locked room, deepening the sense of unseen intrusion.
Camera: Medium wide, mother standing over the seated group
Lighting: Warm lamp plus cool TV flicker
Mood: Suspicion

19INT

EVENING

pp. 17-19

HALLWAY

secret-keeping

Steve locks the grandmother's door by key as a cemetery call about a 'desecrated' grave forces him to lie, and Annie pulls on a coat to flee the house.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER
Props: door key; phone; coat
Wardrobe: Annie wearing a coat
Notes: Cemetery reports the grave desecrated a week after burial; Steve hides it. Annie's cover story of 'going to a movie' begins.
Camera: Medium on the father at the door, wife pulling on coat behind
Lighting: Low warm hallway sconce, deep shadow
Mood: Secret-keeping

20INT

EVENING

pp. 19-20

TREEHOUSE

hidden compulsion

Charlie lays the fresh pigeon head into a shoebox already holding three other decomposing animal heads, flies buzzing in the cold.

Characters: CHARLIE; ANNIE
Props: shoebox; severed pigeon head; severed rabbit head; severed rat head; severed squirrel head
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Severed animal heads in decay with practical flies
Notes: Reveals Charlie's collection of severed heads (later assembled into the cult diorama).
Camera: High angle looking down into the shoebox over the girl's hands
Lighting: Cold failing dusk through plank gaps
Mood: Hidden compulsion

21INT

NIGHT

pp. 20-20

CAR (MOVING)

dread of disclosure

Annie idles into a Catholic-school lot, kills the engine, and braces herself in silence before facing the grief group.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie's secret destination is the grief support group, not a movie.
Camera: Static interior profile, lot lights beyond the glass
Lighting: Cold blue night with a distant sodium spill
Mood: Dread of disclosure

22INT

NIGHT

pp. 20-23

CATHOLIC SCHOOL GYMNASIUM

raw confession

Forced to speak in the circle of chairs, Annie unspools her family's history of suicide and mental illness, ending on the haunting word 'blamed.'

Characters: ANNIE; LEADER; YOUNG MAN; MEXICAN WOMAN
Props: easel sign reading Losing A Loved One; circle of chairs
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Crucial exposition: father starved himself, brother hanged himself in mom's bedroom blaming her for 'putting people inside him,' Annie's mother had D.I.D. Annie hints at her sleepwalking incident.
Camera: Slow push into the circle toward Annie, chairs ringing the frame
Lighting: Flat cold gymnasium fluorescent
Mood: Raw confession

23INT

NIGHT

pp. 23-23

HALLWAY

estrangement

A depleted Annie crests the stairs just as Peter's door eases quietly shut in the foreground.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Brief transitional beat of mother and son avoiding each other.
Camera: Deep-focus hallway, closing door foreground, mother distant
Lighting: Low blue night, thin warm light leak from the door
Mood: Estrangement

24INT

pp. 23-23

PETER'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

teenage longing

Peter scrolls Bridget's Facebook photos behind a 'Popular Career Interests' tab, then takes a pipe hit at the window as a party invite text lands.

Characters: PETER
Props: laptop; water pipe; marijuana; smartphone
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Party at Aaron's house set up via Brendan's text. Peter's weed established.
Camera: Medium over-shoulder on the laptop, window beyond
Lighting: Cold screen-blue, faint warm window spill
Mood: Teenage longing

25EXT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 23-23

GRAHAM HOUSE

watched

A wide of the house with an anonymous shoulder in the foreground as pot smoke and a cough drift from Peter's window.

Characters: PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The foreground shoulder implies an unseen watcher observing the house.
Camera: Wide static, anonymous shoulder hard foreground left, house beyond
Lighting: Cold moonlit blue, single warm window
Mood: Watched

26INT

pp. 23-24

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM - THE NEXT DAY

summoned

A sudden glint of light sweeps Charlie's room; her clicking stops and she rises to stare fixedly out the snowy window at something unseen.

Characters: CHARLIE
Props: small human manikin; severed pigeon head; drawing pad; still life of the pigeon head; bare diorama stage; M&Ms
Wardrobe: Charlie in her pajamas
VFX/Stunts: Glint of light flashing across the room
Notes: The recurring 'streak of light' (Paimon's presence) first sweeps Charlie's room. The unfinished diorama is the future cult altar.
Camera: Medium from behind, girl framed in the bright window
Lighting: Cold snow-bounced daylight, a sudden glinting streak
Mood: Summoned

27INT

pp. 24-24

KITCHEN - SAME TIME

mounting pressure

Annie reads an email from the Asher Gallery asking for progress photos and is suddenly overwhelmed by the looming deadline.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: smartphone; gallery email
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Gallery deadline pressure builds.
Camera: Medium, phone screen and face in shared focus
Lighting: Bright even kitchen daylight
Mood: Mounting pressure

28EXT

pp. 24-24

WOODS - MINUTES LATER

sleepwalking pull

Coatless and trance-like, Charlie slogs through snow following a fresh trail of mysterious footprints, a fire crackling somewhere ahead.

Characters: CHARLIE
Props: footprints in snow
Wardrobe: Charlie in regular shoes, no coat, dressed in pajamas
VFX/Stunts: Extreme high-angle / bird's-eye photography
Notes: Charlie is lured into the woods by an unseen force following footprints of unknown source. Max follows.
Camera: Extreme high-angle bird's-eye looking straight down
Lighting: Flat cold daylight on snow, distant warm fire-glow ahead
Mood: Sleepwalking pull

29INT

pp. 24-26

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP - SAME TIME

reluctant permission

Distracted and anxious at her miniatures, Annie negotiates Peter's party request and orders him to take his sister along.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Props: miniature; paintbrush
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie insists Peter bring Charlie to the party - the fatal decision she will later blame herself for.
Camera: Medium two-shot, artist at the bench, son in the doorway
Lighting: Warm work-lamp on the models, cooler hall behind
Mood: Reluctant permission

30EXT

pp. 25-26

HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER

absence

Peter finds Charlie's room empty and calls her name into the silent hall.

Characters: PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Slug is labeled EXT. HALLWAY but plays inside the upstairs hall; grouped to graham house.
Camera: Medium from the hall, empty room framed in the doorway
Lighting: Cool flat daylight
Mood: Absence

31INT

pp. 26-26

WORKSHOP - MOMENTS LATER

alarm

Peter reports Charlie isn't in the house and a frustrated Annie throws down her paintbrush insisting she must be.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: paintbrush
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium, mother at bench reacting toward the doorway
Lighting: Flat daylight, work-lamp fill
Mood: Alarm

32EXT

pp. 26-27

WOODS - SAME TIME

occult glimpse

In the distance Charlie sees a ring of burning torches around an inanimate white-robed body tied to a pole, as Annie arrives oblivious and drags her home.

Characters: CHARLIE; ANNIE
Props: ring of burning torches; old woman's body tied to a pole; fine white silk robe
Wardrobe: The tied body dressed in fine white silk, resembling Ellen Leigh
VFX/Stunts: Practical fire torches; Ritual body rig on pole
Notes: First glimpse of the cult ritual - a white-robed corpse resembling the grandmother, which Annie never sees. Charlie says 'I want grandma.'
Camera: Wide, girl foreground, torch-ring tiny in deep background
Lighting: Cold daylight, distant warm torch-glow
Mood: Occult glimpse

33INT

pp. 27-28

FOYER - MOMENTS LATER

coerced

Annie stamps snow off her boots and forces a reluctant Charlie to go to the party with Peter, whose welcoming nod hides cold, uninviting eyes.

Characters: ANNIE; CHARLIE; PETER
Props: snow boots
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie sends Charlie to the party against the girl's wishes; the no-drinking conversation.
Camera: Medium three-shot in the foyer
Lighting: Cool door-light, warm interior fill
Mood: Coerced

34EXT

EVENING

pp. 28-28

HIGHWAY

foreboding transit

A full moon glows pale-blue over a lonely highway as the green family car flashes past.

Characters: None
Props: green family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The 'green car' identified; full moon and lonely highway set the fatal route.
Camera: Wide static landscape, car small and crossing
Lighting: Cold dusk with pale full-moon backlight
Mood: Foreboding transit

35INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 28-28

GRAHAM FAMILY CAR

ominous resentment

Peter's eyes narrow resentfully at clicking Charlie in the mirror as the car passes a telephone pole carved with a small hidden sigil.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Props: rear-view mirror; telephone pole with carved sigil
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The fatal telephone pole is planted with a carved sigil - the cult engineered the accident site.
Camera: Tight on the driver, mirror reflection of the sister in frame
Lighting: Low blue night with green dash glow
Mood: Ominous resentment

36EXT

NIGHT

pp. 28-29

PARTY HOUSE

reluctance

At the foot of a bustling party house, a suddenly nervous Charlie slows to a stop, begging to wait outside.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide on the entrance, siblings small at the steps
Lighting: Warm interior spill versus cold night
Mood: Reluctance

37INT

pp. 29-31

PARTY HOUSE - MOMENTS LATER

fateful abandonment

An extreme close-up of walnuts being brutalized on a chopping board cuts to Peter abandoning Charlie by promising the kitchen's chocolate cake.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE; AARON; BRIDGET
Props: cake; walnuts; chopping board; drawing pad; bag of marijuana; chocolate cake
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The nut-laden cake (foreshadowed by ECU of walnuts) is the allergen. Peter ditches Charlie to chase Bridget.
Camera: Macro on the walnuts, rack focus to Peter leaving Charlie
Lighting: Warm tungsten party light
Mood: Fateful abandonment

38INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 31-32

OTHER ROOM

awkward exposure

Bridget announces Peter has weed to two boys watching videos, and Peter immediately deflates at being outed.

Characters: BRIDGET; PETER; HISPANIC BOY; BLONDE BOY
Props: tablet
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium group, favoring Peter's deflating face
Lighting: Low warm room light plus tablet glow
Mood: Awkward exposure

39INT

pp. 32-32

KITCHEN - SAME TIME

innocent danger

Shy and magnetized to the chocolate cake, Charlie accepts a slice studded with visible nuts without meeting the girl's eyes.

Characters: CHARLIE
Props: chocolate cake
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Charlie unknowingly eats the nut-laden cake - the trigger of her allergic reaction.
Camera: Close on the slice passing to the girl, eyes down
Lighting: Warm overhead kitchen light
Mood: Innocent danger

40INT

pp. 32-33

OTHER ROOM - SAME TIME

distraction

Peter packs a bong as Annie's call goes ignored into his pocket, a missed-voicemail light beginning to blink.

Characters: PETER; BRIDGET; HISPANIC BOY
Props: large bong; marijuana; cell phone
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie's voicemail (later heard by Peter in the bathroom) goes unanswered here.
Camera: Medium, phone screen prominent in foreground
Lighting: Low warm party haze
Mood: Distraction

41INT

pp. 33-33

LIVING ROOM - SAME TIME

first symptom

Lips smeared with chocolate, Charlie swallows again and again, looking faintly concerned as she draws herself a cup of water.

Characters: CHARLIE
Props: empty plate; red cups
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Charlie's allergic reaction begins.
Camera: Medium on the girl, party softened around her
Lighting: Warm tungsten party light
Mood: First symptom

42INT

NIGHT

pp. 33-33

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP

looming menace

Annie plants a ghostly figurine of her mother looming outside the open master-bedroom door of the dollhouse where she and Steve sleep.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: Graham house miniature; figurine of ghostly old woman in bathrobe
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The miniatures mirror the haunting in real time.
Camera: Macro into the dollhouse bedroom, looming figurine at the door
Lighting: Tight warm work-lamp, surrounding black
Mood: Looming menace

43INT

NIGHT

pp. 33-34

PARTY HOUSE - LIVING ROOM

swelling panic

Cheeks pink and inflamed, Charlie keeps assembling her manikin on the couch and waves off a concerned boy as she visibly worsens.

