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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Banshee Draft 5

Ext. Day. Edge of forest.

ANGUS and HEATHER run down the side of a slippery hill in a forest. They pause to take in the sight. In front of them is a huge bridge of ancient stone leading to a castle above. They are surrounded by looming walls and knobbly dead trees.

HEATHER

Of all the places to trip balls you choose this place, it’s proper blair witch over here.

ANGUS

Ah so you’re Billy Big Baws right up ‘til we’re here, shitebag.

HEATHER (shakes head)

*tuts* Fuck up.

(Teasing)

It's no the forest, it’s being alone with a psycho bastart like you.

(In condescending voice)

Had yer pills today McMurphy?

They stare each other down for a moment as though she has crossed a line, then both scoff and walk together deeper into the woods.

Ext. Day. Forest

Angus and Heather wander lackadaisically around the woods.

Ext. Day. Forest

Angus’s attention shoots from tree to bush to ground, taking none of it in. Heather notices his distress and clicks her fingers

Heather

Angus come on look at me

Angus’s eyes lock onto Heathers.

Heather

It’s just a bad point in the trip okay? Yea? It’ll pass soon now don’t worry. It’s all waves remember, you just have to ride them.

Heather is now right in front of Angus and sits the two of them down against a tree.

Heather

Just breathe with me alright? 1

Angus breathes to the pace Heather sets and slowly calms down.

Cuts to Black

Ext. Night. Cave.

The two stand by the entrance of a cave. An eerie singing comes from within, punctuated by sloshing water and a strange wet slapping noise. Heather leads the way in

Int. Night. Cave.

The space is filled with contrasting shadows and moonlight. A woman in a ragged grey dress and a dirty blind fold is half hidden in darkness, washing clothes in an old wooden bucket.

Angus steps back quivering but Heather seems somehow mesmerised by the woman.

ANGUS(Whispering)

Heather

She doesn’t seem to hear

ANGUS(Louder)

Heather!

Silence fills the cave.

Water drips from the Banshee’s translucent white and veiny blue hands.

Heathers eyes widen as The Banshee raises its head and slightly cocks its ear.

Ext. Night Forest

Angus blindly stumbles through tripping roots and scratching branches. The Banshee’s wails seem to follow him even when his legs are shaking and chest heaving.

The screams finally begin to die away of their own accord. Angus leans against a tree, counting

Angus

One, two, three four

Int. Morning. Kitchen.

Angus blows into a steaming cup of tea. Dim wintery light filters in from outside. Angus turns to Heather, words on his lips, but finds her muttering to herself.

Heather is hunched over the basin totally still and reminds Angus strangely of the Banshee. Water drips from her limp hands.

HEATHER

No no I can’t do that, I can’t.

ANGUS

Heather?...Who are you talking to?

Heather turns to him surprised.

HEATHER

What you on about?

[Confused frown]

You look a mess mate, you alright?

Angus shakes his head dismissively. He reaches for his tea but it is somehow on his other side.

ANGUS

Something was wrong with those shrooms, Fuck knows what I did that night but I’m s... nah I'm being para... I mean, you’ve not fully been... here. Will you tell me what happened?

HEATHER

Man! nothing happened

The basement door thumps from the other room as though someone had hit it hard from below. Angus leans to the side to try see what the noise was. He slowly leans forward to try and see what happened. Heather, from the sink, holds her hand out, drops a glass and smashes it. Angus jumps out his skin.

HEATHER

Sorry.

At a loss for words Angus looks into his tea. Black blobs like blood spread through it. He tries to stare the tea back to normality.

Heather

I trusted you and you left me behind

Angus is snapped out of the trance. He turns to Heather to continue their conversation to find she is gone. Angus’s wheezy breathing rattles out his mouth so he counts but seems unable to calm down

He sits on the couch, hugging legs to chest and counting.

Int. Night. Kitchen

Angus sits up confused and disoriented to a dark room. There’s a knocking noise over a humming which seems to be eternally getting lower pitched.

