Piney Croft. An unproduced feature screenplay by Christine Madrid French & Megan Matousek. “A local historian fights to save her family during a violent hurricane that brings malevolent spirits and a powerful demon from the past into their home.”
Synopsis: Poppy London (37), her two kids Jasper and Golden, and her dad Ruben are new transplants to the weird land of Florida. They are settled into a mid-century modern A-frame house in Maitland. Newly single Poppy works at the Art & History Museum and depends on both her best friend Natasha and the neighborhood sage Betty for advice on ghostly activities on their street, named Piney Croft. As their first hurricane hits, so does the hell. The swirling storms power the paranormal manifestations of a woman brutally beaten and drowned at the old Piney Croft estate by her husband, the Mayor of Maitland.
Poppy tries to understand the presence of the spirits, but their only intent seems to be inciting terror. When the body-building neighbors are inexplicably murdered and cannibalized by a face-eating college student, Poppy realizes there is a common denominator between these crimes: a demon named Danyal that arrives with the storms and seduces people to violence. After her discovery, Poppy rushes her family to safety into an underground shelter behind the house created from the wine cellar of the old mansion. The brick vaults contain hundreds of Prohibition-era bottles, now empty, hidden decades ago.
The family is blocked from leaving the cellar by Danyal himself and the raging storm outside. They escape after Poppy fashions a demonic-bottle trap holding her own nail-bitten fingernails and strands of hair, snaring the demon. When they emerge from the shelter, they find the neighborhood trashed but their home intact. Returning to the cellar, Poppy realizes that Danyal has hidden his trap among the collection of old bottles, each now plugged with a cork and indistinguishable one from the other. The family blockades the cellar rather than risk releasing the demon. Danyal is entombed—for the present—in his glass prison.
Review from iHorror Film Festival: “Historian Poppy London, her two children, and her father Ruben, are recent Florida transplants living in a mid-century A-frame house. When a hurricane begins to batter their area, dark spirits are unleashed and one in particular has set his sights on claiming Poppy as his own. It’s an epic battle between good and evil with a healthy dose of social commentary that keeps the pages turning.”
https://ihorror.com/ihorror-film-festival-announces-full-list-of-screenplay-finalists/