Characters: CHARLIE; CONCERNED BOY
Props: small manikin
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Allergic-reaction facial swelling/inflammation makeup
Notes: Charlie's reaction visibly intensifying.
Camera: Medium on the girl and the worried boy
Lighting: Warm party tungsten
Mood: Swelling panic

44INT

pp. 34-35

OTHER ROOM - MOMENTS LATER

horror dawning

Mid-bong-hit, Peter turns to a terrified Charlie who chokes out that her tongue is getting bigger.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Props: bong
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The crisis ignites: 'My tongue is getting bigger.' Hard cut out.
Camera: Fast medium between brother and sister
Lighting: Low warm haze, hard shadow
Mood: Horror dawning

45EXT

NIGHT

pp. 35-35

CAR

frantic rescue

A distraught Peter shoves a red-faced, suffocating Charlie into the back seat and bolts for the driver's side.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Props: family car
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Anaphylaxis facial makeup
Notes: None
Camera: Wide handheld, boy moving fast around the car
Lighting: Cold night with hard white spill
Mood: Frantic rescue

46INT

NIGHT

pp. 35-36

CAR (MOVING)

catastrophe

As Peter swerves around a deer carcass at 80 mph, Charlie's head, thrust out the window for air, collides with a telephone pole and is ripped clean off.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Props: family car; deer carcass; telephone pole; voicemail-waiting phone
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: High-speed driving stunt; Deer-carcass road dressing; Decapitation gag - Charlie's head ripped off against telephone pole
Notes: The film's central tragedy. Peter does not look back, turns the mirror away, and drives home with the headless torso - mirroring Annie's later denial behavior.
Camera: Tight interior, whip toward the open window and onrushing pole
Lighting: Cold night, harsh headlight bounce
Mood: Catastrophe

47EXT

NIGHT

pp. 36-36

GRAHAM HOUSE

dissociation

The car idles into the driveway with its door-alarm dinging; Peter steps out as if in a dream and walks stiffly into the house.

Characters: PETER
Props: family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Peter leaves Charlie's body in the car.
Camera: Wide static, car and house, boy small and stiff
Lighting: Cold night, car headlights raking the snow
Mood: Dissociation

48INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 36-36

HALLWAY

numb retreat

Peter stalks woodenly past his sleeping parents and climbs into bed, leaving his door open.

Characters: PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Slow track following the boy down the hall to bed
Lighting: Very low blue night, thin moonlight
Mood: Numb retreat

49INT

pp. 36-37

BEDROOM - THE NEXT MORNING

discovery horror

Peter lies wide-eyed as Annie's cheerful goodbye outside dissolves into a shrill, inhuman scream when she discovers the body.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE; STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie discovers Charlie's headless body in the car; the scream is heard offscreen. Peter's POV.
Camera: Static close on the boy's face, sound off-screen
Lighting: Pale cold morning light
Mood: Discovery horror

50EXT

MORNING

pp. 37-37

HIGHWAY

grisly aftermath

Charlie's severed head rests roadside, nose smashed, one eye milky, completely blanketed in crawling ants.

Characters: None
Props: Charlie's severed head; ants
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Severed head prosthetic; Practical ants infestation
Notes: Ants on the head establish the ant motif that recurs in Annie's nightmare.
Camera: Tight static on the roadside head, ants in focus
Lighting: Flat grey overcast morning
Mood: Grisly aftermath

51INT

NIGHT

pp. 37-37

GRAHAM HALLWAY

shattering grief

A storm rages as Annie wails 'I just wanna die' through a cracked bedroom door while Peter stands paralyzed on the stairs, listening.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Props: pill
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Storm outside. Annie's anguish; Peter overhears her cry 'Charlie!'
Camera: Wide stairwell, son on the stairs, lit door above
Lighting: Cold storm-blue, intermittent lightning
Mood: Shattering grief

52EXT

DAY

pp. 37-37

CEMETERY

burial descent

As Charlie's coffin sinks into the earth, the camera follows it down through dirt and earthworms until everything is swallowed in black.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER; STEVE
Props: coffin
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Camera tracking down into the grave through soil
Notes: Charlie's funeral; the descending-into-earth shot.
Camera: Vertical descent following the coffin down into the grave
Lighting: Flat grey overcast above, blackness below
Mood: Burial descent

53INT

pp. 38-38

HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - LATE AFTERNOON

numb mourning

At the wake, everything glossed as if seen through grief-fogged glass, Steve absently accepts condolences in a daze.

Characters: STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The wake.
Camera: Slow drifting medium on Steve, mourners soft around
Lighting: Soft diffused dusk, gauzy and low-contrast
Mood: Numb mourning

54INT

pp. 38-38

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

withdrawal

Annie lies facing the wall, her back to us, absent from her own daughter's wake.

Characters: ANNIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Static wide from the doorway, her back to camera
Lighting: Dim cool dusk through curtains
Mood: Withdrawal

55INT

pp. 38-38

LIBRARY - SAME TIME

self-loathing

Peter hides in the library, watching the wake through textured glass with an almost deranged look, until a man stumbles in on him.

Characters: PETER; MAN
Props: cell phone; textured glass door
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Peter battered by guilt and trauma.
Camera: Medium on the boy at the glass, intruder entering behind
Lighting: Low warm gloom, diffused light through textured glass
Mood: Self-loathing

56INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 38-39

BATHROOM

suppressed panic

Peter locks himself in the bathroom and turns on the sink to mask his panic with white noise.

Characters: PETER
Props: sink
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Tight on the boy over the sink, water running
Lighting: Dim cool overhead, hard tile reflections
Mood: Suppressed panic

57INT

EVENING

pp. 39-39

LIVING ROOM

isolation

The last mourners filter out and Steve stands lost in the middle of the empty room.

Characters: STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide, father small and central in the emptying room
Lighting: Fading warm dusk, low and soft
Mood: Isolation

58INT

pp. 39-39

HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER

quiet worry

Steve knocks gently on the locked bathroom door, the running sink faint behind it, and gets no answer.

Characters: STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium on the father at the door
Lighting: Low warm hall sconce
Mood: Quiet worry

59INT

pp. 39-39

BATHROOM - SAME TIME

torment

On the tub's edge, Peter replays Annie's loving voicemail from the night Charlie died, a wound he keeps reopening.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: cell phone; voicemail
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie's saved voicemail ('have a good time at the BBQ') heard - the lie about a BBQ surfaces.
Camera: Close on the boy on the tub edge, phone to ear
Lighting: Dim cool overhead, soft tile glow
Mood: Torment

60INT

pp. 39-39

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATER

vanishing

Steve stops at the bedroom door to find Annie gone, sheets dragged halfway off the mattress.

Characters: STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide from the doorway, empty bed centered
Lighting: Dim cool dusk
Mood: Vanishing

61INT

pp. 39-40

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATER

grief release

Steve flips through Charlie's drawing pad, past severed-animal-head sketches to the crowned pigeon head, then a blank page, and the floodgates open.

Characters: STEVE
Props: drawing pad; drawings of severed animal heads; drawing of pigeon head with crown
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The crowned pigeon head drawing prefigures the cult's crowned-figure iconography. Steve finally weeps.
Camera: Over-shoulder on the pad, then cut closer to his crumbling face
Lighting: Low warm dusk, soft
Mood: Grief release

62INT

NIGHT

pp. 40-40

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM

avoidance

Framed by the doorway, Peter walks past Charlie's empty snowlit room, determinedly refusing to look in.

Characters: PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Static, room framed through the doorway, boy crossing the hall
Lighting: Cold blue snow-light in the empty room
Mood: Avoidance

63INT

NIGHT

pp. 40-40

PETER'S BEDROOM

restless dread

Unable to sleep, Peter stares out at the looming treehouse, then gathers his blanket and pillow at 1:32 AM and leaves the room.

Characters: PETER
Props: alarm clock; blanket; pillow
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Treehouse fixation; Peter heads out to sleep there.
Camera: Medium, boy at the window, treehouse beyond
Lighting: Cold blue night, faint clock-face glow
Mood: Restless dread

64EXT

pp. 40-41

GRAHAM HOUSE - MOMENTS LATER

haunted approach

In parka and Elmer Fudd hat, Peter notes Charlie's fly-buzzing shoebox at the tree's base before scaling the treehouse.

Characters: PETER
Props: blanket; pillow; Charlie's shoebox; tree climbing handles
Wardrobe: Peter in parka and Elmer Fudd hat
VFX/Stunts: Tree-climbing
Notes: None
Camera: Low angle up the trunk, boy at the base by the shoebox
Lighting: Cold moonlit blue, deep shadow
Mood: Haunted approach

65INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 41-41

TREEHOUSE

startled flight

About to sleep, Peter senses someone and turns to find Annie bundled asleep in the corner, sending him fleeing and falling hard from the tree.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: blanket; pillow; wet climbing handles
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Fall from treehouse stunt
Notes: Slow dissolve transition out.
Camera: Medium, boy foreground reacting, mother revealed in the corner
Lighting: Cold blue moonlight through planks
Mood: Startled flight

66INT

DAY

pp. 41-41

CLASSROOM

intrusive guilt

The teacher's voice warps as if underwater while Peter flashes to the rear-view mirror and Charlie's blurred, headless body just out of frame.

Characters: PETER; BRIDGET
Props: rear-view mirror insert
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Peter's obsessive replaying of the accident. His eyes harden at Bridget.
Camera: Medium on Peter, surreal rear-view-mirror insert
Lighting: Flat daylight, distorted cool insert
Mood: Intrusive guilt

67EXT

DAY

pp. 41-41

GRAHAM HOUSE

paranoia

Annie goes pale pulling a 'Calling All Skeptics!' seance brochure from the mail, glancing around as if suddenly being watched.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: mail; public seance brochure
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The spiritual-medium Suzanne Marlowe brochure planted (the seance Joan later attends).
Camera: Medium on the woman at the mailbox or step
Lighting: Cold flat overcast daylight
Mood: Paranoia

68INT

DAY

pp. 41-42

WORKSHOP

depleted

Numb and exhausted at the hospice miniature, Annie hears the front door unlock and looks toward the noise.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: hospice miniature; Graham house miniature
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium at the bench, head turned toward off-screen sound
Lighting: Soft flat daylight
Mood: Depleted

69INT

pp. 42-42

FOYER - SAME TIME

homecoming

Steve calls for Annie as Max bounds up to greet him, tail wagging.

Characters: STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium, father in the doorway, dog leaping to him
Lighting: Bright warm door-light
Mood: Homecoming

70INT

pp. 42-42

WORKSHOP - SAME TIME

avoidance

Hearing Steve climb the stairs, Annie silently eases the workshop door shut to avoid him.

Characters: ANNIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Close on the hand and door, woman behind
Lighting: Soft flat daylight
Mood: Avoidance

71INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 42-42

HALLWAY

estrangement

Steve eases the door open to find Annie 'working' with headphones on, and smiles sadly before leaving her alone.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Props: headphones
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Over-shoulder past the husband to the wife at her bench
Lighting: Soft daylight, gentle contrast
Mood: Estrangement

72INT

pp. 42-42

KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER

concealed mistrust

Steve quietly dumps the seance brochure in the trash as Annie crosses the doorway unseen behind him.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Props: mail; seance brochure
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve disposes of the seance brochure, Annie watching unseen.
Camera: Medium on the husband at the trash, wife soft in deep background
Lighting: Bright even kitchen daylight
Mood: Concealed mistrust

73EXT

pp. 42-43

GRAHAM HOUSE - LATE AFTERNOON

maternal avoidance

Frozen in the parked car so Peter won't see her, Annie watches her son gather his nerve at the front door before she starts the ignition.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Props: blue family car; bicycle
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The green 'accident' car is gone; only the blue one remains. Annie hides from Peter.
Camera: Wide, son at the door, mother hidden in the car
Lighting: Cold fading dusk
Mood: Maternal avoidance

74EXT

EVENING

pp. 43-46

CATHOLIC HIGH SCHOOL GYMNASIUM

fateful meeting

About to leave the grief-group lot, Annie is flagged into her headlights by a merry older woman, Joan, who reveals her son and grandson drowned.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: family car; paper with phone number
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Joan introduced - the cult member who will manipulate Annie. She gives Annie her phone number.
Camera: Through the windshield onto Joan in the headlights
Lighting: Cold dusk, hard white headlight beams
Mood: Fateful meeting

75INT

NIGHT

pp. 46-46

FOYER

weary return

Annie lumbers in and pulls off her snow boots in the dark foyer.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: snow boots
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide low foyer, woman small and stooped
Lighting: Very low warm light, near-dark
Mood: Weary return

76INT

pp. 46-46

LIVING ROOM - MOMENTS LATER

lying coldness

Bathed in muted TV glow, Steve wakes to ask where Annie was and she flatly repeats her movie lie before going to bed.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: muted TV; armchair
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie maintains the 'at the movies' cover.
Camera: Medium two-shot, TV glow on both
Lighting: Cool muted TV flicker, otherwise dark
Mood: Lying coldness

77INT

NIGHT

pp. 46-47

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM

marital chill

Annie recoils from Steve's touch and rises with a blanket to sleep elsewhere, intimacy frozen solid.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: blanket
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie retreats to the treehouse to sleep.
Camera: Wide over the bed, the widening space between them
Lighting: Cold blue moonlight
Mood: Marital chill

78INT

NIGHT

pp. 47-47

TREEHOUSE

uncanny refuge

An ominous wide finds Annie asleep in Charlie's treehouse between two heaters burning bright orange.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: two large heaters
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Practical heater glow
Notes: None
Camera: Static ominous wide, mother centered between the heaters
Lighting: Twin orange heater-glow in near-blackness
Mood: Uncanny refuge

79INT

pp. 47-47

PETER'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

haunting onset

A clicking like Charlie's tongue startles Peter awake; he fixes on a hoodie that for an instant looks like a standing figure.

