TROY TOWN
Waking to find himself trapped in an abandoned asylum in the present, Nick’s attempts to escape trigger a mind-bending loop between that reality and one sixty years in the past - as a patient of the asylum - fighting to escape before the horrors of either time kill him.
TROY TOWN is a psychological horror set in two different times but in the same place, sixty years apart. Our hero Nick (late 20s), wakes up in the present in an abandoned lunatic asylum with no idea how he got there. As he swings a chair to break a window and escape the labyrinthine building, everything shifts on a heartbeat. Suddenly, it’s sixty years in the past, the hospital is functioning, and Nick is a patient pinned to the ground by orderlies stopping him from escaping. Nick is thrust into a horrific loop between the past and the present, with no apparent way of escaping either.
We avoid the tedium of repetition through Nick’s relationships with fellow patients as well as the ever changing and increasing horrors of both the abandoned and functioning hospital times, all of which represent Nick’s deterioration into madness and ruin. Nick struggles to piece together memories of his life in the twenty-first century; memories that include a woman he loves but knows is in some kind of danger. Frantic to get home to help her, Nick fights against doctors who have diagnosed him as delusional. The more he deteriorates and rails against hospital staff, the more his life is under threat at the hands of the sadistic Dr Crane. Crane is the hospital’s chief psychiatrist and purveyor of antiquated cruelties who threatens to take over Nick’s case from the compassionate, science-driven psychiatrist Dr Annabel Anderson.
In the past, as a patient, Nick’s life is at risk from both other patients, some of whom have committed the most heinous of acts known to man, and hospital staff whose white coats camouflage cruel delights all of their own. The more Nick pieces together what he believes is his real life - that of a successful architect expecting his first child with his wife Mina - the more he learns about the serial killer loose in his hometown.
But, is Dr Crane right? Is Nick really just another delusional patient among thousands in the overcrowded 1960s asylum? Are his memories of a loving wife nothing more than the ravings of a mad man? Is Nick the serial killer known as the Minotaur? And did the act of slaughtering his wife and unborn child crack his mind completely?
TROY TOWN is mind-fuck horror. It takes the ancient mythology of the minotaur and the labyrinth (a “troy town”), to construct a contemporary, mind-bending thriller inspired by the likes of del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” and Nolan’s “Memento”.
Matthew was shortlisted in the Australians in Film GatewayLA program on the strength of TROY TOWN:
http://www.if.com.au/2015/03/22/article/Scripts-shortlisted-for-Gateway-prize/XVZBDFMRYK.html
RECOGNITION FOR TROY TOWN:
Edinburgh Screenwriting Competition (Semi-Finalist)
Spotlight Screenplay Competition (Semi-Finalist)
Stage 32 Happy Writers Feature Screenplay Contest (Quarter-Finalist)
Australians in Film GatewayLA Screenplay Program (Shortlisted)
The Blood List’s New Blood Screenwriting Contest (Quarter-Finalist)
The Blood List’s New Blood Screenwriting Contest (Semi-Finalist)
TROY TOWN is a psychological horror set in two different times but in the same place, sixty years apart. Our hero Nick (late 20s), wakes up in the present in an abandoned lunatic asylum with no idea how he got there. As he swings a chair to break a window and escape the labyrinthine building, everything shifts on a heartbeat. Suddenly, it’s sixty years in the past, the hospital is functioning, and Nick is a patient pinned to the ground by orderlies stopping him from escaping. Nick is thrust into a horrific loop between the past and the present, with no apparent way of escaping either.
We avoid the tedium of repetition through Nick’s relationships with fellow patients as well as the ever changing and increasing horrors of both the abandoned and functioning hospital times, all of which represent Nick’s deterioration into madness and ruin. Nick struggles to piece together memories of his life in the twenty-first century; memories that include a woman he loves but knows is in some kind of danger. Frantic to get home to help her, Nick fights against doctors who have diagnosed him as delusional. The more he deteriorates and rails against hospital staff, the more his life is under threat at the hands of the sadistic Dr Crane. Crane is the hospital’s chief psychiatrist and purveyor of antiquated cruelties who threatens to take over Nick’s case from the compassionate, science-driven psychiatrist Dr Annabel Anderson.
In the past, as a patient, Nick’s life is at risk from both other patients, some of whom have committed the most heinous of acts known to man, and hospital staff whose white coats camouflage cruel delights all of their own. The more Nick pieces together what he believes is his real life - that of a successful architect expecting his first child with his wife Mina - the more he learns about the serial killer loose in his hometown.
But, is Dr Crane right? Is Nick really just another delusional patient among thousands in the overcrowded 1960s asylum? Are his memories of a loving wife nothing more than the ravings of a mad man? Is Nick the serial killer known as the Minotaur? And did the act of slaughtering his wife and unborn child crack his mind completely?
TROY TOWN is mind-fuck horror. It takes the ancient mythology of the minotaur and the labyrinth (a “troy town”), to construct a contemporary, mind-bending thriller inspired by the likes of del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth” and Nolan’s “Memento”.
Matthew was shortlisted in the Australians in Film GatewayLA program on the strength of TROY TOWN:
http://www.if.com.au/2015/03/22/article/Scripts-shortlisted-for-Gateway-prize/XVZBDFMRYK.html
RECOGNITION FOR TROY TOWN:
Edinburgh Screenwriting Competition (Semi-Finalist)
Spotlight Screenplay Competition (Semi-Finalist)
Stage 32 Happy Writers Feature Screenplay Contest (Quarter-Finalist)
Australians in Film GatewayLA Screenplay Program (Shortlisted)
The Blood List’s New Blood Screenwriting Contest (Quarter-Finalist)
The Blood List’s New Blood Screenwriting Contest (Semi-Finalist)
The world of TROY TOWN...