Wendy Wheeler Screenplay Synopsis: Dark Blood

Logline:
When a sexually troubled artist follows her brother to a remote facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains where he's undergoing a mysterious treatment for homicidal mania, she finds a town that is The Stepford Village by day and the Island of Dr Moreau by night. Then the researchers become focused on keeping her and her mitochondrial DNA trapped there.

If you're a producer or agent, please email me to see the whole script.

THE LILITH CODE, a psycho-sexual thriller of the science fiction kind, is a feature-length screenplay by Wendy Wheeler. It introduces Randi Rosenthal, a sexually troubled artist from a wealthy New York family, at her latest gallery showing. She explains the legend behind one of her paintings of Lilith, the first wife of Adam, reviled in Jewish legend as the mother of all demons. Lilith wouldn't submit to her husband and ultimately flew off to birth the monsters that plague mankind. But in Randi's painting, Lilith is a favorite of God's who's allowed the freedom to find her own mate when Adam turns out so poorly.

Also at the gallery opening, we meet Chaz, Randi's dynamic and aggressive financial analyst brother, his doting wife Becca, and their six-year-old Wallace. Another attendee, "Uncle Tucker," is a wealthy older man whom Randi despises.

That night there's a violent murder in Central Park. Police quickly establish that it was Chaz, who has no memory of the event, but plentiful evidence to indict him. It turns out that Chaz has had a rage "problem" all their lives, and Randi was somehow atturned to her brother's moods and could stop them. Now, their parents use all their influence to keep Chaz from being publicly charged. The powerful family friend, Senator Tucker, arranges for Chaz to take treatment at the secretive Jenkins Center in the mountains of Tennessee.

But Randi's guilt over not stopping the murder and her disturbed dreams when Chaz undergoes the mysterious medical treatment on the first night at Jenkins drives her to follow her brother and his family to Hyde Hollow.

Think: Stepford Village by day, and Dr. Moreau's Island by night... Randi finds a strange town with only one (guarded) entrance, and a population of blissed-out men. It's not a perfect place, however: there are wild screeches and noises from the Center at night. Farmers bring mutilated livestock for reimbursement. Becca and Randi are told to keep all their doors and windows locked, and one night something does try to claw its way into the house. And every night at 10pm, schlocky music plays on loudspeakers throughout the town to cue a stream of the blissed-out men to walk dreamily to the Center for treatment.

As Randi doggedly pursues answers to her questions, she must partner with Eric Turner, an iconoclast researcher at the Center. Randi finally discovers the secret of the treatment, and why it makes such peaceful men. The patients of the Center all have a special DNA that the Center can trigger, releasing the inner beast from the man, as is shown in a hair-raising sequence of special effects transformation of half-man, half-beasts from myths and nightmares. Even worse, her own mitochondrial DNA holds markers the more corrupt researchers want to exploit. Her enemies trap Randi and Eric within the compound at night, locking them away with the monsters, causing Randi to reveal her own true nature, defeat her personal and other demons, and validate herself as a true daughter of Lilith.

Synopsis of THE LILITH CODE Screenplay

-- Original Title: Dark Blood