Characters: PETER
Props: hoodie sweatshirt
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The tongue-clicking haunting of Peter begins; the hoodie-as-figure setup pays off later.
Camera: Medium on the boy, hoodie-as-figure in the dark corner
Lighting: Cold low blue night, deep shadow
Mood: Haunting onset

80INT

pp. 47-47

WORKSHOP - THE NEXT DAY

unseen interference

As Annie scratches 'Satony' into the miniature wall, a paint bottle tips over on its own near her hand without her touching it.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: replica of Charlie's bedroom; paint bottle; post-it note; Joan's phone number; paper towels
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Self-tipping paint bottle (apparent telekinesis)
Notes: First overt poltergeist beat in the workshop. Joan's number resurfaces in the spilled paint.
Camera: Close on the hand and model, bottle tipping in frame
Lighting: Soft flat daylight
Mood: Unseen interference

81INT

DAY

pp. 47-48

HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY

peer pull

Three giggling stoners intercept Peter in the hall, Brendan miming a joint to invite him on a 'walk.'

Characters: PETER; BRENDAN
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium group in the hall
Lighting: Flat school fluorescent daylight
Mood: Peer pull

82EXT

DAY

pp. 48-49

HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER FIELD

trauma flashback

Under the bleachers, a reluctant hit triggers Peter into a panic attack echoing Charlie's death - 'My tongue is getting bigger' - as the oblivious stoners laugh.

Characters: PETER; BRENDAN; STONER #2; STONER #3
Props: pipe; weed
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Peter's panic attack mirrors Charlie's anaphylaxis, fusing his guilt with her death.
Camera: Medium low under the bleachers, slatted light bars
Lighting: Hard daylight slatted through the bleachers
Mood: Trauma flashback

83EXT

DAY

pp. 49-50

STREET

drawn in

Annie hunts an address scrawled on the back of Joan's phone-number paper, arriving at a large red-brick apartment building.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: paper with Joan's number and address
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide, woman small against the brick building
Lighting: Flat urban daylight
Mood: Drawn in

84INT

DAY

pp. 50-50

APARTMENT BUILDING - THIRD FLOOR HALLWAY

arrival

Annie knocks at apartment 316, looking down at a handmade 'JOANIE' welcome mat, before Joan opens the door delighted.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: hand-made welcome mat reading JOANIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The embroidered welcome mat - later revealed to match Annie's mother's craft - is the clue linking Joan to the family.
Camera: Medium at the door, mat in lower foreground
Lighting: Even warm hallway light
Mood: Arrival

85INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 50-50

JOAN'S APARTMENT

false warmth

In a cheerfully bright apartment, Annie notes the welcome mat resembles her mother's embroidery as Joan pours tea.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: tea kettle; welcome mat; tea cups
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie remarks her mother used to embroider mats just like Joan's.
Camera: Medium two-shot, mat visible in frame
Lighting: Warm bright apartment light
Mood: False warmth

86INT

pp. 50-53

JOAN'S APARTMENT - MINUTES LATER

intimate confession

Over tea, Annie and Joan trade the grisly details of their dead - Charlie's headless tarry body, Joan's fish-eaten son - finding morbid comfort, as Annie pulls a black herb from her mouth without noticing.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: tea; pill; black herb
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie recounts discovering Charlie's body and her own sleepwalking paint-thinner-and-matches incident. The black herb in her tea hints Joan is drugging her.
Camera: Intimate two-shot across the tea table
Lighting: Warm soft apartment light
Mood: Intimate confession

87INT

pp. 53-54

GRAHAM HOUSE - KITCHEN - MOMENTS LATER

withdrawal

Voice cracked from his bleacher panic attack, Peter brushes past a carrot-chopping Steve and hurries upstairs.

Characters: STEVE; PETER
Props: carrots
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium, father at the counter, son crossing behind
Lighting: Bright even kitchen daylight
Mood: Withdrawal

88INT

DAY

pp. 54-56

PETER'S ROOM

blocked grief

Steve gently offers Peter someone to talk to, but the boy deflects every question back, unable to confront his grief, then chills over.

Characters: PETER; STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve and Peter's stalled attempt at connection.
Camera: Medium two-shot, father and son not quite facing
Lighting: Soft daylight, low contrast
Mood: Blocked grief

89INT

NIGHT

pp. 55-56

WORKSHOP

marital rupture

Steve discovers Annie has sculpted a miniature of the accident - Charlie's decapitated head and Peter in the car - and erupts, calling it cruel and useless.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: miniature of the highway accident; figurine of Charlie's decapitated head; figurine of Peter in the car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie's compulsion to recreate the trauma in miniature ignites a fight.
Camera: Close on the miniature, then the husband's furious reaction
Lighting: Tight warm work-lamp, surrounding dark
Mood: Marital rupture

90INT

NIGHT

pp. 56-59

DINING ROOM

scalding confrontation

Provoked across the dinner table, Annie explodes at Peter that he can't take responsibility, and he counters with the devastating question of why his mother made Charlie go.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Props: pill; empty fourth chair
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The film's centerpiece dinner-table eruption. Peter: 'I didn't want to take her, and she didn't want to go. So why was she there?'
Camera: Wide table master, then push along the mother-son axis
Lighting: Warm pendant over the table, edges dark
Mood: Scalding confrontation

91INT

pp. 59-61

ANNIE AND STEVE'S BEDROOM - MINUTES LATER

blame and helplessness

Steve insists they have no control over anything, the ceiling could collapse and who would they blame, as Annie spirals into self-blame for sending Charlie out.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie admits she made Peter take Charlie. Steve's 'we have no control over anything' fatalism.
Camera: Medium two-shot on the bed
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Blame and helplessness

92INT

NIGHT

pp. 61-63

PETER'S BEDROOM

shared breakdown

Peter sobs that he should be dead because at least Charlie could make things, and a weeping Steve holds his head, both apologizing.

Characters: PETER; STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Peter confesses he didn't care about Charlie - 'That's how it happened.'
Camera: Close two-shot, father holding the son's head
Lighting: Cold blue with a faint warm lamp
Mood: Shared breakdown

93INT

pp. 63-63

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

remorse

Back to us, Annie whispers 'I'm sorry' and her shoulders begin to heave with sobs as Peter's muffled weeping bleeds through the walls.

Characters: ANNIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Fade to black ends the act.
Camera: Static on her back, shoulders shaking
Lighting: Cold dim blue night
Mood: Remorse

94INT

pp. 63-63

WORKSHOP - DAY - DAYS LATER

depleted resolve

Gaunt and lethargic, Annie stares at her unfinished miniatures beneath a Post-It commanding 'KEEP WORKING!'

Characters: ANNIE
Props: unfinished miniatures; post-it note reading KEEP WORKING
Wardrobe: Annie in an old T-shirt and pajama bottoms
Notes: Time has passed; Annie has lost weight.
Camera: Medium, woman at the bench, Post-it in frame
Lighting: Pale flat daylight, low energy
Mood: Depleted resolve

95INT

DAY

pp. 63-66

ART SUPPLY STORE

seductive hope

Annie runs into a beaming, transformed Joan in the chalk aisle, who confides that a spiritual medium conjured her dead grandson.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: shopping cart; chalk
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Joan baits Annie with the seance, planting the idea of contacting Charlie. Joan invites Annie over.
Camera: Medium two-shot in the aisle
Lighting: Bright flat retail fluorescent
Mood: Seductive hope

96INT

DAY

pp. 66-67

JOAN'S APARTMENT

ritual immersion

Joan blacks out the window, lights a black candle, and guides Annie's hand onto an upturned glass to summon 'Louie' in the dark.

Characters: ANNIE; JOAN
Props: sweetgrass; upturned drinking glass; blacked-out window; black candle
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Joan teaches Annie the glass-sliding seance technique - the trap that hands Annie the means to invite the spirit home.
Camera: Close on the two hands on the glass, candle behind
Lighting: Single black-candle flame, surrounding black
Mood: Ritual immersion

97INT

EVENING

pp. 70-70

CAR (MOVING)

creeping haunt

Stopped at a red light, Annie hears tongue-clicking in the empty back seat and turns, white-faced, to nothing.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The seance content (the chalkboard 'I LOV YU GRANMA', the brushed hair) plays out at the apartment in the prior pages; Annie drives home shaken and now hears Charlie's clicking.
Camera: From the back seat toward her turning face, empty seat foreground
Lighting: Cold dusk with a red traffic-light wash
Mood: Creeping haunt

98EXT

NIGHT

pp. 70-70

GRAHAM HOUSE

miniaturized dread

A wide of the moonlit house looks uncannily like one of Annie's miniatures, all lights dark save a single glowing window.

Characters: None
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: House-as-dollhouse motif reinforced.
Camera: Static symmetrical wide, the house centered
Lighting: Cold moonlit blue, one warm window
Mood: Miniaturized dread

99INT

pp. 70-70

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

secret scheming

Steve sleeps as Annie whispers intensely behind the lit bathroom door, asking 'Can it be anything? Like her clothes?'

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: phone
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie secretly consulting Joan about a 'link' object for a home seance.
Camera: Wide, sleeping husband foreground, lit bathroom door beyond
Lighting: Cold blue night, warm bathroom slice
Mood: Secret scheming

100INT

NIGHT

pp. 70-71

PETER'S BEDROOM

ominous purpose

Annie leans over the sleeping Peter, strangely hopeful, begging forgiveness before rousing him for something she's 'figured out.'

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie wakes Peter for the home seance.
Camera: High angle over the bed, mother leaning in
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Ominous purpose

101INT

pp. 71-72

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM - MOMENTS LATER

uneasy summons

Annie nudges Steve awake to join 'something together,' with Peter waiting nervously in the unlit hallway.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium, bed foreground, son dim in the doorway
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Uneasy summons

102INT

pp. 72-72

STAIRWAY - MOMENTS LATER

descent into ritual

Annie leads the wary pair down the dark hall toward the unlit dining room, Peter whispering 'Dad?'

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Wide following the three down the dark hall
Lighting: Very low blue night
Mood: Descent into ritual

103INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 72-80

DINING ROOM

possession terror

At the candlelit table Annie falls into a trance and speaks in Charlie's voice, crying out blindly 'Why are you scaring me?!' until Steve hurls water in her face.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Props: upturned drinking glass; Charlie's drawing pad; Charlie's hoodie; black candle; pencil lead; car drawing; glass of water
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Self-relighting candle; Glass moving on its own; Trance/possession performance; Door slamming on a gust
Notes: The home seance. Annie is possessed and channels Charlie's voice. Steve breaks the trance with water. Centerpiece supernatural set-piece.
Camera: Tight on Annie's tranced face across the table, then the water thrown
Lighting: Single black-candle flame, deep surrounding dark
Mood: Possession terror

104EXT

NIGHT

pp. 80-81

HOUSE

fracture

Outside, a shaking Steve says he's terrified of Annie and demands they see Dr. Stetson, as Peter watches from a window.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER
Props: towel
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie probes whether 'something happened' when she blacked out, hinting she knows she's a conduit.
Camera: Wide, couple in the yard, son framed in the window above
Lighting: Cold night, single warm window
Mood: Fracture

105INT

NIGHT

pp. 81-81

ANNIE AND STEVE'S BEDROOM

dread

In icy-blue moonlight Annie lies awake beside a sleeping Steve, too anxious to rest.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Bridges into the ant nightmare.
Camera: Static high angle over the bed
Lighting: Icy-blue moonlight, cold and even
Mood: Dread

106INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 81-81

HALLWAY

nightmare lure

Annie follows a trail of black ants from the window straight toward Peter's open bedroom door.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: trail of ants
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Practical/CGI ant trail
Notes: Part of Annie's nightmare.
Camera: Low angle along the ant trail toward the open door
Lighting: Cold blue dream-light
Mood: Nightmare lure

107INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 81-84

PETER'S BEDROOM

buried confession

Ants swarm Peter's head before the dream shifts and Annie confesses she tried to miscarry him, both suddenly drenched in paint thinner as an offscreen fire ignites.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Props: black ants; paint thinner
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Ants enveloping Peter's head; Paint-thinner drench; Off-screen fire glow
Notes: Dream-within-dream. Annie admits 'I never wanted to be your mother' and the attempted miscarriage. Max's barking swells to bridge the cut.
Camera: Close on the ant-swarmed head, then pull to the drenched pair
Lighting: Cold dream-blue invaded by off-screen fire-orange
Mood: Buried confession

108INT

NIGHT

pp. 84-84

ANNIE & STEVE'S BEDROOM

dawning wrongness

Annie wakes with a start to a fly on her face and Max barking wildly, finding Steve's side of the bed and his pillow gone.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: fly
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve has moved to the couch; the fly/ant infestation continues.
Camera: Close on her waking face, empty bedside beyond
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Dawning wrongness

109INT

pp. 84-84

PETER'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

haunted stillness

Lights on, Peter sits traumatized on his bed's edge in a wide high-angle composition matched eerily to the next cut.

