Film Synopsis: Delirium

Teenage siblings, and wanna-be paranormal investigators, Megan and Zac, find themselves drawn to a graveyard on the very edge of their latest hometown; New Shipton. Having moved there with their father after their Mother committed suicide in the bathroom of the previous house. She'd had a life-long struggle with severe depression and schizophrenia which her husband didn't understand. Although both Zac and Megan missed their Mother, Katherin, they grieved their loss, then moved on. Their Father on the other hand was not so lucky. He blamed himself for not looking out for her more. Memories of his bloodied, deceased wife haunted him on a day to day basis, thus resulting in the sudden change of scene. He uprooted his two teenage children (much to their despair), and moved them two hundred and seventy three miles north to New Shipton.

The first thing they see as they drive to their new home is a funeral procession. Later on they will find out about a young girl who committed suicide in the cemetery by hanging herself from a tree. Despite this negative first encounter, the new town was pleasant enough. Nothing like their previous home where drug addicts and prostitutes clung to street corners like leeches to flesh. No, there was none of that in New Shipton. Instead, there were little quaint coffee shops, upmarket bakers and organic grocers, all selling their goods at three times the rate of any shop the family had ever known.

However there seemed to be a - sickness- that hung over the town like the plague. About half a mile down the main road out of the town, sat an abandoned mental institute. It was closed down in the nineteen fifties after its one-hundred-and-odd years of abuse and torture for all those unfortunate enough to be trapped inside. Now it just stands there, a grey, skeletal reminder of a far darker time for the town.

See the thing is, New Shipton arose from the ashes of Shipton. Back just after the asylum was first set up, the original town, at that point only a few farm houses, burnt to the ground after a freak fire tore through the buildings. Many said that it was the curse of all the "Devil's spawn" that lived at the asylum. That they had caused the fire. As a result, only the staff that worked at the asylum would live nearby, so New Shipton was built. The first new houses developed were for the managers, big-wigs with even bigger bank accounts. Many claimed to be "Doctors specialized in the field of mental health", although there was never any proof of this. Then again, nobody cared, so nobody questioned it. As a result, these first few houses set the tone for the rest of the town. Huge buildings, lavish stonework and huge gardens. Many of the original buildings still stand there today.

However as time went on, the fire was forgotten, and the town began to flourish. Instead a new attitude began- The mental institute had helped build the economy. However, this brought negative consequences. As the asylum gradually became emptier and emptier, the staff began to worry for their jobs, after all, you need money to maintain such huge houses. As a result, local homeless men and women were taken in, as well as the elderly, and anybody who showed even mild traits of depression or other mental illness. They would then spend the rest of their days being electrocuted, tortured, beaten and in most cases, raped. It was not a healthy atmosphere. It never will be.

Once Zac and Megan heard all this history they were intrigued. Waiting till their Father went to bed, they snuck out with their cameras, flashlights and digital recorder to the old asylum. However, they couldn't get past the high rusted fencing into the actual building. Despondent, they turn to head home, when Zac notices a glint of something shining in the beam of his flashlight, just within the tree-line of a small forest to the edge of the field.

On closer inspection, it became apparent that they had stumbled upon the asylum's graveyard. Hundreds of cold, grey, unmarked slabs of marble laid flush against the damp soil. Some had been cracked over the years, others were dirtied and covered in centuries of filth. However, a solitary stone angel stood in the very center. Its head bowed, wings outspread and hands held in the praying position. The peculiar monument didn't fit into the scene that surrounded them, she was beautiful, pure.

Something about the angel set the two on edge, circling round behind her, both jumped from their skins.The back of her delicate head had all been shattered away, but a brown-maroon-y mush oozed from the back, maggots writhing in the gore. However, in a blink it was gone. Both thoroughly shook up, they ran home. Neither speaking till through the threshold of their warm house.

As time went on, Megan put the strange encounter down to a trick of the light, to being too tired, to having an over active imagination. Anything that seemed logical. The two didn't speak about it once.

Zac however was a different story. Her elder sibling started acting strange. She noticed peculiar marks on his arms, like burns, however in unusual shapes. He cut away his hair saying that he needed to be clean. His usually tidy room would be turfed upside down looking for something he hadn't seen for years. Then other times he was completely fine, the old Zac that she'd always known.

Exactly one week after the incident, she found him sat in his room, a large black garden spider crawling on his hands. He caressed the fragile beast once, before grasping its legs and twisting. Watching the insect twist and try to get away from his torture with a blank expression. His eyes flicked over the black body once, before he rived hard, ripping the beast in two.

