Horror script, Dead Girls for TV
A novel-to-screen adaptation
Some will know, I worked for BBC Films on the Golden Boy script for several years, along with Emmy-award-winning producers Duck Soup and director/co-writer Sara Dunlop, before our project got axed in a round of budget cuts.
This was after a few credits for additional dialogue with Handel Films and Zeitgeist Industries, two small but mighty producers here in the UK and in Finland/the US, and one very interesting period employed on a writing team for Chris Morris, author of the bestselling Guerrilla Filmmaking series.
After Golden Boy was axed, I studied and graduated from a Sundance screenwriting lab, which helped my script work enormously. I subsequently worked on several speculative ideas—a half-hour comedy, a feature script, and this, a three-part adaptation of my novel Dead Girls.
Readers will know the story revolves around Thera, aged 11, who is propelled by the ghost of her dead best friend to find her killer. It’s set in 1999. The Spice Girls are mentioned profusely. It’s a dark, girly horror.
Here’s the Teaser.
FADE IN:
INT. THERA’S BEDROOM - AFTERNOON - 1999, PRESENT DAY
SOBBING (OS). A family of Barbies. Ken delimbed. He smiles.
Room awash with pink light cast by closed curtains. Leo Dicap poster on wall. GIRL-SHAPE in bed, sobbing dramatically.
FAR AWAY, TINNY SOUND OF TV starting up (OS).
The GIRL-SHAPE aka THERA, sits up, looks to the door, sniffs. Thera is 11, brunette, on puberty’s knife edge. Striking. Too intense to be “pretty” “cute” “sweet”. Her EYES see everything.
Thera’s eyes look to her mirrored dressing table. Collage of photos on mirror-frame - Spice Girls, Thera & friends.
SOUND: T.V. (O.S.)
-- curfew continues with police patrols --
Thera crawls off the bed, stands at the mirror, sniffs at her reflection. That belly-forward body kids have. 90s kid clothes.
Thera opens a drawer, pulls out a Furby, puts it on the table.
FURBY U-nye-loo-lay-doo?
Beneath the Furby is a paper bag. Hiccuping with sobs, Thera retrieves it, opens it, pulls out a black Wonderbra and low- cut minidress, puts on both. Thera tugs the strings on her bra then stuffs it to ‘make boobs’; applies bright red lipstick and silver eyeshadow; creates “bed hair” with her hands.
She blinks into the mirror -- an innocent child.
Thera’s face suddenly channels a porno, but so outlandishly we can’t read it as sexy—we get that she’s aiming for mouth open, winking, raunchy. In her mind, she’s Sam from Sex and the City. But it’s Ghoulish. Like Edvard Munch’s Scream.
SOUND: A GHOSTLY WHISPER.
EXT. THERA’S GREY LITTLE HOUSE/GARDEN - EVENING
Thera’s leg, in Baby Spice-platform, reaches for, then presses against a black cast iron drainpipe. Low sunlight.
Thera’s body, black velvet backpack on, on first-floor window ledge, stretches her hand towards the pipe.
The flat sole of the platform slips on the pipe. Thera falls two storeys to the ground. BAM. She hits the paving, flat out, face first. Thera lies there... Unmoving... Dead?
She lies there too long. We watch.
Slowly, achingly, her chin lifts -- blood pours out her lip, pools. This girl does not die.
MUSIC.
She lifts her head—a gash on it.
Her grazed knees painfully get up, start to crawl...
...past a ground floor window where TV NOISE IS LOUD.
SOUND: T.V.
(Northernish female voice) -- wish I could say she did everything right, but their parents let them play out after dark. What do you expect? --
Thera darts from the pavement around the house, across a patch of grass, into a thorny bramble bush, then through it. Thorns scratch her skin, gouging red streaks—nothing registers on her face. Maybe a grunt.
Thera reaches the fence behind the bush; hauls herself over. It shakes.
EXT. WHEAT FIELD - EVENING
MUSIC KICKS UP.
Thera runs full pelt through the wheat field, PANTING LOUD. A HUGE ditch in front of her—how will she cross it? She LEAPS—slow motion—across the huge ditch, way too far, we see the effort on her face—she lands, hauling herself on to the other bank.
Running again, looking ahead.
Ahead: a SNATCH of long blonde hair, whipping away through wheat sheaves. We can’t see the body attached to it.
Thera speeds up, expression determined, sweaty-faced. She powers through the wheat --
-- STUMBLES in her platforms, onto her knees again, CRIES OUT.
Thera sits back onto the ground, defeated, red-faced, sweaty.
Tips of golden wheat sheaves against a deep, cornflower sky. Thera’s SNIFFLES AND BREATHING (OS, nearby). She cries, seems defeated.
Wind begins to WHISPER in the wheat tips, creepy, ghostly.
EXT. WHEAT FIELDS - BIRD’S EYE VIEW - EVENING
Fields of gold and green and nothing. WHISPERS gain volume, become EERIE VOICES, high, girlish, we can’t tell what they are saying.
Suddenly we move FAST across the fields, eerie voices LOUDER, screams, laughter, racing from afar towards Thera -- a dot down on the ground.
EXT. WHEAT FIELD - EVENING
Thera looks up, her eyes widen, as VOICES GROW.
SUDDENLY, she gasps/shrinks back.
CUT TO BLACK
OVER BLACK: GHOSTLY DEATH RATTLE
EXT. THE ROAD THROUGH THE WHEAT FIELDS - SUNSET
MUSIC: Catatonia’s “Road Rage” [chorus beginning “you could be taking it easy on yourself...”]
Time has passed. Colder light.
A fast-approaching Jeep. LOUD ENGINE. Huge tyres.
Thera steps bouncily out the wheat and onto the verge. No tears. Perky, as if possessed by a totally different girl.
Close on: Thera’s eyes squint, evilly.
Thera’s POV: the Jeep’s numberplate.
Thera smiles, widely, toothily, as if looking at her birthday cake. Bloodied lip. Bloody forehead. Whore outfit.
Thera holds her skinny arm out, thumbs-up, hitchin’ a ride.
The engine roars.
The sun sinks below the horizon.
Thera pulls her ghoulish “sexy” face, mouth open, winking [Cerys Matthew’s sings “maybe losing your mind...”]
SUPER: DEAD GIRLS
SUPER: Episode 1: “Don’t Go Out After Dark”
END TEASER
FADE OUT.
The original book trailer
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