Characters: PETER
Wardrobe: Peter in pajamas
Notes: Matched-cut composition into the classroom.
Camera: Wide high-angle, boy small and central
Lighting: Even overhead bedroom light
Mood: Haunted stillness

110INT

pp. 84-85

CLASSROOM - NEXT DAY

self-turned-enemy

A glint of light flashes to the window where Peter's own reflection stares back, its eyes hardening bitterly against him.

Characters: PETER; TEACHER
Props: window; hall pass
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Reflection acting independently
Notes: The malevolent presence inhabits Peter's reflection.
Camera: Medium on Peter and his window reflection
Lighting: Flat daylight, cold glassy reflection
Mood: Self-turned-enemy

111INT

DAY

pp. 85-85

STEVE'S OFFICE

alarm

As Steve drafts a worried email about Annie, Peter calls in near-hysterics: 'Something's at the school. It followed me here!'

Characters: STEVE; PETER
Props: computer; search engine; half-composed email; cell phone
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Strange static on the phone line
Notes: Steve secretly researches grief hallucinations; Peter reports being threatened.
Camera: Medium, father at the desk, phone to ear
Lighting: Soft office daylight, screen glow
Mood: Alarm

112INT

pp. 85-88

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP - SAME TIME

destructive collapse

Pushed past breaking by the gallery's voicemail, Annie smashes every miniature with a hammer, sparing only the pristine Graham house replica.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: cordless phone; flies; funeral home model; balsa wood; answering machine; hammer; Graham house replica
Wardrobe: Annie still in her nightgown
VFX/Stunts: Miniatures smashed apart
Notes: Annie destroys her life's work in a rage; the Graham House miniature survives, signaling its special significance.
Camera: Wide, woman mid-swing, intact replica isolated in frame
Lighting: Harsh flat daylight
Mood: Destructive collapse

113INT

pp. 88-88

FOYER - MOMENTS LATER

creeping rot

Steve and Peter enter to a foul smell and Steve swats a fly, wondering aloud if something died in the house.

Characters: STEVE; PETER
Props: flies
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The decomposition smell from the attic body intensifies.
Camera: Medium, both in the foyer, fly swat mid-gesture
Lighting: Flat daylight
Mood: Creeping rot

114INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 88-91

HALLWAY

interrogation

Steve calls in Dr. Stetson, who quietly competency-questions Annie amid buzzing flies while she seethes that her husband summoned a peer to investigate her.

Characters: STEVE; PETER; ANNIE; DR. STETSON
Props: phone; flies
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Dr. Stetson introduced. He performs an orientation assessment on Annie. Steve discovered the demolished workshop.
Camera: Medium group in the hallway, favoring Annie's resentment
Lighting: Flat daylight
Mood: Interrogation

115INT

pp. 91-93

GRAHAM HOUSE - LATER

horrible revelation

Examining the spared Graham house replica, Steve and Annie find a headless Peter figurine and a bloodied Annie figurine kneeling in the attic - additions neither made.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; DR. STETSON
Props: Graham house replica; headless figurine in Peter's clothes; figurine of Annie in bloodied nightgown
Wardrobe: The Annie figurine dressed in the same nightgown Annie wears now
Notes: Dr. Stetson leaves. The miniature has been altered by an unseen force, prophesying the family's fate. Slug labeled 'LATER' continues the Stetson visit; grouped to graham house.
Camera: Close into the model attic, then the couple's stunned faces
Lighting: Soft daylight on the replica
Mood: Horrible revelation

116INT

pp. 91-93

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP - MOMENTS LATER

dread recognition

Among the wreckage Steve spots the altered Graham house replica and bitterly chuckles, 'I was wondering when Peter would get switched with Charlie.'

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Props: ruined miniatures; figurine of Annie's mother holding out breast; Graham house replica
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Closer look at the tampered replica - the swap of Peter for Charlie and the bloodied attic Annie.
Camera: Medium on the father with the replica
Lighting: Harsh flat daylight
Mood: Dread recognition

117INT

pp. 93-93

LIVING ROOM - MINUTES LATER

exhaustion

Drained and resentful, Steve downs three sleeping pills on the couch, muttering that he's always the one holding it together.

Characters: STEVE
Props: prescription bottle of sleeping pills; blanket; pillow
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve drugged into deep sleep, explaining why he won't stir during the night's horrors.
Camera: Medium on the father on the couch, pills in hand
Lighting: Low warm single lamp
Mood: Exhaustion

118INT

pp. 93-94

WORKSHOP - LATER THAT NIGHT

supernatural summons

From the dark workshop Annie hears a pencil furiously scratching paper down the hall as flies cluster around the attic door.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Props: flies
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Flies converge on the attic hatch. Annie follows the phantom drawing sound.
Camera: Wide from the workshop toward the dark hall, flies at the hatch
Lighting: Very low blue night
Mood: Supernatural summons

119INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 94-94

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM

phantom drawing

In the empty room, Charlie's drawing pad fills itself with a materializing sketch and flips its own pages as Annie's eyes widen in horror.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: Charlie's drawing pad
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Drawing materializing and pages flipping on their own
Notes: The drawings (revealed later) are Peter with X'd-out eyes.
Camera: Medium, the pad in foreground, mother in the doorway
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Phantom drawing

120INT

NIGHT

pp. 94-95

PETER'S BEDROOM

nocturnal assault

Charlie stands clicking in the dark corner, her head drooping and rolling off before two invisible hands seize Peter's chin and yank back as if to tear his head free.

Characters: PETER; CHARLIE
Props: Nerf basketball
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Charlie apparition; Invisible hands gripping Peter's head
Notes: Charlie's apparition and the first physical attack on Peter. Max senses the presence and attacks the door.
Camera: Wide, apparition in the corner, boy's head pulled back on the bed
Lighting: Cold low blue night, hard shadow
Mood: Nocturnal assault

121INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 95-95

HALLWAY

violent expulsion

An invisible vacuuming force drags barking Max by his hind legs down the stairs and hurls him out the front door, which slams shut.

Characters: None
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Dog dragged by invisible force / animal handling and rig
Notes: Max is forcibly ejected - the presence removes the family's protector.
Camera: Wide down the stairs following the dragged dog
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Violent expulsion

122INT

pp. 95-95

LIVING ROOM - SAME TIME

oblivious slumber

Steve sleeps the drugged sleep of the dead on the couch as Annie's cries for Peter echo from upstairs.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Static medium on the sleeping father
Lighting: Low blue night
Mood: Oblivious slumber

123INT

pp. 95-96

PETER'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

fearful accusation

Released from the phantom hands, a terrified Peter accuses Annie of pulling on his head, and she swears she'd never hurt him while ordering him to tell no one.

Characters: ANNIE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie vows she alone can stop what's happening.
Camera: Medium two-shot, boy on the bed, mother over him
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Fearful accusation

124INT

pp. 96-96

CHARLIE'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

marked for death

The drawing pad reveals page after page of crude sketches of Peter's face with X'd-out eyes, framed by furiously scribbled triangles.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: Charlie's drawing pad; sketches of Peter with X'd-out eyes
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Pages flipping on their own
Notes: The drawings explicitly target Peter with the Paimon triangle.
Camera: Close on the self-flipping pad and its pages
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Marked for death

125INT

NIGHT

pp. 96-96

LIVING ROOM

binding horror

As Annie tries to burn Charlie's drawing pad, flames erupt on her own arm in perfect sync with the burning page, revealing she is bound to the book.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE
Props: Charlie's drawing pad; fireplace fire
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Sympathetic fire - flames on Annie's arm mirroring the burning book
Notes: Establishes the lethal rule: whoever burns the link object dies in its place. Sets up the climax.
Camera: Close on the burning pad and her igniting arm
Lighting: Hot orange firelight, blue surrounding dark
Mood: Binding horror

126EXT

NIGHT

pp. 96-97

GRAHAM HOUSE

ominous transition

A large moon over the house slam-cuts to a shrill morning sun, time lurching forward.

Characters: None
Props: moon; sun
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Matched static wides, moon then sun over the house
Lighting: Cold moonlight cutting to harsh white morning sun
Mood: Ominous transition

127INT

MORNING

pp. 97-97

HALLWAY

surveillance

Sleepless and anxious, Peter glances at the cracked workshop door, behind which Annie secretly watches to make sure he leaves.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Wardrobe: Peter with backpack slung over his shoulder
Notes: None
Camera: Medium on the boy, mother's eye at the door-crack
Lighting: Pale flat morning light
Mood: Surveillance

128INT

pp. 97-98

JOAN'S APARTMENT BUILDING - THIRD FLOOR - MOMENTS LATER

desperation

Frighteningly determined in her nightgown and coat, Annie hammers on Joan's unanswered door.

Characters: ANNIE
Wardrobe: Annie in nightgown under a coat
Notes: None
Camera: Medium on the woman pounding the door
Lighting: Even warm hallway light
Mood: Desperation

129INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 98-98

JOAN'S APARTMENT

exposure of the trap

The camera pulls back from the door to reveal Joan's apartment now draped in Paimon sigils, with a photo of Peter, a ritual dagger, and the finished severed-head diorama crowned by a raven's head.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: Paimon sigil drapes; carved triangle on tabletop; photo of Peter; athame ritual dagger; herbs; severed-head diorama; severed raven head with foil crown; severed pigeon, rat and squirrel heads
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Reveals Joan as a cultist; the diorama is built from Charlie's collected heads. The Sigil of Paimon named here.
Camera: Slow pull-back from the door revealing the full room
Lighting: Dim moody ritual light
Mood: Exposure of the trap

130INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 98-98

HALLWAY

the penny drops

Annie looks down at the 'JOANIE' welcome mat and a realization hits, sending her racing back to the elevator.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: welcome mat reading JOANIE
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie connects the welcome mat to her mother. School bell bridges the cut.
Camera: Medium, mat in foreground, woman reacting
Lighting: Even warm hallway light
Mood: The penny drops

131EXT

DAY

pp. 98-99

HIGH SCHOOL

supernatural threat

Across a busy road only Peter can perceive, Joan screams the invocation 'SATONY, DEGONY, EPARIGON!' and 'GET OUT, PETER!' like a lunatic.

Characters: PETER; JOAN
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Joan's invocation uses the same 'Satony' word carved in Charlie's wall. Nobody else sees or hears her.
Camera: Wide from Peter's side across the road to Joan
Lighting: Flat daylight
Mood: Supernatural threat

132INT

DAY

pp. 98-100

ANNIE'S WORKSHOP

buried truth

Digging through her mother's boxes, Annie finds welcome mats embroidered ANNIE, CHARLES and CHARLES-with-Paimon-sigil, the demonology tome INVOCATIONS, and a photo of her mother showered in coins beside a younger Joan.

Characters: ANNIE; ELLEN; JOAN
Props: Mom's Things boxes; welcome mats embroidered ANNIE and CHARLES; Notes on Spiritualism; grimoire; INVOCATIONS book; King Paimon illustration; photo albums titled Memories; necklace
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The full backstory: Annie's mother was a Paimon cultist, Joan her co-conspirator. The book's rules - 'Paimon will possess the most vulnerable host'; 'Paimon is Male, covetous of a male human body' - and the mother's apology note are read here.
Camera: High angle over the spread-out boxes and finds
Lighting: Soft flat daylight
Mood: Buried truth

133INT

DAY

pp. 100-100

HIGH SCHOOL HALLWAY

encroaching menace

A flash of light streaks down the hall and dies at Peter's classroom, where Mr. Davies smiles expectantly through the door's window.