As his behavior became more and more erratic, more and more violent, she found herself searching his symptoms online. The more she looked, the more tests she took, the more it seemed he had extremely suddenly developed Schizophrenia. She didn't believe the results, after all, these tests weren't a full diagnosis right? Her Mother never acted like this? Besides this behavior was far too sudden to be the result of a mental disorder. It had only flared up since the graveyard incident. She prayed she wouldn't lose him like her Mother.

Leaving her room and heading into the back yard for some air she saw her brother, crouched down, concealing something from view of the door with his body. His shoulders were tense, Body unnaturally still, one hand helping to hold his weight up, the other clutching something. Calling out but getting no form of acknowledgement, she slowly walked closer. "He becomes violent when he's like this," she mentally reminded herself.

Nothing could have prepared her for what she saw.

In-front of Zac was the family cat. Well, what was left of it. He'd pulled the guts out from a cruel gash, ragged in the stomach, made with his Dad's fishing knife, yet somehow kept the cat alive. It's lungs heaved painfully, sickeningly, as she tried to wheeze out a pitiful hiss. Her heart laying on a pile of unidentifiable innards, beating shallowly. Angered suddenly by something or other, Megan watched in horror as her brother plunged the knife deep into the cat's eye socket, ending her plight.

The killer then stood up, scooped up the bloodied, grotesque parody of a cat, and dumped it into the wheelie bin at the end of the yard. He slammed the lid back down before the cat had even come to rest in the bottom. He didn't look at Megan once throughout the whole time. He didn't look back at the corpse of his beloved Tassie, nor did he pay any attention to the blood pooling in the yard. Simply just walked up the steps into the house out of sight.

Flooding with tears, Megan ran out of the back gate of the yard, running full pelt out onto the fields behind the house. She didn't know where she was going, but she felt she had a reason to be running in that direction, so she didn't think to stop. After all, it wasn't her losing her mind was it? It's her psycho brother, wasn't it?

It was about six in the evening when she eventually dropped from exhaustion. She had been running through sharp gorse bushes, stumbling over tree roots, been whipped in the face by low-hanging tree branches for the past two hours. The pain had become unbearable. The pain. Pain.

Darkness.

When she awoke, she was laid out flat on one of the cold, unforgiving marble slabs. Her brother was stood over her, a sick grin on his face. The same blade he'd used to gut the cat was resting in his hands. More fresh marks scarred his arms, and his face was smeared in blood and filth from the graveyard.

Immediately Megan sat up, trying to bring herself level with Zac, when she realised he was stood on a chair. Only then did she notice the coarse rope round his neck, and the rickety wooden chair that he was stood on. Before she could stop him, he grinned and leapt backwards of the chair. The rope pulled tight, and his neck twisted to an impossible angle with a deafening crack.

Megan spun round, throwing up violently in the hedge bottom, tears burning her eyes, pain gripping her chest. Slowly, tentatively she turned to take in the horrific scene that she'd found herself in. The angel was the first thing she saw.The angel's face was twisted into a sick grin, her face was rotting and her hand's were also decomposing, strips of flesh hung from them like ghoulish lace and maggots fell from her eyes.

Megan opened her mouth to scream, but as she did, her voice caught in her throat. Her brother's dead eyes bore into hers, his head hanging at an inhuman angle. His grin mirrored the angel's as his hands shot out, grasping the sides of her face, and twisting sharply. Her world slipped into blackness, orchestrated by numerous disembodied hoots of laughter.

Opening Titles Sequence: 
This will start with the camera tracking around a stone wall of some building or other to expose a long shot of the graveyard which will pan to expose the whole scene. This will then fade to black.

The next shot will be a tracking view of the graveyard through some metal railings, the camera will then tilt up to show the sky and the trees reaching up for the sky before fading to black.

The third shot will be a shadowy girl walking through the tree-line. I'll change frame rates so that her movements seem unnatural and creepy. This will then straight cut to a low angle shot of her walking by. After this, I'll then fade her out so she disappears, then it will once again fade into black.

The fifth shot will be a medium shot of a noose swinging on one of the tree branches. The camera will track to the noose so that it results in a close up. You'll then see the fuzzy outline of the girl walking towards it. This will then fade to black.

Next the girl is sat in the tree, she has the noose round her neck and then drops out of the branches. There will then be a straight cut to a close up of the rope going taught and swinging.

The final shot will be a close up of her face, hidden by hair and tilted to the side. She'll then suddenly jolt her head up and scream into the camera. The music will suddenly stop and the screen will go black. The only word on the screen will be "Delirium".

Throughout all of these shots, 2 second extreme close-ups of dates on a gravestone will fit in between all of the different shots. This will aim to show what's gone on in the past.