Int. Night. Angus’s room

The shadows are a deep crimson and blood red shoots out the projector to bounce of a blank wall above the bed. The room is a pile of clothes, dishes and cigarette paraphernalia.

A large black amp hums its strange noise from a chest of drawers by the door, which Angus switches off. But the low banging continues from elsewhere in the dark flat.

Int. Night. Hallway.

A bar of light shines from the cupboard across the hall, beyond it, darkness. The banshee, unnoticed, watches him from within the darkness. The noise comes from Heather’s room.

He opens the door.

Int. Night. Heather’s room

The curtains are closed, the room is dark. A single red lamp casts dim light in the far corner. Heather’s shadowy figure is moving strangely back and forth by the wall, but it is difficult to make out what she is doing in the dark. Angus takes a step closer

She is repeatedly banging her head off the white wall with an awful force.

Blood splatters out of her nose and cut up gums. Her face, wall and t-shirt are covered.

In a rush Angus turns the lights on. Blinding white light destroys shadows lurking in the corners. Suddenly Heather is by her bed looking perplexed and clicking her fingers.

Heather

Angus...Hallooo?

Angus can hardly respond, he hardly breathes, hardly moves, except an imperceptible shake of his head.

Silhouetted by the bar of light across the corridor the Banshee watches Angus.

Heather

Angus I really think you should speak to someone.

He switches the light back off just to see what happens.

Heather smashes her face off the wall once again. The blood has spread everywhere and is flying through the air in drops.

Heather lurches away from the wall as though breaking free but is incredibly tense.

She seems to be trying to speak but nothing escapes her lips. She slowly and shakily forces her hand up, either trying to point or reach for help.

Angus is transfixed and doesn’t notice the Banshee, now standing right behind him. He takes a hesitant step towards Heather, but turns to leave. The Banshee has vanished from behind him, then a bone breaking crack comes from Heather’s direction. Tentatively he turns.

Heather stands in the corner staring at him, head ominously tilted forward and hair covering her face.

Her arm bends forwards and inwards with a blood curdling Crack. Her knees bend inwards and her foot forwards. Crack

She goes for Angus, each step bringing more destruction to her twisted body.

Int. Night. Hallway

Angus turns to run, almost right into the Banshee who is blocking the hall. He has nowhere to go but his room and slams the door closed.

Int. Night. Angus’s Bedroom

Angus holds the door knob, hands shaking, as though his life depends on it. But nothing happens and he begins to calm down.

Unbeknown to him the trap door is open right behind his feet. He takes a cautious step back, then another, and falls. There is a horrible crack from his landing.

Int. Night. Basement

Angus groans in a square of red light coming from above. Whispers and the dripping of water permeates the shadowy basement. Dark shapes loom about him but he doesn’t know what they are.

Angus tries to stand up but on putting weight on his left leg he cries out in pain and falls back down. The whispering stops but the dripping noise continues. All his movements seem unnaturally loud in the deep underground silence.

He takes his phone light out and shines it around in a slow circle around him.

Right at the edge of light is the banshee, suddenly illuminated by the phone light, watching him through its blind fold. He cries out once again and drops his phone.

In the red light he closes his eyes and tries to block out the horror of his situation. There’s noises of something moving around him

Angus

One, Two, Three, Four, Five.

He’s pulled himself together slightly and picks his phone up to gingerly point where the banshee had been. It’s gone. Instead, in the far corner is a stool he could use to get out.

Unsure of his ability to walk he half crawls along the ground, making slow progress to the stool. The light flashes about the space momentarily lighting strange creepy objects as he passes.

He reaches the stool and pauses a moment. A faint crying noise comes from the darkness. It sounds just like Heather.

Angus

Heather?

HEATHER

No, no, no please no.

He grabs his phone and shines it about. About a meter away is the thing, hunched away from him, shaking as though its crying.

Banshee

[Screams in pain]

Please stop, please I’ll do anything. [beat] I don’t care, he left me. Whatever you want just let me go. [a gasp of relieved air] Thank you, than...

Angus’s face screws up in a rage. He grabs the nearest thing and flings it. But the Banshee is gone.