Characters: PETER; MR. DAVIES
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Streak of light traveling the hallway
Notes: None
Camera: Wide down the hall following the streak to the door
Lighting: Flat daylight cut by a moving light-streak
Mood: Encroaching menace

134INT

pp. 100-101

GRAHAM HOUSE - UPSTAIRS HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER

approaching the source

Annie pulls the rope on the fly-blackened attic hatch, releasing a horde of flies before she climbs up.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: photo album; attic hatch rope; flies
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Horde of flies
Notes: None
Camera: Low angle up at the hatch, flies spilling down
Lighting: Flat daylight, dark hatch maw
Mood: Approaching the source

135INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 101-101

ATTIC

ghastly discovery

Annie's flashlight finds a headless old woman's corpse in white silk and, painted in dry blood on the vaulted ceiling above, the Sigil of Paimon crawling with flies.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: flashlight; headless woman's corpse; white silk robe; chalk triangle; Sigil of Paimon painted in blood
Wardrobe: Corpse wearing a white silk robe identical to the one Charlie saw in the woods
VFX/Stunts: Decapitated corpse prosthetic; Practical flies
Notes: The grandmother's exhumed, headless body has been hidden in the attic and turned into a Paimon shrine.
Camera: Handheld, flashlight beam sweeping up to the ceiling sigil
Lighting: Single hard flashlight cone in blackness
Mood: Ghastly discovery

136INT

DAY

pp. 101-103

CLASSROOM

violent possession

An unseen force forces Peter's arm up and smashes his face repeatedly into the desk, breaking his nose in a spray of blood as the class screams.

Characters: PETER; MR. DAVIES; BRIDGET
Props: desk
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Peter's head slammed into desk by invisible force; Broken-nose blood effect
Notes: The presence physically assaults Peter at school, echoing Charlie's clicking and squealing death sounds.
Camera: Medium on Peter at the desk, classmates scattering
Lighting: Flat daylight
Mood: Violent possession

137INT

DAY

pp. 103-103

STEVE'S OFFICE

numb avoidance

Haggard and nursing scotch, Steve lets Annie's call and then the school's call go unanswered as the caller ID reveals Peter's high school.

Characters: STEVE
Props: scotch; cell phone; office phone with caller ID
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Medium on the father, phone with caller ID in frame
Lighting: Soft office daylight
Mood: Numb avoidance

138INT

DAY

pp. 103-103

GRAHAM HOUSE - KITCHEN

unanswered alarm

The land-line rings into an empty kitchen as the school tries the Graham house.

Characters: None
Props: land-line phone
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Static wide of the empty kitchen, phone prominent
Lighting: Flat kitchen daylight
Mood: Unanswered alarm

139INT

pp. 103-103

CAR - SAME TIME

frantic vigil

Eyes crazed, Annie waits in her parked car watching the house, willing Steve to come home as she clutches her phone.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: cell phone; family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: Tight on the woman in the parked car
Lighting: Flat daylight through the glass
Mood: Frantic vigil

140INT

pp. 103-104

STEVE'S OFFICE - SAME TIME

shock

Steve finally answers the office phone and snaps alert: 'What happened? Which hospital?'

Characters: STEVE
Props: office phone; drink
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve learns Peter is hospitalized.
Camera: Medium on the father seizing the phone
Lighting: Soft office daylight
Mood: Shock

141INT

pp. 104-104

CAR (MOVING) - LATE AFTERNOON

breaking point

Driving home with a bandaged, black-eyed Peter asleep in back, Steve stomps a red light and breaks down crying behind the wheel.

Characters: STEVE; PETER
Props: rear-view mirror
Wardrobe: Peter with heavily bandaged nose and black-and-blue eyes
Notes: None
Camera: Interior, father at the wheel, bandaged son in the mirror or back
Lighting: Cold dusk with red light wash
Mood: Breaking point

142INT

pp. 104-105

ANNIE'S CAR - LATE AFTERNOON

fresh terror

Annie's relief curdles to panic as Steve pulls an unconscious, bandaged Peter from the car and she rushes over clutching her mother's photo album.

Characters: ANNIE; STEVE; PETER
Props: photo album; family car
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Steve reveals Peter smashed his own face into the desk.
Camera: Wide at the car, parents and limp son
Lighting: Cold fading dusk
Mood: Fresh terror

143INT

DAY

pp. 105-106

PETER'S BEDROOM

dreadful disclosure

Laying the comatose Peter in bed, Annie tells Steve there's a decapitated old woman's body in the attic and urges him to go see for himself.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE; PETER
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Max's barking persists. Annie reveals the attic corpse.
Camera: Medium, parents over the bed, son between them
Lighting: Soft daylight
Mood: Dreadful disclosure

144INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 106-106

LIVING ROOM

resolve

While Steve climbs to the attic, Annie rushes to the fireplace and starts a fire.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: fireplace fire
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie prepares the fire she intends Steve to use to burn the drawing pad.
Camera: Medium on the woman building the fire
Lighting: Daylight plus growing hearth glow
Mood: Resolve

145INT

pp. 106-110

UPSTAIRS HALLWAY - MOMENTS LATER

horrific climax

Annie lays out her mother's photos to prove Joan and the cult cursed them, but Steve, convinced she dug up the grave, refuses, so Annie hurls the drawing pad into the fire and Steve instantly ignites into a screaming ball of flame.

Characters: STEVE; ANNIE
Props: photo album; Charlie's drawing pad; lighter fluid; fireplace fire; Steve's wedding ring
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Steve engulfed in fire (full-body burn); Streak of light entering Annie
Notes: The climactic combustion. Burning the link kills Steve in Annie's place; the Paimon presence (streak of light) then enters Annie. Spans hallway and living room across the cut.
Camera: Wide across hallway and living room, husband bursting into flame
Lighting: Daylight overwhelmed by sudden orange fire
Mood: Horrific climax

146EXT

NIGHT

pp. 110-111

WOODS

ritual gathering

Snow falls over the woods as faint, war-drum-like percussion thumps steadily from an unseen drum circle.

Characters: None
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The cult assembles for the final ceremony.
Camera: Static wide of the dark snowy woods
Lighting: Cold blue moonlit night, falling snow
Mood: Ritual gathering

147INT

pp. 111-112

PETER'S BEDROOM - SAME TIME

uncanny stalking

Caught in passing headlights, the possessed Annie hangs weightless in the corner with her cheek pressed to the ceiling, then crab-walks across the wall and out the door before Peter can see her.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: treehouse candlelight
Wardrobe: Annie still in her nightgown
VFX/Stunts: Annie floating/ceiling-pressed; Crab-walking across walls
Notes: Peter wakes to the treehouse glowing with candlelight; the possessed, weightless Annie stalks him.
Camera: Wide, headlights sweeping, mother on the ceiling corner
Lighting: Cold blue night raked by passing headlights
Mood: Uncanny stalking

148INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 112-112

HALLWAY

mounting paranoia

A sharp clang of snapped piano wire reverberates as Peter, calling for his parents, finds the attic loud with flies and the rooms empty.

Characters: PETER
Props: flies; attic hatch
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: The snapped piano wire foreshadows Annie's weapon.
Camera: Medium tracking with the boy down the empty hall
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Mounting paranoia

149INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 112-112

FOYER

approaching horror

Peter finds the piano lid open with wires snapped, then moves toward the living room lit by an off-screen flame.

Characters: PETER
Props: piano; snapped piano wires
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: Annie has stripped the piano of wire to make her saw.
Camera: Medium on the boy at the open piano, lit doorway beyond
Lighting: Cold blue night, warm off-screen flame spill
Mood: Approaching horror

150INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 112-113

LIVING ROOM

ambush terror

Peter finds Steve's charred, headless corpse before the fire while Annie, huddled in the ceiling corner with bloody piano wire, suddenly bursts screaming out of the dark after him.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: charred headless corpse; Steve's wedding ring; piano wire; fireplace embers
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Charred corpse prosthetic; Annie ceiling-perched and lunging
Notes: Steve's burned body confirmed by his wedding ring. A red-cloaked man stands in the closet. Annie chases Peter.
Camera: Wide, boy foreground, mother lunging from the ceiling corner
Lighting: Low ember-orange and cold blue dark
Mood: Ambush terror

151INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 113-113

ATTIC

trapped

Peter locks the attic hatch as a mad pounding hammers up from beneath the floor.

Characters: PETER
Props: attic hatch
Wardrobe: Standard
Notes: None
Camera: High angle down on the boy over the locked hatch
Lighting: Very low single light source in the dark attic
Mood: Trapped

152INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 113-113

HALLWAY

demonic frenzy

Upside down and straddling the ceiling, Annie bashes her own forehead against the attic hatch like a maddened bull.

Characters: ANNIE
Props: attic hatch
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Annie inverted on the ceiling, head-banging the hatch
Notes: None
Camera: Low angle up at the inverted mother on the ceiling
Lighting: Cold low blue night
Mood: Demonic frenzy

153INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 113-115

ATTIC

escape into the void

Among black candles and his own X'd-out photo, Peter turns to see the floating Annie saw through her own neck with piano wire, then a smiling red-cloaked man, and hurls himself through the window.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE; MIDDLE-AGED BLONDE MAN
Props: black candles; photograph of Peter with eyes X'd out; piano wire; window
Wardrobe: The blonde man dressed in a red cloak; Two older women crouched
VFX/Stunts: Annie self-decapitation with piano wire; Peter jumping through the attic window (glass-break stunt)
Notes: Annie decapitates herself; the cult watches. Peter jumps out the window to escape.
Camera: Wide, mother floating center, cultists in the dark, boy breaking the window
Lighting: Black attic lit only by ringed candle flames
Mood: Escape into the void

154EXT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 115-115

GRAHAM HOUSE

surrender to possession

Face-down in the snow, Peter is entered by the streak of light, rises hollow-eyed, clicks his tongue, and walks toward the candlelit treehouse where Annie's headless body has ascended.

Characters: PETER; ANNIE
Props: treehouse candlelight; Max's dead carcass; whippoorwill birdcage
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: Window-fall landing; Streak of light entering Peter; Headless floating Annie / shadow
Notes: Paimon transfers from Annie into Peter's body. Peter takes on Charlie's trance and tongue-click. Max found dead. The caged whippoorwill recalls the funeral bird.
Camera: Wide, boy rising in the snow, glowing treehouse beyond
Lighting: Cold night, warm treehouse candle-glow
Mood: Surrender to possession

155INT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 115-118

TREEHOUSE

coronation

Red-cloaked worshippers bow to a wooden manikin crowned with Charlie's rotting decapitated head as Joan crowns Peter and proclaims him Paimon, King of Hell, the headless corpses of his family kneeling before him.

Characters: PETER; JOAN
Props: black candles; 6-foot wooden manikin; Charlie's decapitated head; silver crown; wooden scepter; Queen Leigh portrait; red cloaks
Wardrobe: Worshippers in red cloaks; Annie's mother's corpse in white silk; Annie's headless torso
VFX/Stunts: Charlie's head on the manikin; Headless corpses
Notes: The cult's purpose revealed: Charlie's body was Paimon's flawed first 'female' host, now corrected into Peter's male body. Joan names him Paimon and the worshippers hail him.
Camera: Wide ceremonial master, then push to the crowned boy
Lighting: Warm ringed black-candle light
Mood: Coronation

156EXT

CONTINUOUS

pp. 118-118

TREEHOUSE

doomed completion

A final wide of the candlelit treehouse as the worshippers cry 'Hail!', then the image fades to a neutral wide of the house rendered uncannily as its own miniature replica.

Characters: JOAN
Wardrobe: Standard
VFX/Stunts: House composited to look like a miniature for the closing shot
Notes: Closing dollhouse motif bookends the opening; the real house dissolves into its miniature. Credits roll.
Camera: Wide on the treehouse dissolving to the miniaturized house
Lighting: Warm candle-glow resolving to flat model light
Mood: Doomed completion

Locations

graham house

The Graham family's rustic two-story craftsman home, isolated in a snowy landscape and identical to Annie's miniature replica. Contains the artist's workshop, foyer, kitchen, TV room, living room with fireplace, dining room, library, bathrooms, stairway and hallways, the parents' bedroom, Peter's and Charlie's bedrooms, Annie's mother's locked bedroom, and a fly-infested attic.

