Private Project

Halloween Club

Logline: Set in 1998 Los Angeles, a young woman takes a job at a year round halloween outlet, where she secretly investigates the store’s dark past, including an unresolved murder, with help from a group of eclectic employees.⁣

Longer bio: Halloween Club is a delightful culmination of genres, characters and story lines, packed under the roof of a yearlong costume outlet. It's a dark comedy, murder mystery unfolding in the late 1990's. One might say it’s Stranger Things meets Scooby Doo meets Superstore, but weirder.

The story follows Luz, a young filipino caucasian Nancy Drew type. An aspiring investigative journalist, she takes a job at Halloween Club back in her hometown following college graduation after learning about a murder that took place there many years before. There, she meets a host of eclectic employees, all of whom share the commonality of being misfits in their communities. Halloween Club is a place they can all exist peacefully, despite its dark past.

Through flashbacks, we see the murder and darkness unfold and Luz and her new friends try to solve what she believes to be a cover up and unsolved crime. Her new friend/co-worker Jade, a black goth girl and nobodies sidekick, suggests they have a seance to communicate with the dude who was murdered and ask him who really killed him. Nico, an attractive and funny disabled man in a wheelchair also plays a part in helping Luz uncover the truth, while becoming her love interest in the process. The other supporting roles are just as colorful in their own ways.

Drawing on 90’s references such as Scream and Never Been Kissed, the show explores true crime in a time before podcasts like Crime Junkie existed and AskJeeves.com was our Google.

  • Chelsea Javier
    Writer
    Fruit Fly, Lonely Batman, Paving My Own Way, Stranger Danger
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Halloween Club Short
  • Project Type:
    Screenplay, Short Script, Television Script, Treatment
  • Number of Pages:
    30
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • First-time Screenwriter:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Women in Film x Blacklist Episodic Lab

    September 10, 2019
    Semi-Finalist
  • “Writing The Half-Hour TV Pilot” competition
    Los Angeles, CA
    July 9, 2019
    Finalist for Best Screenplay
Writer Biography - Chelsea Javier

Hi, I’m Chelsea Javier! I’m a filmmaker and Los Angeles native, currently living in Silver Lake with my husband Paul and our two rescue bunnies, Hammy and Yoshi.

I’ve been working in entertainment for several years. My first job in the biz was as a special effects PA on the film “Guardians of the Galaxy 2”, and from that point on I was hooked! I love working both in front of and behind the camera, and this year, Paul and I started a production company called American Lagomorph Productions to house our collaborations. One of my favorite projects we’ve done together is a comedic short film called “Lonely Batman”, which was recently written about in Vulture.

Recently, I became a semi-finalist in the Women in Film x Black List 2019 Episodic lab for my dark-comedy pilot “Halloween Club”, which I plan on shooting a short film/proof of concept film that I plan on developing into a series. My ultimate career goal is to produce my own television show that I also star in, a la Brit Marling with The OA, and Issa Rae with Insecure.

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Writer Statement

I wrote my first pilot, Halloween Club, as a way to combine my love of dark comedy, true crime and 90's nostalgia, centered around a lead character who reflects my own identity as a mixed Filipina/Caucasian woman. ⁣ I want to explore identity in a non direct way, within a colorful and strange world.