Angus’s breath speeds up but he tries to hold it together. He grabs the stool and swings it over his waist then pushes it back to the red hole above.

He now counts each push of the chair, going to five repeatedly

Angus

One, Two, Three, Four, Five

He places the stool under the hole beside the heavy table and stand up with the support of the two object. Now he has to pull himself up to stand on the wobbly stool.

He holds himself up with the table and stool and pulls his strong leg onto the stool beside his hand. His bad leg hangs in the air underneath him. With one hand on the table behind him for support he reaches for the edge of the hole.

He can’t quite reach it.

The sounds of Heather crying begin once again, like a multitude of recordings all cut and over laid together. Her weeping, screaming in pain and begging for help. The noise makes him jump and he almost falls off the stool, having to grab back on with his outstretched hand.

Once again he has to pull himself together

Angus

One, Two – aw fuck this

This time he goes for broke and lurches with his hand for the hole, just grabbing it. The stool wobbles beneath him. With his hand on the floor above he stands one footed on the stool and his head just about enters the other room.

Int. Night. Living Room

Angus looks over the edge into his room, it seems empty in the translucent red light. He wedges his elbows on either side of him with hand palm down on the ground

Takes a moment to mentally prepare himself.

Then pulls his weight onto his arms. The chair clatters beneath.

His Face strains with the effort. Slowly but surely, he pulls up, going red and breathing hard with the effort.

He gets his arms locked beneath him, he’s more or less out of the hole. His breath frees up with the relief of pressure physical and emotional. He lets out a small laugh, his head hanging limp

Then seems to be yanked back down from below. A look of terror passes over his face as he looks up, almost questioningly.

Then he is rushed downwards into the darkness. A thump and a crack follow.

There is silence except for dripping.

Crimson shadows dominate the red room.

Heather emerges from the darkness. She has been watching all along.

She stands over the hole and looks down into the darkness.

Then closes the trap door.

She disappears back into the darkness

Time passes until night becomes day.

Int. Day. Living Room

The red light is mostly lost under the pale orange light of sunrise. The shadows are mostly obliterated leaving an inviting well lit room.

Heather has also disappeared.

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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Acting without Dialogue

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how to get good performances out of the actors when there is no dialogue, and the acting is primarily in how they carry themselves. Specifically for Christine I feel her key possessed moments will need intensive work. When practicing her movement down the hall we found that if she imagined she was being sucked backward it gave her something to play with. So I plan to do intensive work shops with her to help her loosen up, where we both together try different ways of moving, hopefully we will bounce off each other and together get a better idea of how to capture the movement. Then she will have to capture the possessed empty shell of Heather at the end of the film. I believe that compiling clips from films which do this and have her study them would be an effective means to achieve this. With James he must really express the fear that Angus feels very convincingly. Again research will be key. Then I would like to have him remember times he has been afraid through his life, or imagine scenarios, such as being on a rollercoaster, feeling that someone is following him in the street, being alone in a dark place, feeling abandoned as a child. Hopefully these exercises will help them both find the performances we need

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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Myself, Helen, Costas and David went to the forest we planning to shoot at. Costas took the black magic along to test possible shots and Helen took sound kit to test the sound.

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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Character Bios

Angus and Heather have been friends since pretty early on in secondary school. Hence, they know each other inside and out, they're good and dark sides. They drifted for a couple of years after school but reconnected to live together and have lived more or less happily together since.

Angus was always quite popular in school and would spend most of his time hanging around. He can’t really remember how Heather and him became friends so it's almost as though they have always been. Throughout his life he has had a series of friends that he has fancied but never said anything to, and Heather was the first, and possibly for the longest (most of their school years) so even though he no longer feels like that at all for her she retains a special place in his heart, like an echo of his unexpressed feelings. When they drifted, Angus felt it was because he tended to party far more than Heather so without school to force them together, they didn’t naturally spend huge amounts of time together. While he found this slightly sad, he did not worry too much as he was busy partying and making new friends. Angus felt sure living together would work as they had been friends for so long and thought maybe Heather would ground him. His failure to express his feelings to anyone of the people he has fancied through his life reflect one of his greatest weaknesses, in that he is a coward. It is also why he parties so much, as it is far easier than putting himself out there and trying to do something creative or productive. It is why he moved in with Heather, safe and comfortable. He becomes scared to say or do the wrong thing which creates a deep-seated anxiety and self-doubt which only serves to feed the fear which plagues and defines him. He is desperate not to show this side of himself, he keeps his anxiety meds hidden and only Heather is truly aware of it.

