Bitter Sweets

a feature-length screenplay in the horror genre

Synopsis

When young ADAM and GRETA are orphaned after the tragic death of the parents in a car accident, Greta is struck dumb, and Adam does his utmost to protect her. The children, as willed by their father, are taken under the wing of their estranged heavy metal rocker uncle CLEM, and his partner DANA - a singer/musician with two steel front teeth.

Once taken to live in their new home - a forest shack in the middle of nowhere - the children must get used to radical changes in their lives, not least, new guardians given to growing commercial quantities of marijuana. To make matters worse, the children learn that people have been disappearing in the area without trace.

Meanwhile the cheerful local police constable MURPHY goes missing after investigation a missing backpacker.

Deep in the forest, middle-aged loner BREWSTER, proprietor of the confectionary shop, “The Big Lamington”, surfs the web, fascinated by such spine-chilling news items as the German man who advertised on-line to be eaten.  

One night, after being left alone by their guardians who have gone into town for a pub gig, Adam and Greta hear a blood-curdling wail. Frightened out of their wits, the children scurry to hide from a stranger with a weapon who’s pursing a backpacker. The children make a run for it. But not before Adam grabs a notebook from the kitchen.

In darkness, Adam spikes the notebook pages through tree-branches so they can find their way back to the house. But by dawn, a wind has sprung up and the children wake in undergrowth to the sound of rustling paper flying past them. Adam and Greta take solace in the knowledge that if they die, at least they’ll die together.

Lost and hungry, Adam and Greta go in search of help and food, eventually stumbling across “The Giant Lamington”. The shopkeeper in his pristine apron is all smiles as he offers the children comfort and sweets.

Before they know it, Adam and Greta find themselves bound and gagged and confronting the fate which befell the backpacker and other missing persons.

But Brewster hadn’t reckoned on the resourcefulness of his captives and their will to live. As decapitated human heads with missing tongues hang on butcher’s hooks in the monster’s home-made abattoir, Greta recovers her voice enabling her to distract Brewster long enough to save Adam from the meat cleaver.

The children muster all their might and wit to render their abductor helpless, buying them enough time for help to arrive in the form of their frantic, bike-chain wielding guardians.

As the police board up Brewster’s house of horrors, Clem and Dana eradicate their crop of marijuana then enlist the help of the Adam and Greta to add an extra room to the house with the intention of making the children’s ’s life more comfortable.