Final Short Film Treatment

           I.     Treatment For:  A Living Nightmare

         II.     Logline: A boy kills his psychotic father as his father attempts to kill his family.

       III.     Treatment: Chris comes home from school in the evening. He walks into his house casually. His mother is cooking dinner, his sister is doing homework, and his father is on the computer. The mom says dinnertime as everyone comes to the table to eat spaghetti. It is now dark outside. Chris’s mom and ad announce to him and his sister that they will be getting a divorce. Chris’s sister storms out of the room. Chris goes after his sister to talk to her. Once they get into the sister’s room, the power goes out. Chris’s mom lights candles throughout the house and then walks down stairs. Chris tries to calm his sister down when a scream is heard.

The sister freaks out as she says that was their mom who screamed. Chris tells his sister to stay in her room while he searches for his parents. He walks through the kitchen and then upstairs. When he walks back down, the candles are no longer lit. Chris hesitantly calls for his mom and dad. He gets a flashlight out of a drawer in the kitchen and turns it on. He walks downstairs into the garage. He still cannot find his parents. He starts to walk back upstairs when the beam of his flashlight comes across a hand sticking out of a door in the garage. Chris freezes, and then slowly walks toward the hand as the beam from the flashlight is shaking because his hands are shaking. He opens the door and there is the body of his mother.

He slowly walks up the stairs and creeps around the corner. He then surveys the room with his flashlight. Chris then walks towards the kitchen without making a sound and grabs a knife. He heads towards his sister room to check up on her, still walking slowly, surveying the house with his flashlight. He hears a noise and quickly turns around, but no one is there. He turns back and walks down the hall towards his sister’s room. Chris opens the door and searches with his flashlight, but she is not in the room. He continues into the room and peeks into the bathroom and finds his sisters body lying on the floor of the shower.

The boy exits the bathroom and sits down next to her bed. He is panicking and mumbling to himself. He then hears footsteps coming from the hall. The footsteps bypass his sister’s room as his father goes into Chris’s room. Chris gets up and walks towards his room, with is knife in his hand shaking. He walks towards his room. As he enters into his room, no one is there. He turns on his flashlight and it is apparent that no one is there. He sighs and turns as round as his father is in front of him. Chris’s father puts his hand around Chris’s neck and walks him towards Chris’s bed. As the father puts Chris onto his bed while strangling him, Chris shoves the knife into his father’s stomach. His father falls on top of him dead. Chris pushes his father off of him. Unable to cope with the pain, Chris stabs himself in the heart.