BOTH100 scenes

MORNINGDAYEVENINGNIGHT

Set Requirements

•Artist's workshop full of detailed miniatures/dollhouses, paints and tools
•Master bedroom, Peter's bedroom, Charlie's bedroom (art-strewn)
•Annie's mother's stripped bedroom with carved-triangle floorboards (lockable by key)
•Dank attic with vaulted ceiling, single window, blood-painted Sigil of Paimon, hidden headless corpse and black candles
•Living room with practical fireplace
•Dining room with oval table for the seance
•Foyer with stairway and piano (wires removable)
•Library with textured-glass door
•Practical fly/ant infestation that escalates over the film
•Snow-covered exterior grounds and driveway with two family cars

Key Visual Moments

S1The camera glides across meticulous handmade dollhouses until a miniature teenage bedroom dissolves into the real room where Peter sleeps, the model and the world becoming indistinguishable.
S2A wide reveals the snow-blanketed house identical to the miniature, the camera booming down past a looming treehouse to find Annie hollowed out in the parked car.
S6The family enters a dark, seemingly vacant house to the sound of scurrying feet, and Steve notices mysterious dried footprints across the foyer.
S7Annie paints a doctor figurine into a miniature hospice tableau of her dying mother while Steve quietly sets a pill beside her, which she downs without a word.
S8After tender goodnights, the loaded tension between Annie and Peter lingers, and once she's gone Peter climbs out to lock his door.
S9Among Charlie's handmade manikins, Annie spots a word like 'Satony' carved into the wall behind the bed as Charlie asks who will take care of her when Annie dies.
S10Annie flicks off the light and freezes as her dead mother stands smiling motionless in a dark corner, vanishing the instant the light snaps back on.
S11Annie nearly tells Steve she scared herself in the workshop, then swallows it and turns off the lamp into a held, lingering kiss.
S16Annie paints a tiny laptop displaying 'Discernment of Presumed Apparitions' inside her miniature, art and obsession folding into one another.
S17Annie freezes in the doorway of her mother's stripped room, eyeing a large triangle violently carved into the floorboards.
S18Annie interrogates the family about who opened the grandmother's room, and Peter coldly insists she'll never find him in there.
S19Steve locks the grandmother's door by key as a cemetery call about a 'desecrated' grave forces him to lie, and Annie pulls on a coat to flee the house.
S23A depleted Annie crests the stairs just as Peter's door eases quietly shut in the foreground.
S24Peter scrolls Bridget's Facebook photos behind a 'Popular Career Interests' tab, then takes a pipe hit at the window as a party invite text lands.
S25A wide of the house with an anonymous shoulder in the foreground as pot smoke and a cough drift from Peter's window.
S26A sudden glint of light sweeps Charlie's room; her clicking stops and she rises to stare fixedly out the snowy window at something unseen.
S27Annie reads an email from the Asher Gallery asking for progress photos and is suddenly overwhelmed by the looming deadline.
S29Distracted and anxious at her miniatures, Annie negotiates Peter's party request and orders him to take his sister along.
S30Peter finds Charlie's room empty and calls her name into the silent hall.
S31Peter reports Charlie isn't in the house and a frustrated Annie throws down her paintbrush insisting she must be.
S33Annie stamps snow off her boots and forces a reluctant Charlie to go to the party with Peter, whose welcoming nod hides cold, uninviting eyes.
S42Annie plants a ghostly figurine of her mother looming outside the open master-bedroom door of the dollhouse where she and Steve sleep.
S47The car idles into the driveway with its door-alarm dinging; Peter steps out as if in a dream and walks stiffly into the house.
S48Peter stalks woodenly past his sleeping parents and climbs into bed, leaving his door open.
S49Peter lies wide-eyed as Annie's cheerful goodbye outside dissolves into a shrill, inhuman scream when she discovers the body.
S51A storm rages as Annie wails 'I just wanna die' through a cracked bedroom door while Peter stands paralyzed on the stairs, listening.
S53At the wake, everything glossed as if seen through grief-fogged glass, Steve absently accepts condolences in a daze.
S54Annie lies facing the wall, her back to us, absent from her own daughter's wake.
S55Peter hides in the library, watching the wake through textured glass with an almost deranged look, until a man stumbles in on him.
S56Peter locks himself in the bathroom and turns on the sink to mask his panic with white noise.
S57The last mourners filter out and Steve stands lost in the middle of the empty room.
S58Steve knocks gently on the locked bathroom door, the running sink faint behind it, and gets no answer.
S59On the tub's edge, Peter replays Annie's loving voicemail from the night Charlie died, a wound he keeps reopening.
S60Steve stops at the bedroom door to find Annie gone, sheets dragged halfway off the mattress.
S61Steve flips through Charlie's drawing pad, past severed-animal-head sketches to the crowned pigeon head, then a blank page, and the floodgates open.
S62Framed by the doorway, Peter walks past Charlie's empty snowlit room, determinedly refusing to look in.
S63Unable to sleep, Peter stares out at the looming treehouse, then gathers his blanket and pillow at 1:32 AM and leaves the room.
S64In parka and Elmer Fudd hat, Peter notes Charlie's fly-buzzing shoebox at the tree's base before scaling the treehouse.
S67Annie goes pale pulling a 'Calling All Skeptics!' seance brochure from the mail, glancing around as if suddenly being watched.
S68Numb and exhausted at the hospice miniature, Annie hears the front door unlock and looks toward the noise.
S69Steve calls for Annie as Max bounds up to greet him, tail wagging.
S70Hearing Steve climb the stairs, Annie silently eases the workshop door shut to avoid him.
S71Steve eases the door open to find Annie 'working' with headphones on, and smiles sadly before leaving her alone.
S72Steve quietly dumps the seance brochure in the trash as Annie crosses the doorway unseen behind him.
S73Frozen in the parked car so Peter won't see her, Annie watches her son gather his nerve at the front door before she starts the ignition.
S75Annie lumbers in and pulls off her snow boots in the dark foyer.
S76Bathed in muted TV glow, Steve wakes to ask where Annie was and she flatly repeats her movie lie before going to bed.
S77Annie recoils from Steve's touch and rises with a blanket to sleep elsewhere, intimacy frozen solid.
S79A clicking like Charlie's tongue startles Peter awake; he fixes on a hoodie that for an instant looks like a standing figure.
S80As Annie scratches 'Satony' into the miniature wall, a paint bottle tips over on its own near her hand without her touching it.
S87Voice cracked from his bleacher panic attack, Peter brushes past a carrot-chopping Steve and hurries upstairs.
S88Steve gently offers Peter someone to talk to, but the boy deflects every question back, unable to confront his grief, then chills over.
S89Steve discovers Annie has sculpted a miniature of the accident - Charlie's decapitated head and Peter in the car - and erupts, calling it cruel and useless.
S90Provoked across the dinner table, Annie explodes at Peter that he can't take responsibility, and he counters with the devastating question of why his mother made Charlie go.
S91Steve insists they have no control over anything, the ceiling could collapse and who would they blame, as Annie spirals into self-blame for sending Charlie out.
S92Peter sobs that he should be dead because at least Charlie could make things, and a weeping Steve holds his head, both apologizing.
S93Back to us, Annie whispers 'I'm sorry' and her shoulders begin to heave with sobs as Peter's muffled weeping bleeds through the walls.
S94Gaunt and lethargic, Annie stares at her unfinished miniatures beneath a Post-It commanding 'KEEP WORKING!'
S98A wide of the moonlit house looks uncannily like one of Annie's miniatures, all lights dark save a single glowing window.
S99Steve sleeps as Annie whispers intensely behind the lit bathroom door, asking 'Can it be anything? Like her clothes?'
S100Annie leans over the sleeping Peter, strangely hopeful, begging forgiveness before rousing him for something she's 'figured out.'
S101Annie nudges Steve awake to join 'something together,' with Peter waiting nervously in the unlit hallway.
S102Annie leads the wary pair down the dark hall toward the unlit dining room, Peter whispering 'Dad?'
S103At the candlelit table Annie falls into a trance and speaks in Charlie's voice, crying out blindly 'Why are you scaring me?!' until Steve hurls water in her face.
S104Outside, a shaking Steve says he's terrified of Annie and demands they see Dr. Stetson, as Peter watches from a window.
S105In icy-blue moonlight Annie lies awake beside a sleeping Steve, too anxious to rest.
S106Annie follows a trail of black ants from the window straight toward Peter's open bedroom door.
S107Ants swarm Peter's head before the dream shifts and Annie confesses she tried to miscarry him, both suddenly drenched in paint thinner as an offscreen fire ignites.
S108Annie wakes with a start to a fly on her face and Max barking wildly, finding Steve's side of the bed and his pillow gone.
S109Lights on, Peter sits traumatized on his bed's edge in a wide high-angle composition matched eerily to the next cut.
S112Pushed past breaking by the gallery's voicemail, Annie smashes every miniature with a hammer, sparing only the pristine Graham house replica.
S113Steve and Peter enter to a foul smell and Steve swats a fly, wondering aloud if something died in the house.
S114Steve calls in Dr. Stetson, who quietly competency-questions Annie amid buzzing flies while she seethes that her husband summoned a peer to investigate her.
S115Examining the spared Graham house replica, Steve and Annie find a headless Peter figurine and a bloodied Annie figurine kneeling in the attic - additions neither made.
S116Among the wreckage Steve spots the altered Graham house replica and bitterly chuckles, 'I was wondering when Peter would get switched with Charlie.'
S117Drained and resentful, Steve downs three sleeping pills on the couch, muttering that he's always the one holding it together.
S118From the dark workshop Annie hears a pencil furiously scratching paper down the hall as flies cluster around the attic door.
S119In the empty room, Charlie's drawing pad fills itself with a materializing sketch and flips its own pages as Annie's eyes widen in horror.
S120Charlie stands clicking in the dark corner, her head drooping and rolling off before two invisible hands seize Peter's chin and yank back as if to tear his head free.
S121An invisible vacuuming force drags barking Max by his hind legs down the stairs and hurls him out the front door, which slams shut.
S122Steve sleeps the drugged sleep of the dead on the couch as Annie's cries for Peter echo from upstairs.
S123Released from the phantom hands, a terrified Peter accuses Annie of pulling on his head, and she swears she'd never hurt him while ordering him to tell no one.
S124The drawing pad reveals page after page of crude sketches of Peter's face with X'd-out eyes, framed by furiously scribbled triangles.
S125As Annie tries to burn Charlie's drawing pad, flames erupt on her own arm in perfect sync with the burning page, revealing she is bound to the book.
S126A large moon over the house slam-cuts to a shrill morning sun, time lurching forward.
S127Sleepless and anxious, Peter glances at the cracked workshop door, behind which Annie secretly watches to make sure he leaves.
S132Digging through her mother's boxes, Annie finds welcome mats embroidered ANNIE, CHARLES and CHARLES-with-Paimon-sigil, the demonology tome INVOCATIONS, and a photo of her mother showered in coins beside a younger Joan.
S134Annie pulls the rope on the fly-blackened attic hatch, releasing a horde of flies before she climbs up.
S135Annie's flashlight finds a headless old woman's corpse in white silk and, painted in dry blood on the vaulted ceiling above, the Sigil of Paimon crawling with flies.
S138The land-line rings into an empty kitchen as the school tries the Graham house.
S143Laying the comatose Peter in bed, Annie tells Steve there's a decapitated old woman's body in the attic and urges him to go see for himself.
S144While Steve climbs to the attic, Annie rushes to the fireplace and starts a fire.
S145Annie lays out her mother's photos to prove Joan and the cult cursed them, but Steve, convinced she dug up the grave, refuses, so Annie hurls the drawing pad into the fire and Steve instantly ignites into a screaming ball of flame.
S148A sharp clang of snapped piano wire reverberates as Peter, calling for his parents, finds the attic loud with flies and the rooms empty.
S149Peter finds the piano lid open with wires snapped, then moves toward the living room lit by an off-screen flame.
S150Peter finds Steve's charred, headless corpse before the fire while Annie, huddled in the ceiling corner with bloody piano wire, suddenly bursts screaming out of the dark after him.
S151Peter locks the attic hatch as a mad pounding hammers up from beneath the floor.
S152Upside down and straddling the ceiling, Annie bashes her own forehead against the attic hatch like a maddened bull.
S153Among black candles and his own X'd-out photo, Peter turns to see the floating Annie saw through her own neck with piano wire, then a smiling red-cloaked man, and hurls himself through the window.
S154Face-down in the snow, Peter is entered by the streak of light, rises hollow-eyed, clicks his tongue, and walks toward the candlelit treehouse where Annie's headless body has ascended.

treehouse

A large treehouse joined to a sturdy oak, hovering about fifteen feet above the ground behind the Graham house; Charlie's refuge and the site of the cult's final coronation, lit by candlelight.

BOTH6 scenes

MORNINGEVENINGNIGHT

Set Requirements

•Climbable oak with handholds and floor-hatch
•Interior practical to hold multiple actors plus a 6-foot crowned wooden manikin shrine
•Black candle lining
•Birdcage with live whippoorwill
•Heaters for Annie's night-sleep scene

Key Visual Moments

S3Steve finds Charlie asleep on the freezing treehouse floor, who lunges to snap shut a secret shoebox the instant she wakes.
S20Charlie lays the fresh pigeon head into a shoebox already holding three other decomposing animal heads, flies buzzing in the cold.
S65About to sleep, Peter senses someone and turns to find Annie bundled asleep in the corner, sending him fleeing and falling hard from the tree.
S78An ominous wide finds Annie asleep in Charlie's treehouse between two heaters burning bright orange.
S155Red-cloaked worshippers bow to a wooden manikin crowned with Charlie's rotting decapitated head as Joan crowns Peter and proclaims him Paimon, King of Hell, the headless corpses of his family kneeling before him.
S156A final wide of the candlelit treehouse as the worshippers cry 'Hail!', then the image fades to a neutral wide of the house rendered uncannily as its own miniature replica.

funeral home

A funeral home chapel for Ellen Leigh's moderately attended funeral, with an open casket, blown-up photo of the deceased, altar and rows of chairs.

