Monstrous
In the North American rust-belt, a bullied 12-year-old boy is heartbroken when his unstable mother exposes his absentee father as a cheat. But when the boy survives a suicide bid, and his mother spirals into depression, he learns new ways to cope under the influence of a monstrous entity.
Harrison Vercoe, a young boy in the North American rust-belt, is desperate for the love and protection of his father, John. Unfortunately, John is not there for his son. Harrison suffers at the hands of sadistic school bullies and the slow-burning abusive of his mother, Elizabeth.
Harrison’s situation goes from bad to worse when an anonymous letter exposes John as a cheat and Harrison locks John out of the family home. As Elizabeth strains to pick up the pieces, Harrison struggles for emotional support. His older sister, Nicky, is not interested, and his only friend is his little brother, Daniel. Harrison hangs himself from the attic skylight.
Harrison regains consciousness, and the hospital discharges him under the care of a counsellor, Doctor Haim. Harrison’s grandmother, Edith, also comes to support the family. That night, Harrison wakes to find a terrifying entity watching him in his room. His screams alert the entire house, and Elizabeth investigates, only to find him asleep in bed. In the morning, Harrison’s behavior begins to take a darker turn. And soon after he spits in the face of a school bully.
Doctor Haim places Harrison under hypnosis to understand the history of Harrison’s melancholy. He gets more than he bargained for… The entity appears in a suppressed memory and causes Harrison to have a strange seizure. Back in the present, Elizabeth’s emotional state unravels. And when Edith dies in bizarre circumstances, she beats Harrison and Nicky in a rage.
Despite mourning Edith, Harrison, Elizabeth and Daniel watch Nicky perform in an orchestra show at the school. When Harrison slips out of the audience to the restroom the school bullies take the opportunity for revenge. Bad idea. Harrison’s snaps and murders the gang, including Nicky, who tries to intervene. Then, he goes after Elizabeth and Daniel.
Doctor Haim phones John convinced that Elizabeth is unstable and concerned for the safety of the children. John can’t reach them by phone. He heads to the family home where he finds Harrison impaled on the floor of the attic, and Daniel in tears. Elizabeth attacks and slices John’s hand in two with a shard of glass. He fights her off long enough to rescue Harrison and Daniel from the house. But he pays a heavy price when Elizabeth beheads him in ultimate revenge.
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Adam SpringWriter
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Project Type:Screenplay
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Number of Pages:110
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Country of Origin:United Kingdom
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Language:English
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First-time Screenwriter:Yes
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Student Project:No
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Shore Scripts 2019USA
October 25, 2019
Feature Semifinalist -
The Script Lab Free Screenplay ContestUSA
December 4, 2019
Feature Quarterfinalist
Undiagnosed as a child, with what has now become known as “Pure-O” - a type of OCD relating to intrusive thoughts, with very few external symptoms - Adam Spring had a sometimes-challenging childhood, where his symptoms were aggravated by stresses at home and school; and misunderstood by counsellors and psychologists.
This auto-imagination led to an interest in story-telling and writing from a young age, and an appreciation for darker genres of film and literature – he plagiarised the film “Aliens” as a seven year old, despite not having seen the actual film, and presented an original story to an impressed primary school tutor who hadn’t realised his crime.
As an adult, Adam now mines from his past traumas and present challenges as a father to bring real emotional and cerebral weight to allegorical feature horror scripts, centred around familial relationships.
Educated at the International Film School of Wales and residing in London, Adam has built strong relationships across the screenwriting community in the UK, and also, more recently, with Roadmap Writers in the US.
Monstrous is born out of childhood experience. I just asked myself "what's the worst, scariest, way my trauma could have gone?" and then I turned it up to eleven.
This is not a script I could have written at university, nor even in my twenties. It needed a certain time for me to be able to reflect without becoming too emotional. But interesstingly for me, it was the fact that I became a father myself, that triggered memories and emotions to resurface about a specific, and traumatic time.