Logline:
An exhausted student keeps falling asleep and waking up in different places after having strange but beautiful dreams. She is desperate to continue dreaming despite their slow descent into nightmares.
INT. CLASSROOM-DAY
Complete darkness.
We can hear unnerving, indiscernible sounds.
Whispers, cries, giggles, hushed noises.
ALORA (V.O.)
I’ve been having these weird
dreams lately.
ALORA, 20, pretty, but sort of unsettling, wakes up abruptly
after falling asleep in class. Whispers stop immediately and
are replaced with loud sounds of chairs scraping, students
leaving, the professor ending class.
She is visibly unsettled. Strands of curls stick to her
sweating forehead.
ALORA (V.O.)
And then I wake up.
She is framed by a large half circle window. It forms a halo
around her. Her edges glow in backlight.
She gets up, grabs her things, and leaves class. We can see
trees outside the window.
EXT. FOREST-DAY
It’s dusk, the sun is just leaving. The world around her is
bathed in golden light. We are looking up at the trees.
She lays in the grass in a white dress. Her curls loose in the
grass, they look like the branches of a tree.
ALORA (V.O.)
I kind of like them. The dreams.
She has a series of dreamlike experiences.
She looks at the trees, at the flowers, they go in and out of
focus, but they seem to glow. It sort of strains your eyes to
try and pay attention to it, to try and focus on it.
It’s beautiful.
She dances and walks around, ecstatic, smiling, laughing. Her
movements are twitchy, almost giddy.
She walks in tall grass, or barefoot on stones. She bends down
and rubs the ground with he hands, her arms, she wants her
whole body to be touching everything around her.
She’s eager to feel every sensation, every texture.
The sun shines on her cheeks. She reaches for it and stares
into its light.
ALORA (V.O.)
I sometimes try to stay asleep
just to see them.
INT. BEDROOM-DAY
Morning light touches her eyes. She’s in bed, face resting on a
pillow, a comforter tucked around her chin.
She struggles to stay asleep. She turns from her side onto her
back.
EXT. FOREST-DAY
She wakes up, she isn’t in bed, she is laying in a clearing in
the forest. She looks around, confused.
The sun shines bright in the early morning.
ALORA (V.O.)
But the longer I sleep, the more I
keep waking up... somewhere else.
EXT. RAILROAD TRACKS-DAY
She wakes up, a different day, her bedding on the ground again.
She sits up, alarmed. She’s more frightened than she was
before.
EXT. ROOFTOP-DAY
She startles awake, having fallen asleep on the railing of a
parking garage.
Terrified, she falls back into a parking spot.
EXT. ROAD-DAY
This time in the middle of the street.
She jolts awake, grabbing her bedding and running.
ALORA (V.O.)
I can’t help it. Maybe I’m
blacking out.
EXT. FOREST-NIGHT
Pitch black again, she lights a candle. We just barely see her
dancing back and forth in the dark behind it.
ALORA (V.O.)
But I don’t remember drinking.
Just... falling asleep.
She comes up and blows the candle out.
Complete darkness again.
Flashes of light from a camera reveal that she’s still there.
We are able to discern what she’s doing because of these brief
moments of bright white light.
Disjointed.
Fragmented.
She dances in the dark.
She approaches the table where the candle was. She crawls on
top of it and sits down.
INT. BEDROOM-NIGHT
She sits on a bed, a bright light shines from behind her.
Shadows obscure her facial features. She is backlit again like
she was in the beginning, but far more intense this time.
Suddenly the light is in front of her and she’s holding it with
both hands.
It almost obscures her in its brightness except for her fingers
as she encloses it.
ALORA (V.O.)
I’m not sure if it even is
something I can stop a this point.
INT. BATHROOM-NIGHT
She looks at herself in the mirror, but her reflection is
upside down. She reaches out to turn it right side up.
As she touches the mirror she notices her hands leave marks on
the mirror.
She looks then down at her hands, they are covered in blood and
dirt. She frantically starts to wash them.
She stands in the shower, her dress still on, hair soaked,
makeup running. She shivers in the cold.
INT. BEDROOM-NIGHT
The dreams become increasingly more abstract and warped.
Unsettling, frightening, but still visceral and exciting.
Strange, illegible writing appears. You can’t tell they’re
words but you can’t quite make them out.
A film reel plays, two people sitting next to each other, it is
slowly painted over until it is no longer recognizable that
there were people there at all.
Suddenly it burns and melts.
Something is wrong. She is terrified, but cannot pull herself
away, she can’t bring herself to wake up.
She needs help. A part of her can recognize that despite this
harmful urge, this desire, this need, for sleep. She reaches
out in desperation to touch a hand but they pass through each
other.
She shuts her eyes as other disembodies eyes, blinking, staring, surround her.
Is something with her? Is she alone? She is frightened, it
feels wonderful.
She frantically empties her bed of its contents, throws
pillows, rips sheets from the mattress.
She pulls at her skin, scrapes at the walls.
The textures, the sensations. They all felt so new and exciting
but are now all encompassing, overwhelming.
She is desperate to escape them.
Suddenly, she stops moving altogether. She seems stuck in an
uncomfortable and jarring position.
She can’t move, she can’t move. She isn’t in control of her
body.
She screams but we can’t hear it.
ALORA (V.O.)
...But I’m not sure if I even want
to stop.
EXT. FOREST-DAY
We get one last glimpse into what the dreams used to feel like
for her.
She stands in her clean white dress on the sidewalk. She isn’t
smiling, but she isn’t sad. She’s stiff, unsettlingly still,
but almost calm, a relief, in contrast to what she’s been
experiencing.
It isn’t like the dreams she used to have, but it’s close.
Close enough for her to still want this. To risk the nightmares
for a glimpse of something beautiful, something glowing.
ALORA (V.O.)
It just feels so good when it’s
happening.
She sits on a bench. Behind her is a wall of greenery. Similar
to some of the scenes of plants and flowers she saw earlier.
ALORA (V.O.)
I wish I could feel like this when
I’m awake.
Her face is full of-not quite anger-more like conviction.
Slowly, she cracks. She’s shaking uncontrollably. She lets out
quiet sobs as she cries and tries to keep body
still.
SUCH A VISION
A few lines in and I LOVE this