Heather was far quieter in school and had a few friends which she stuck to quite closely, the key one being Angus. She suspected that Angus had some feelings for her, but was never sure how she would react if he tried to tell her about it as she loved him deeply but was not sure if she could in the way he wanted. She truly didn’t know how she would react. Like Angus this dynamic in their formative years has cemented their friendship. Ironically when they left school, she was far more upset at them drifting, likely because he was one of a few for her whereas he had many friends to keep himself busy with. It was her that suggested they live together, missing him and struggling to find someone to live with. And like Angus Heather’s great flaw came out in her failure to have a clear response to Angus now gone affections. She hardly knows herself or what she wants, and often become caught in a double bind between her two options. Unable to choose she becomes trapped in a limbo of not choosing, which in reality is worse than either of the other two options could possibly be. And the true tragedy is that she is aware of this, that she is only half living her life rather than ever choosing a course of action. Yet she seems unable to change this and be decisive, at least until it is too late. Once again Angus is the only one in Heather life that knows just how deep rooted this issue is, but less because she is ashamed of the issue and more because sit seems like such a ridiculous thing to cause her so much pain, hence she feels she cannot discuss it with people. Yet even this is part of the issue, she fails to be assertive enough, and she is smart enough to see this also, so the knowledge tortures her.

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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Banshee Inspiration

A banshee (/ˈbænʃiː/ BAN-shee; Modern Irish bean sí, baintsí, from Old Irish: ben síde, baintsíde, pronounced [bʲen ˈʃiːðʲe, banˈtiːðe], "woman of the fairy mound" or "fairy woman") is a female spirit in Irish mythology who heralds the death of a family member, usually by wailing, shrieking, or keening. Her name is connected to the mythologically important tumuli or "mounds" that dot the Irish countryside, which are known as síde (singular síd) in Old Irish.[1]

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bafilmmichaelmallon · 6 years

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Researching films 3

Then there is Hereditary which inoculates the viewers uncertainty through so many means. For example, the mother creates doll house replications of her memories. It then seems as though the Grandmother's doll is moving around in relation to the hauntings yet this is never made totally clear. The mother is in such denial that the viewer becomes unsure. She refuses to respond. This denial I feel is a powerful tool, it is very common to go into denial in the face of a situation too difficult to cope with but denial inevitably makes things worse, allowing the issue to grow ever further out of hand. Hence use of denial makes the character ever more powerless while making the viewer ever more uncertain in the face of the events. There are also large amounts of ambiguity in the plot, nothing is stated, only hinted at and the flow of events slowly reveal the truth. For example, the mother makes friends with a women from her support class and notices, on visiting her flat, that she has a floor matt similar to the grandmothers. Nothing more is said on the matter but as the plot unfolds it become increasingly clear who this women really is. The film also manages to make use of different kinds of horror at different times to touch on all the many different soft spots people may have. There is psychological as the relationships between the family members grow more suspicious, supernatural as the ghost sightings increase and physical horror as awful damage is done to one family member or another. Here again the amibuity comes into play as many of the earlier instances of damage to a family member it is difficult to decipher how much it was accident and how much the influence of evil forces. It is not until the end that we begin to suspect that everything in the whole film played out exactly as wished. Finally camera work is used to throw the viewer off. For example, a shot appears to be upright but we suddenly realise the shot is at a 90 degree angle and we were all along looking at a ghost. It also makes excellent use of long shots which sweep back and forth around the scene, showing everything that must be shown though the movement but never once breaking the tension with a shot. In fact it builds and build until the viewer is desperate for the release of tension through a cut.

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