Split personality psychological thriller

1. Genre: Split personality psychological thriller Summary: A young man has developed a lust for the detective genre. However, he has a darker side unknown to him and begins to subconsciously create gruesome cases for himself to solve. Summary of Narrative: The protagonist’s joy for the detective genre is established in the opening title sequence and after reading up on crimes in his local area is attracted to a specific string of gruesome cases and becomes obsessed. He actively starts to seek involvement by following the cases in detail after the murder of a close friend. He visits crime scenes and pesters the police for information as the murders become more disturbing and frequent. All the while his personal life starts to dissolve around him. After weeks of following the cases he becomes closer and closer to the killer and confronts them resulting in a fight, climaxing in the stabbing of the killer. He then looks down to see he has stabbed himself in the chest, ending on the realisation and death.

2. Opening Title Sequence: Our opening title sequence will start at the end of the film, showing the protagonist bloodied and gasping for breath in a dark and artificial room as coin spins next to him the sound effect of footsteps and a door closing is heard off camera. This raises many questions as to what happened before the audience started watching. There will be a fade to black showing the title of the film and the subtitles “several months earlier” to indicate the time jump to his life before his death. The protagonist is now shown alive, well dressed and happily living his life with a much more vibrant colour pallet. This involves trips to the library to check out detective novels (such as Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes), watching television mysteries like Midsummer Murders and roaming the internet to find recent cases and listening to the radio which has a report on a recent murder, immediately catching his attention. This displays his passion and obsession with the detective/mystery genre. 2

3. In summary: • The protagonist and the antagonist are the same person, however due to the protagonists split personality this is unknown to him • As the protagonist comes closer to the antagonist, the killings become more frequent and gruesome • It is established early on that the protagonist is severally injured at some point in the narrative, this is to set the tone of the film and leave the audience curious as to when/how it will happen • The coin is significant to the antagonist (his calling card) • Throughout the narrative there will be subtle indications of insanity, people in his life commenting on disappearances, dream sequences, etc • The opening title sequence is to establish who the protagonist is