INT1 scene

MORNING

Set Requirements

•Open casket with corpse prosthetic wearing the sigil necklace
•Rafters and ceiling perch for a trained whippoorwill
•Altar and chairs

Key Visual Moments

S4A whippoorwill flaps out of the rafters and fixes its gaze on Annie mid-eulogy, while below an old woman covertly streaks oil across the corpse's lips.

family car

The Graham family cars (a green one and a blue one), used for funeral drives, the fatal highway trip, Annie's secret outings, and the hospital return. The green car is the 'accident' car, later permanently removed.

BOTH9 scenes

LATE AFTERNOONNIGHTEVENINGDAY

Set Requirements

•Process/insert rig for high-speed night driving
•Rear-view and side-view mirror inserts
•Back seat for headless-torso prop
•Two distinct cars (green and blue) for continuity

Key Visual Moments

S5Driving past a gathering of deer, Annie confesses the funeral-home bird felt like her mother while Charlie tenses and clicks her tongue over a chocolate bar.
S21Annie idles into a Catholic-school lot, kills the engine, and braces herself in silence before facing the grief group.
S35Peter's eyes narrow resentfully at clicking Charlie in the mirror as the car passes a telephone pole carved with a small hidden sigil.
S45A distraught Peter shoves a red-faced, suffocating Charlie into the back seat and bolts for the driver's side.
S46As Peter swerves around a deer carcass at 80 mph, Charlie's head, thrust out the window for air, collides with a telephone pole and is ripped clean off.
S97Stopped at a red light, Annie hears tongue-clicking in the empty back seat and turns, white-faced, to nothing.
S139Eyes crazed, Annie waits in her parked car watching the house, willing Steve to come home as she clutches her phone.
S141Driving home with a bandaged, black-eyed Peter asleep in back, Steve stomps a red light and breaks down crying behind the wheel.
S142Annie's relief curdles to panic as Steve pulls an unconscious, bandaged Peter from the car and she rushes over clutching her mother's photo album.

high school

Peter's and Charlie's high school - classrooms (special-needs and English/algebra), hallways, the schoolyard, soccer field with bleachers, and the fenced exterior beside a busy road.

BOTH10 scenes

MORNINGDAY

Set Requirements

•Classroom with breakaway window for pigeon strike
•Chalkboards for thematic lesson text
•Desk rigged for face-slamming gag
•Bleachers / soccer field
•Exterior fence facing a road with traffic

Key Visual Moments

S12A pigeon slams into the classroom window and snaps its neck, and amid the children's excitement Charlie's eyes coldly fix on the scissors on the teacher's desk.
S13Under a chalkboard reading 'Escaping Fate,' Mr. Davies argues that the oracle left Heracles no choice, while Peter, oblivious, stares longingly at Bridget.
S14Charlie calmly snips off the dead pigeon's head with the stolen scissors, pockets it, then locks eyes with a sentimental old woman watching from beyond the fence.
S66The teacher's voice warps as if underwater while Peter flashes to the rear-view mirror and Charlie's blurred, headless body just out of frame.
S81Three giggling stoners intercept Peter in the hall, Brendan miming a joint to invite him on a 'walk.'
S82Under the bleachers, a reluctant hit triggers Peter into a panic attack echoing Charlie's death - 'My tongue is getting bigger' - as the oblivious stoners laugh.
S110A glint of light flashes to the window where Peter's own reflection stares back, its eyes hardening bitterly against him.
S131Across a busy road only Peter can perceive, Joan screams the invocation 'SATONY, DEGONY, EPARIGON!' and 'GET OUT, PETER!' like a lunatic.
S133A flash of light streaks down the hall and dies at Peter's classroom, where Mr. Davies smiles expectantly through the door's window.
S136An unseen force forces Peter's arm up and smashes his face repeatedly into the desk, breaking his nose in a spray of blood as the class screams.

steve's office

Steve's large, sparsely decorated psychiatrist's office with a leather chair and computer.

INT4 scenes

AFTERNOONDAY

Set Requirements

•Leather chairs
•Computer with browser inserts
•Office phone with caller ID

Key Visual Moments

S15Steve absorbs an agitated patient's circular despair with superhuman, stifled patience in his sparse leather-chaired office.
S111As Steve drafts a worried email about Annie, Peter calls in near-hysterics: 'Something's at the school. It followed me here!'
S137Haggard and nursing scotch, Steve lets Annie's call and then the school's call go unanswered as the caller ID reveals Peter's high school.
S140Steve finally answers the office phone and snaps alert: 'What happened? Which hospital?'

catholic school gymnasium

A Catholic high-school gymnasium hosting the 'Losing A Loved One' grief-recovery support group, with a circle of chairs and an easel sign; also its parking lot.

BOTH2 scenes

NIGHTEVENING

Set Requirements

•Circle of ~20 folding chairs
•Easel signage
•Adjoining parking lot for the Joan headlight meeting

Key Visual Moments

S22Forced to speak in the circle of chairs, Annie unspools her family's history of suicide and mental illness, ending on the haunting word 'blamed.'
S74About to leave the grief-group lot, Annie is flagged into her headlights by a merry older woman, Joan, who reveals her son and grandson drowned.

highway

A lonely rural highway under a full moon, lined with telephone poles (one carved with a hidden sigil), site of Charlie's decapitation and her roadside severed head.

EXT2 scenes

EVENINGMORNING

Set Requirements

•Telephone pole rigged for the decapitation collision
•Deer-carcass road dressing
•Severed-head prop with practical ants

Key Visual Moments

S34A full moon glows pale-blue over a lonely highway as the green family car flashes past.
S50Charlie's severed head rests roadside, nose smashed, one eye milky, completely blanketed in crawling ants.

party house

A large modern suburban house hosting a teenage party - kitchen, living room, and a back 'other room' with a bong; Aaron's house.

BOTH8 scenes

NIGHT

Set Requirements

•Kitchen with oven and chopping station (walnuts/chocolate cake)
•Living room couch
•Back bedroom for smoking
•Party-crowd extras and practical music

Key Visual Moments

S36At the foot of a bustling party house, a suddenly nervous Charlie slows to a stop, begging to wait outside.
S37An extreme close-up of walnuts being brutalized on a chopping board cuts to Peter abandoning Charlie by promising the kitchen's chocolate cake.
S38Bridget announces Peter has weed to two boys watching videos, and Peter immediately deflates at being outed.
S39Shy and magnetized to the chocolate cake, Charlie accepts a slice studded with visible nuts without meeting the girl's eyes.
S40Peter packs a bong as Annie's call goes ignored into his pocket, a missed-voicemail light beginning to blink.
S41Lips smeared with chocolate, Charlie swallows again and again, looking faintly concerned as she draws herself a cup of water.
S43Cheeks pink and inflamed, Charlie keeps assembling her manikin on the couch and waves off a concerned boy as she visibly worsens.
S44Mid-bong-hit, Peter turns to a terrified Charlie who chokes out that her tongue is getting bigger.

cemetery

An overcast cemetery where Charlie's coffin is lowered into the grave.

EXT1 scene

DAY

Set Requirements

•Open grave rigged for a camera move tracking down into the soil
•Coffin and earthworm/dirt detail

Key Visual Moments

S52As Charlie's coffin sinks into the earth, the camera follows it down through dirt and earthworms until everything is swallowed in black.

joan's apartment building

A large red-brick apartment building; Joan lives on the third floor at apartment 316, fronted by a handmade 'JOANIE' welcome mat.

INT3 scenes

DAY

Set Requirements

•Elevator and well-lit third-floor hallway
•Apartment door 316 with embroidered welcome mat

Key Visual Moments

S84Annie knocks at apartment 316, looking down at a handmade 'JOANIE' welcome mat, before Joan opens the door delighted.
S128Frighteningly determined in her nightgown and coat, Annie hammers on Joan's unanswered door.
S130Annie looks down at the 'JOANIE' welcome mat and a realization hits, sending her racing back to the elevator.

joan's apartment

Joan's apartment, at first cheerfully decorated in bright homey colors, later revealed draped in Paimon sigils with a carved-triangle ritual table, athame, and the severed-head diorama.

INT4 scenes

DAY

Set Requirements

•Bright homey dressing that converts to occult dressing (sigil drapes, blacked-out window)
•Kitchen table with carved triangle and ritual props
•Severed-head diorama build

Key Visual Moments

S85In a cheerfully bright apartment, Annie notes the welcome mat resembles her mother's embroidery as Joan pours tea.
S86Over tea, Annie and Joan trade the grisly details of their dead - Charlie's headless tarry body, Joan's fish-eaten son - finding morbid comfort, as Annie pulls a black herb from her mouth without noticing.
S96Joan blacks out the window, lights a black candle, and guides Annie's hand onto an upturned glass to summon 'Louie' in the dark.
S129The camera pulls back from the door to reveal Joan's apartment now draped in Paimon sigils, with a photo of Peter, a ritual dagger, and the finished severed-head diorama crowned by a raven's head.

art supply store

An art/miniature supply store with aisles of building materials and a chalk section, where Annie runs into a transformed Joan.

INT1 scene

DAY

Set Requirements

•Shopping carts and stocked craft/miniature aisles

Key Visual Moments

S95Annie runs into a beaming, transformed Joan in the chalk aisle, who confides that a spiritual medium conjured her dead grandson.

woods

The vast snowy wooded area behind the Graham house, where Charlie is lured in a trance and a torchlit ritual body is glimpsed; later the site of the cult's distant drum circle.

EXT3 scenes

DAYNIGHT

Set Requirements

•Snow-covered woodland
•Ring of practical burning torches
•White-silk ritual body rigged to a pole
•Footprint trail in snow
•High-angle/bird's-eye camera access

Key Visual Moments

S28Coatless and trance-like, Charlie slogs through snow following a fresh trail of mysterious footprints, a fire crackling somewhere ahead.
S32In the distance Charlie sees a ring of burning torches around an inanimate white-robed body tied to a pole, as Annie arrives oblivious and drags her home.
S146Snow falls over the woods as faint, war-drum-like percussion thumps steadily from an unseen drum circle.

city street

An urban street Annie walks searching for Joan's address.

EXT1 scene

DAY

Set Requirements

•Urban storefront/residential block leading to the apartment building

Key Visual Moments

S83Annie hunts an address scrawled on the back of Joan's phone-number paper, arriving at a large red-brick apartment building.

Cast

ANNIE

A bereaved woman of 45, beautiful in a worn way and emotionally exhausted. A miniaturist artist preparing for a gallery show; wears a delicate necklace bearing the sigil of Paimon.

A grief-stricken artist estranged from her late occultist mother is manipulated into a seance that opens her family to the demon Paimon, and after her work, husband, and sanity unravel she becomes the cult's possessed instrument, ultimately decapitating herself.

86 scenes·5 wardrobe changes

STEVE

Annie's husband, 47, tall, broad-shouldered and formal; a working psychiatrist who serves as the family's steady, rational anchor.

The family's grounded skeptic who keeps everyone together through grief, dismisses the supernatural until it's too late, and is incinerated when Annie burns the cursed drawing pad.

49 scenes·4 wardrobe changes

PETER

The Grahams' handsome, skinny 17-year-old son; a detached, pot-smoking high-schooler with a crush on Bridget who is wracked by guilt after his sister's death.

A guilt-ridden teenager whose careless abandonment of his sister sets the tragedy in motion, who is then hunted by the cult and ultimately emptied out to become the demon Paimon's perfected male host.

71 scenes·4 wardrobe changes

CHARLIE

A plump, androgynous 14-year-old girl, a withdrawn young artist who builds manikins from found objects, has a tongue-clicking tic and a severe nut allergy. Her grandmother wanted her to be a boy.

The grandmother's chosen vessel who collects severed heads and is being drawn toward the cult, until a freak decapitation kills her, after which she persists as a haunting presence and as the demon's flawed first host.

23 scenes·3 wardrobe changes

JOAN

An older woman (late 60s), warm and merry on the surface, who claims her son and grandson drowned; secretly a longtime Paimon cultist and friend of Annie's mother.

Posing as a fellow griever, she lures Annie into the seance and the cult, then presides over the climactic ceremony that crowns Peter as Paimon.

9 scenes·3 wardrobe changes

ELLEN

Annie's deceased 75-year-old mother, Ellen Leigh ('Queen Leigh'). An intensely secretive, manipulative woman with D.I.D.; the matriarch of the Paimon cult who appears as an apparition.

