Short Film Treatment


ACT I
This may contain: a man driving down the street at night with his hand on the steering wheel,


The film opens on a night scape: contrasted blue with yellow glows, empty roads, and the low hum of a car engine. A woman, blunt bob framing her face, drives with a sharp, unreadable expression. The radio crackles with a news report - another young man has been murdered by an unknown killer. The broadcast sets an ominous tone as she pulls up across the street from a quiet suburban home. She pauses, watching. The camera lingers on her stillness, making us question what draws her here. Finally, she steps out of the car and crosses the street. The house door is ajar. She pushes it open and slips inside. From the moment she enters, the perspective becomes voyeuristic - lingering frames, half - seen angles, the feeling that someone is watching her. The audience, primed by the radio report, assumes she’s walked into danger.

ACT II


Inside, silence presses on every corner. She moves slowly, her heels clicking across the wooden floor as she explores the empty house. The tension builds with every room. The camera frames her as if she is the subject of surveillance, the walls and doorways closing in on her. Then, in the kitchen, the mood shifts. She puts a record on - a burst of smooth jazz fills the room - and begins cooking. The aesthetic is distinctly retro, evoking the 1960s-70s in its colour, sound, and design. The moment is incongruous, playful even, as she dances casually to the music. We see flashes of another life: she picks up a framed photo of herself and (who we assume is) her boyfriend, left face-down on the mantle, and studies it. We pick up the idea she knows her way around this kitchen, therefore she’s in no danger, but the tension never fully leaves. Shadows stretch across the walls. The music competes with the dread. A hand reaches for a knife from the block - the blade sliding free is sharp, deliberate. Our sense that she is being stalked, that she is moments away from being attacked, reaches its breaking point. The screen cuts abruptly to black.


ACT III

This may contain: two men in suits standing next to each other

We cut to a new shot - the inside of a car trunk, shot from below in a Tarantino style. The woman’s face leans into frame, blood speckled across her skin. She wipes it away, calm, unshaken. The audience realises the truth in an instant: the threat was never against her. She is the killer. With a casual strength, she hauls her boyfriend’s lifeless body out of the trunk. The image recontextualizes everything that came before - the radio broadcast, the voyeuristic camera, the playful dancing - all clues that she was never prey, but predator. She slams the trunk shut. Black. The film ends on the shock of revelation, leaving the audience unsettled, but also charmed by its aesthetic. The idea of the film is it is both a slight homage to 70s cinema and a subversion of femme fatale and slasher tropes, delivered with style, suspense, and a sense of play.

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