Over the past two nights I’ve been taking into account the ‘central duel protagonists’ idea I took from my horror-comedy research and have begun forming a feature film concept that I think would work whilst also allowing for comedic and horror-centric aspects. Over Christmas I found myself arguing with a friend over whether or not you would be able to kill someone with an apple corer, and whether or not it would make a suitable weapon. Despite being told that the pressure needed to ‘core’ someone was impossible to muster I found something oddly quirky about the image of someone using something so quaint and insignificant to cause death by potentially plunging it into someone’s chest and removing their organs. The thought stayed with me and consistently made me smile and as soon as I began to think of two protagonists who would need to have the same conversation my friend and I did, the concept for my outline began to form almost immediately.

Rough Concept: Two friends who live together accidentally stumble upon a masked serial killer and become convinced that they’re next on the chopping block. They run home and lock themselves in, getting rid of everything in the house that could potentially be used as a weapon against them whilst slowly going insane from the paranoia.

I feel like even though the premise is simple, it would give me a good chance to develop the central characters and have their personalities take center stage which would allow the outline to work as an actual film. The minor horror aspects of the outline would be illustrated by the presence of the masked serial killer, and would contrast to comedic effect with the paranoia and idiocy of the central duo, allowing the scares to act as ‘recreational terror’ (Nowell, 133) for the audience, making the film almost more of a dark comedy.

 

Bibliography:

Nowell, R. (2014) “A kind of Bacall quality” Jamie Lee Curtis, Stardom and gentrifying non-Hollywood Horror. In: Nowell, R. (ed.) Merchants of Horror: The Business of Horror Cinema. New York, USA: Bloomsbury, 133.