A New Night by Tom Zarnowski

Memories don’t always die…

We often refer to holidays as getaways for good reason. They’re a chance to “get away” from the omnipresent stress of working life and recharge the batteries. The downtime also provides us with a golden opportunity to introspect our inner lives.

But in A New Night, the getaway that former parents Emmett and Dawn take to heal deep personal wounds turns out to be nothing more than a placebo.

Or worse.

Heading to a remote log cabin to cleanse themselves of memories of their dead daughters, Dawn struggles to accept the events of the past and mournfully realizes that no matter how hard her partner tries, her family feels incomplete without her girls:

            DAWN
They’re still with us, Emmett.

This weakness is made all the more evident when – during their first night in the cabin – Dawn spies a speck of white in the pitch black darkness. Artificial shouts of “happiness” penetrate the silent forest night.

Intrigued, Dawn follows the sounds – into the dark, and through the woods.

Waking and finding his wife gone, Emmett exits the cabin and follows her trail – until he stumbles onto a sight so incomprehensible that he loses all physical control.

When it returns, Dawn has vanished. She and her companions? Nowhere at all to be found.

Intent on saving his wife, Emmett returns to the cabin. Even from the outside, it’s obvious that someone’s… been there.

Grabbing his axe, Emmett heads inside to confront whoever’s responsible for this mess… But what exactly will he find?

Why has the cabin been ransacked? Where’s Dawn? And who’s with her?

Even more pressingly, when will you read this script and discover the answers to these questions – and more?

A New Night offers ticks all the classic horror boxes: Isolated location, troubled characters, and mystery. Yet it never succumbs to clichés; the organic mixture of psychological/physical horror enables this script to appeal to fans of many horror genres. All combined into one huge scare.

Directors looking to frighten audiences both mentally and visually need to add this one to their collection of scripts to film.

You’ll end up with your own family… of festival awards, that is!

Budget: Relatively low. Get a cabin in the woods, and run from there!

About the writer: Tom Zarnowski is a screenwriter from Chicago with a variety of features and shorts written. He previously worked for Veluvana Pictures writing and developing features from start to finish. His screenplay ‘Stages’ recently placed as a finalist at the Beverly Hills Film Festival. Before partnering with Veluvana, he worked as a script consultant for Road 28 Pictures. Did New Night scare the “daylights” out of you? Then send him an email at tzarnowski (a) gmail.

Read A New Night (8 pages in pdf format)

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This screenplay may not be used or reproduced for any purpose including educational purposes without the expressed written permission of the author.

About the reviewer: Hamish Porter is a writer who, if he was granted one wish, would ask for the skill of being able to write dialogue like Tarantino. Or maybe the ability to teleport. Nah, that’s nothing compared to the former. A lover of philosophy, he’s working on several shorts and a sporting comedy that can only be described as “quintessentially British”. If you want to contact him, he can be emailed: hamishdonaldp (a) gmail. If you’d like to contact him and be subjected to incoherent ramblings, follow him on Twitter @HamishP95.