HOME (12-page short horror screenplay) Written by SEAN O’DONAGHUE
A man and woman are drawn to an abandoned house minutes apart for unrelated reasons and engage in a game of broken telephone in a house with motives of its own.
It’s always a pleasure to find a good, old-fashioned, creepy horror short to contribute to my lack of sleep at night. And while the horror fan in me was really drawn in to this clever spine-tingler, the filmmaker in me was drawn towards it because it was a one-location, two-character piece. So, any filmmakers out there looking for something easy to film during social distancing, look no further.
The story opens as Raymond tapes “missing” posters onto telephone poles throughout a quiet neighborhood in search of his missing cat, Felix. But as he continues to put up these “missing” posters, he hears a meow coming from a creepy, abandoned house across the street. Almost a 100 percent sure it’s Felix, he makes the mistake of entering the home – never a good idea in the middle of the night, especially in a horror movie.
Meanwhile, a photographer named Natasha arrives at the abandoned home to recover a camera she had left there the previous day – she’s been taking photos of the place. But when she arrives, she realizes that she’s not alone.
Trying to draw out what she thinks may be a homeless person upstairs, she bangs on the ceiling with a broomstick, which makes Raymond realize that he’s not alone either. Though both parties are relatively harmless and are at the house with good intentions, they sort of engage in a game of Marco Polo.
But as this game of cat and mouse continues, they each notice strange children’s drawings and carvings on the walls – the creepy drawings tell the tragic story of the family that once lived there, a sinister story that ended violently. And as Raymond and Natasha eventually find each other, they both realize that they’re not the only ones there…
“Home” combines familiar horror tropes to create an original, cleverly-chilling story that constantly plays with the audience’s expectations throughout.
BUDGET: Low. One-location, two actors.
ABOUT THE WRITER: Sean O’Donoghue is a 22-year-old writer based out of Toronto, Canada. Though he studied Economics and Political Science at McGill University in Montreal, his passion was always in film. Sean gravitated towards other creatives, ending up writing for and working with friends on smaller projects. Now graduated and having left McGill’s film club, Sean made the choice to pursue a career in screenwriting with “HOME” being his first foray into the professional sphere. His influences range from classic adventure films such as the Indiana Jones Trilogy (Emphasis on trilogy), to noir/neo-noir thrillers including Memento and The Maltese Falcon, to stoner action flicks like Pineapple Express. Sean’s interest in multiple genres is something he wishes to emulate in his own work as he looks to tell wide-ranging stories that capture various perspectives of the human condition. Sean can be reached at: sean.od1701 (a) gmail.
Read: HOME (12-page short horror screenplay)
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About the Reviewer: Michael J. Kospiah is the award-winning screenwriter of critically acclaimed indie-thriller, The Suicide Theory (79% Rotten Tomatoes – available on Amazon Prime, Itunes, Google Play, etc) and 2020’s upcoming Aussie thriller, Rage. His horror feature, They Never Left is currently in development.
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