×Stage 32 Blog Update
Subjectivity by Julie Gray

Leashed

Liverpool, United Kingdom

Development

Leashed is a psychological horror film that plays with conventions and audience expectations and has a killer third act twist that flips the story and the genre on it's head. Playing as a standard Female in peril in a remote location horror film the story uses all the tropes of the genre – remote location; pretty girl victims; gore and a relentless killer – to lull the audience into a false sense of expectation; then when the audience believes they know what to expect and who to root for and who to jeer, the twists confound their expectations and reveal a revenge drama based in deep primal emotions of honour, love and family.

Leashed started out as a UK Film Council funded short film and is now a feature film script. Continuing on from the short’s themes and expanding upon the story and mythology of the short, the feature aims to create a new iconic British horror film that will also appeal to an international audience and could become a cult classic with many standout visual and terrifying moments.

An American woman, Jennifer, is looking for her estranged missing Civil War recreationist father in the last place he was seen - a remote mountain range in Wales, UK. Still grieving the death of her son and the end of her marriage she is belligerent in her search for her father and a stranger in a strange land. Making no friends and taking no for an answer she manages to land herself in a dire situation: a conflict with the Farmer. Seemingly a psychopathic killer, the Farmer is also his daughter's jailer, keeping her chained up in his remote farmhouse.

But the Farmer is just a father driven crazy by a thirst for revenge and bloodlust. He witnessed his daughter’s murder at the hands of a werewolf and, when he caught the beast, it had reverted back to human form. So kidknapping the human girl he has had to wait and bide his time until the next full moon and the reappearance of the animal within her. It is only then that he can kill the monster that took his daughter away. With his revenge plot in motion he is prepared to let nobody and nothing stand in his way.

When Jennifer comes crashing into his life his plans are forced to change and innocent lives are lost. Culminating in a battle between the Farmer and Jennifer and the female werewolf and her male werewolf mate, the Farmer has to decide just how willing he is to go for revenge, and just how much he is willing to loose.