Reel Fear Film Pitch
Submission Title: BLACK EYED KIDSTeam Members: Neil Howard Butler, Donald A. GuariscoLength Of Planned Film: approx 95 minutesPremise: BLACK EYED KIDS explores the modern urban legend of the title through the tale of a mismatched duo on the run. One is a man whose daughter has disappeared after an encounter with the mysterious, phantom-like children. The other is a woman who survived a black eyed kid attack that killed her husband and has left her consumed with revenge. The result is a mystery, a road movie and horror film that mixes classic elements of the genre with a modern mythology.Why It Should Be Made: The concept of “black eyed kids" is fertile ground for a horror movie and a popular internet obsession along the lines of the Slender Man and other modern, internet-fueled folk tales. Such a film could draw on elemental human fears in a way that would capture a broad audience. As treated in our take on the subject, it also offers the potential for a series of subsequent films or a television spin-off.
The Pitch: They've come to be known as Black Eyed Kids. These sinister figures of mystery lie at the heart of today's most notorious urban legend. They just show up at the door, usually in the dead of night. Their unnerving behavior and pitch black eyes often short-circuit their targets' survival instincts. You might feel yourself drawn toward the door, turning the knob and pulling it open even as your mind screams "For God's sake, stop..."No one has ever produced conclusive evidence that the black eyed kids exist... and yet the stories have been piling up, year after year since the first reports surfaced in the mid-1990's. Any visit to a paranormal message board or chatroom will yield a host of B.E.K. stories, all informed with the same basic plot structure and the same nerve-jangling tone.Why does this legend persist? Is it possible they could cover their tracks so completely? And are the B.E.K.'s aliens, demons or something even worse - something entirely beyond our imaginations, something strange enough to shatter what we know as reality?We took this open-ended concept and spun a mythology that explains the how and why of these mysterious creatures. The result is our screenplay: Black Eyed Kids. It's a supernatural mystery, a road movie and a shape-shifting horror tale that weaves in elements of classic zombie, vampire and ghost stories. It's designed to have the scares and the atmosphere that horror fans crave while utilizing a concept whose urban legend elements give it a unique cultural resonance beyond the well-worn horror archetypes.The script is built around two characters who are forever changed by a chance encounter with the Black Eyed Kids. Forging an uneasy alliance, they set out on the road to find and confront the B.E.K.'s to reclaim some order in their shattered lives. What they discover will provide an answer to the mysteries surrounding this phenomenon - and offer a tale as chilling as anything you've seen or heard.
Bios:Neil Howard Butler first bonded with Don Guarisco over contraband Fangoria mags during a drama class back in high school. A graduate of the Film School at Florida State University, he's spent the last two decades in Los Angeles working mostly in film and television development. An avid writer himself, Neil made the leap back into the realm of hands-on production with a couple of micro-budget films shot in his home state of Florida, most recently completing the synthpop musical LEWIS & KLARQ which debuted at the Cyprus International Film Festival where it won the Golden Aphrodite Award for Best Score. This January, Neil served on the jury of the 2017 Tally Shorts Film Festival, one of the Southeast's fastest growing showcases for short films from around the world.Donald A. Guarisco is a graduate of Florida State University's B.F.A. Film program. He has worked in the film business, with an employment history including script coverage, director's research assistant on the feature film ULTRAVIOLET and devising the story for the SyFy original t.v. film MAMMOTH. He has also written professionally about film and music since 2000, penning countless reviews for All Music Guide, All Movie Guide, Retroland, AVManiacs, Cinema Sewer, the DVD Delirium book series and his own personal site, Schlockmania. He's been a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan since seeing FRIGHT NIGHT at the age of 13 and his favorite filmmaker is Brian DePalma.