Though dead before the story begins, her lifelong devotion to Paimon and manipulation of her family is the engine of the curse; her exhumed, headless corpse becomes the household shrine.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

BRIDGET

An attractive 17-year-old classmate of Peter's, sardonic and self-possessed; the object of his crush.

Peter's romantic fixation and the reason he abandons Charlie at the party, recurring as a witness to his later breakdown.

6 scenes·2 wardrobe changes

DR. STETSON

A pleasant, well-scrubbed man in his 50s; Steve's psychiatrist colleague (Bob) called in to assess Annie.

Brought in to evaluate Annie's sanity, he conducts a brief competency assessment and quietly declines to intervene further.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

MR. DAVIES

Peter's English teacher, 30s, leading discussions on Greek tragedy and inevitability.

A recurring classroom presence whose lessons on fate and lack of agency thematically frame Peter's doom.

3 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

BRENDAN

Peter's stoner friend who texts him party invites and shares weed under the bleachers.

A casual high-school friend who reassures Peter through his panic attack, oblivious to its real cause.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

AARON

A preppy, suspicious 17-year-old; host of the high-school party.

The party host who grudgingly tolerates Peter's appearance.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

MIDDLE-AGED BLONDE MAN

A smiling middle-aged blonde man who stares sentimentally at Charlie at the funeral; later appears in a red cloak among the cultists.

A cult member who watches the family from the funeral onward and presides, red-cloaked, over the final ritual.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

LARGE WOMAN

A woman in her 60s (Judy) who delivers Ellen Leigh's eulogy.

A mourner who memorializes Ellen at the funeral.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

TEACHER

The warm 40s teacher of Charlie's special-needs class, and (a teacher) of Peter's later classroom.

A gentle classroom authority whose well-meaning interference disturbs Charlie.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

PATIENT

An extremely agitated, depressed female patient in her 40s in Steve's office.

A single-scene therapy patient establishing Steve's profession.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

LEADER

The group leader of the grief-recovery support group.

Facilitates the support group where Annie first speaks publicly about her loss.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

YOUNG MAN

A young man who translates the grieving Mexican woman's Spanish for the support group.

Interpreter at the grief group.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

MEXICAN WOMAN

A middle-aged woman who speaks through tears in Spanish at the support group about her late husband.

A grieving group member whose testimony agitates Annie.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

MAN

A man in his 40s who steps into the family library during the wake and offers Peter condolences.

A mourner who briefly encounters Peter at the wake.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

OLDER WOMAN

An older woman in her 60s who sits beyond the schoolyard fence gazing sentimentally at Charlie.

A watching cult presence observing Charlie at school.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

CONCERNED BOY

A boy of about 16 at the party who, mistaking Charlie for a boy, offers her water as she sickens.

A bystander who notices Charlie's distress at the party.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

HISPANIC BOY

A Hispanic teenage boy in the party's back room watching videos and smoking.

A party guest who jokes about Peter's sister.

2 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

BLONDE BOY

A blonde teenage boy in the party's back room watching videos.

A party guest in the smoking room.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

SMART-ASS STUDENT

A wisecracking student (Sam) in Peter's English class who keeps joking about Oedipus.

Comic-relief classmate during the Greek-tragedy lesson.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

STUDENT #2

A student in Peter's English class who half-heartedly answers Mr. Davies.

Classroom participant in the fate discussion.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

STUDENT #3

A thoughtful student in Peter's class who argues the tragedy lies in having no hope.

Classmate who articulates the play's fatalism.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

STONER #2

One of Peter's stoner friends under the bleachers who notices his panic attack.

A friend present during Peter's bleacher panic episode.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

STONER #3

Another of Peter's stoner friends under the bleachers.

A friend present during Peter's bleacher panic episode.

1 scenes·1 wardrobe changes

Production Design · Props

sigil necklace (Sigil of Paimon)

Hero

3 scenes

Worn by Annie, Ellen's corpse, and (in photos) Joan and Ellen; the central occult emblem. Multiples needed.

S2S4S132

Graham house miniature replica

Hero

7 scenes

Hero miniature; supernaturally altered (Peter/Charlie figurine swap, bloodied attic Annie). Survives the workshop destruction. Needs close-up detail and changeable figurines.

S1S16S42S68S112S115S116

Charlie's drawing pad

Hero

10 scenes

Key plot object; self-drawing pages (Peter with X'd eyes), the cursed 'link' object burned in the climax. Multiples for fire and rigged self-drawing gags.

S3S4S9S26S61S103S119S124S125S145

shoebox of severed animal heads

Hero

4 scenes

Contains pigeon, rat, rabbit and squirrel heads in decay; later assembled into the cult diorama. Practical flies.

S3S20S64S129

scissors

Hero

2 scenes

Stolen from the teacher's desk; used by Charlie to behead the dead pigeon.

S12S14

chocolate / nut-laden cake and bars

Hero

4 scenes

Charlie's nut allergy device; ECU of walnuts being chopped, the cake slice that triggers anaphylaxis.

S5S14S37S39

black candle

Hero

3 scenes

Joan's seance candle that self-relights; black candles ring the climactic attic and treehouse rituals.

S96S103S153

upturned drinking glass

Hero

2 scenes

Seance planchette that slides on its own; used at Joan's and at the Graham dining table.

S96S103

INVOCATIONS book (Paimon grimoire)

Hero

1 scene

Demonology tome with the King Paimon etching, possession rules, and Ellen's handwritten apology note.

S132

embroidered welcome mats

Hero

4 scenes

JOANIE mat; ANNIE, CHARLES and CHARLES-with-sigil mats in Mom's boxes - the craft that links Joan to Annie's mother.

S84S128S130S132

telephone pole with carved sigil

Hero

2 scenes

The pole that decapitates Charlie, pre-marked with a Paimon sigil.

S35S46

Charlie's severed head

Hero

3 scenes

Decapitated-head prosthetic; ant-covered roadside, later crowning the treehouse manikin in advanced decay.

S46S50S155

piano wire

Hero

4 scenes

Stripped from the foyer piano; Annie's self-decapitation weapon.

S148S149S150S153

pills / prescription bottles

5 scenes

Recurring medication motif; Steve's sleeping pills (three downed) explain his deep sleep during the climax.

S7S51S86S90S117

Charlie's handmade manikins

4 scenes

Found-object figures Charlie builds; one becomes the diorama torso.

S9S12S26S43

cell phone / voicemail

8 scenes

Tracks Peter's guilt (Annie's saved BBQ voicemail) and the unanswered crisis calls.

S13S24S40S55S59S111S137S139

public seance brochure

2 scenes

'Calling All Skeptics!' flyer for medium Suzanne Marlowe; Steve throws it away.

S67S72

flies and ants

Hero

12 scenes

Escalating practical insect infestation signaling the hidden attic corpse and the supernatural decay; ants in the head shot and Annie's nightmare.

S20S50S64S107S108S112S113S114S118S134S135S148

athame (ritual dagger) and diorama

Hero

1 scene

Joan's ritual dagger, herbs, and the finished severed-head diorama crowned with a raven head.

S129

crown and wooden scepter

Hero

2 scenes

Crowned-figure iconography from the pigeon drawing pays off in the treehouse manikin's silver crown, scepter, and Peter's coronation.

S61S155

red cloaks

Hero

3 scenes

The cult's ceremonial robes; multiples for the worshippers and the blonde man.

S150S153S155

lighter fluid / paint thinner

3 scenes

Flammable accelerant tied to Annie's sleepwalking incident and the climactic burning.

S80S107S145

guitar

1 scene

Peter improvises a tune.

Memories photo albums

Hero

4 scenes

Annie's mother's albums revealing photos of Joan and the coin-showering ritual; Annie's proof of the cult.

S10S132S142S145

Poster Concepts

Character-Driven

The Maker Who Lost Control

“Some families pass down more than their faces.”

A worn, exhausted woman in her forties fills the frame from the chest up against pitch black, her face slack with grief. A delicate necklace bearing an ornate carved sigil rests at her throat, catching the only sharp light. Her eyes are unfocused, fixed past the viewer at something we cannot see in the dark corner over her shoulder. Lower third reserved for title.

Character-Driven

The Boy They Hollowed Out

“Something is wearing him now.”

A skinny seventeen-year-old boy stands centered against a dim bedroom, photographed dead-on, his nose freshly bandaged and both eyes ringed black and blue. His mouth is parted mid-breath; his expression is empty, recently emptied. A thin horizontal streak of pale light cuts across his eyes like something passing through him. Negative headroom above for the title.

Character-Driven

Grandmother in the Corner

“She never really left the house.”

The frame is a dark domestic room shot wide. In the far back corner, small and barely lit, stands the motionless figure of an old woman in a bathrobe, smiling faintly, half-dissolved into shadow. The foreground is empty floor, drawing the eye slowly back to her. The viewer realizes she is staring straight out. Title floats in the empty foreground.

Symbolic/Metaphorical

The Sigil Carved In

“Marked before you were born.”

A tight overhead shot of bare wooden floorboards, raw and scratched, with a large triangle violently carved into them, the gouges fresh and splintered. A few black ants crawl along the cut lines. The wood grain reads like skin. Everything else is darkness. Title sits below the carving.

Symbolic/Metaphorical

The House That Was Always a Model

“You think you're living it. You're being arranged.”

A handmade miniature of a craftsman house sits on a dark workbench, lit by a single lamp, while behind and around it the real, identical house looms blurred and full-scale, so the eye cannot tell which is the model. Tiny figurines are visible in the miniature's lit windows. Title runs along the workbench edge.

Symbolic/Metaphorical

Crown for a Severed Thing

“They were always building toward a king.”

Centered on black, a crude foil-and-silver crown rests atop something we slowly recognize as a decayed animal head, drawn in the raw style of a child's sketch bleeding into a real prosthetic. Black candle flames flank it low. The image hovers between drawing and rotting fact. Title beneath.

Scene-Based

Headlights and the Pole

“The road home was set long ago.”

A lonely rural highway at night under a pale full moon, telephone poles receding into the dark. A sedan's headlights rake one pole in the near distance; a deer carcass lies on the shoulder. Nothing has happened yet, but everything is in place. Composition leaves the lower sky open for title.

Scene-Based

The Glass Begins to Move

“Open the door and something always walks in.”

A directly overhead shot of a dark dining table ringed by three seated figures, hands converging on a single upturned drinking glass at the center. One black candle burns. The figures' faces are lost; only the hands, the glass, and a child's drawing pad on the wood are clear. The pool of candlelight is an island in black. Title set into the surrounding dark.

Scene-Based

Flies on the Hatch

“Whatever died up there is awake.”

A low upward angle of a darkened upstairs hallway ceiling and a closed attic hatch, its seams black and crawling with flies, a pull-rope hanging dead-still. A foul faint glow leaks from the hatch edges. The viewer stands below, where the family stood, not yet knowing what waits above. Title fills the dark lower hallway.

Minimalist/Typographic

One Triangle, One Word

“It was decided before you arrived.”

A flat near-black field. Dead center, a single triangle rendered as if scratched into the surface by a fingernail, raw and uneven. Nothing else but the title, small, below it. The whole poster is restraint and one wrong shape.

Minimalist/Typographic

The Family, Subtracted

“A family is only ever one removal away.”

Four small silhouetted figures stand in a row on a vast black field, family-portrait spacing. Three are intact; one is missing its head, a clean absence. No faces, no detail, just the gap where a head should be. Title set large in the empty black above the row.

Minimalist/Typographic

Click

“You'll hear her before you believe it.”

Black field. A single small phonetic mark or tongue-click glyph sits high, almost invisible, suggesting a sound in an empty room. The title sits centered, isolated, with enormous breathing dark around it. The whole poster is the feeling of hearing a noise no one else hears.

Mood/Atmospheric

Candlelight in the Tree

“The light in the trees was never for you.”

A wide night exterior of a snow-covered yard. High in a bare oak, a treehouse glows from within with warm candlelight, the only light in a freezing blue-black world. Faint figures may be inside. The house below is dark. The image is beautiful and deeply wrong. Title low in the snow-dark.

Mood/Atmospheric

The House as a Specimen

“Look closely. Someone is arranging this.”

The Graham craftsman house shot dead-center and perfectly symmetrical against snow, every window dark but one, which glows. The framing is too clean, too composed, so the house looks like an object on display rather than a home. Cold flat light. The uncanny is in the symmetry. Title low and centered.

Collage/Ensemble

The Inheritance

“Everything they were is coming down to you.”

A single tall composition reading downward like a fall: at top, a faint smiling old woman dissolving from shadow; beneath her a worn grieving woman with a sigil at her throat; below, a hollow-eyed bandaged boy; and at the very bottom, half-buried in dark, a carved triangle and a scatter of black flies. Each figure bleeds into the next in candlelit gloom, a lineage descending into the symbol that owns them. Title across the lower third.