I've had a couple of ideas for horror movies I'd write if given the chance, and this is my most recent one. It's about a group of researchers on a base in the Himalayas who discover that the surrounding villages have all been experiencing Yeti sightings for the last couple hundred years, and slowly start to realize that it might not all be superstition. It's heavily inspired by horror stories like John Carpeneter's The Thing and an audio drama podcast I listened to a while back called The White Vault. I want this story to explore themes of cultural differences, communication & miscommunication, and the way foreign ideas or sentiments are often disregarded by some members of the scientific community as 'primitive' in spite of any legitimacy they might carry.
First thing's first, the Yeti's gonna be a real Yeti. I don't want it to be one of those Scooby-Doo situations where it's just somebody in a costume, or the main characters imagining things due to cabin fever. Psychological mind-screw stuff like that definitely has its place in horror, especially when exploring more psychological themes, but the ideas I want to explore here are more socially external, if that makes sense. Once I've practice drawing some more, I wanna post a concept sketch of my idea for the Yeti. It'd be easy to just have it be a white bigfoot like most depictions are nowadays, but I want the creature design to be really distinct and memorable. I want the Yeti to be largely humanoid with white fur covering it's body, but the head of the creature is covered in what looks like a parka hood to obscure its face. I thought it would be neat to make the creature look like it's wearing a hood, only to reveal its a part of the creature's actual body and that the head underneath is just a bunch of exposed muscle and bone. I'm not sure if I'm describing it properly, but I like the idea of the creature's 'face' being obscured within the hood for the majority of the movie, and then having it revealed near the end akin to when Jason gets his mask knocked off in any of the applicable Friday the 13th sequels. I'd want the Yeti's head to have a humanoid construction for the most part, but it wouldn't just look like a skinless head when they pull the hood down. The Yeti would have several eyes on the front of its face, like a spider. It would also have a jawless mouth like a lamprey eel, and maybe a long frog-like tongue that it can use to ensnare people. I really wanted to give it a bunch of eyes so that you could see them reflecting light through the darkness of the hood while the rest of the face is hidden in darkness. There's this fanart of a bug-type Regi pokemon that gave me the idea. I'm not sure if they should be compound eyes, though. I'd have to look further into the benefits of compound vs single-aperture eyes on animals to see what fits the design best for how it behaves in the story. I also thought it would be cool if it had some sort of torn raggy cloak that could billow in the wind behind it whenever it was trudging around outside to make it looka bit spookier/cooler.
In terms of its role in the story, I want the Yeti to start as an antagonistic force that becomes better understood and forms an uneasy alliance with the protagonist in the third act, kind of like the Predator in the first Alien vs. Predator movie. The scientists would hear stories of the Yeti and learn about the superstitions of some of the villages in the area. They'd have legends spanning the last 200 years about the Yeti and each village would have different rituals tied to appeasing/deterring it that would be recontextualized later once the Yeti is better understood by the protagonist at the end of the story. I don't have the rituals and superstitions fully planned out in my head, but I wanted to have stuff like some villagers warding the Yeti off with special stones that are later discovered to be mildly radioactive, leading to the scientists realizing that the Yeti is suffering from radiation sickness. Other rituals involving leaving offerings for the Yeti would tie into the Yeti studying the medicinal properties of different plants and animal parts, and inedible offerings like small metal or ceramic trinkets would lead to the discovery that the Yeti is using these materials to repair damaged technology in its lair. Of course, this is all supposed to tie in pretty closely with the Yeti's backstory, so I'll elaborate more on that below, but I wanted to showcase my ideas for some of the clues that are given over the course of story as to what the Yeti really is and what it's doing. I also wanted the scientists to discover small pieces of inorganic matter left behind by the Yeti after certain encounters. After being scared off with a high-frequency noise, one of the scientists would find a small metal capsule left behind by the Yeti which would be revealed to be some sort of hearing aid. Another encounter ending with the Yeti's face being exposed and having one of its eyes gouged out would lead to the discovery that the Yeti's eyes are covered in an inorganic membrane soon found to be a sort of contact lens for its vision. I'd want the scientists to each have a badge on their labcoats designating their position in the heirarchy on the research base, and one of the scientists would be 'kidnapped' by the Yeti early in the story. Subsequent encounters with the Yeti would see it wearing the badge from the person it 'kidnapped' pinned to its raggy cloak. While this is initially assumed to be a trophy that the Yeti is using to mark its kill, it's later revealed that the Yeti is trying to use the badge to identify itself as a fellow scientist to the humans. The Yeti studies the scientists over the course of the story, and develops a simple method of nonverbal communication with the protagonist in the third act as they collaborate to fix the Yeti's broken machinery.
The Yeti is actually an alien creature from some other world and the last surviving member of its crew after a transporter malfunction sent their ship to earth, phasing into a mountain in the Himalayas some 200 years ago. The Yeti species is incredibly long-lived compared to humans, but the Yeti is suffering radiation sickness due to the breakdown of equipment on the ship and is slowly dying. By the time the scientists arrive and the plot proper gets started, the Yeti has only a couple months left to live. It's trying in vain to repair parts of the ship's transporter to get home, and is harvesting conductive and insulative materials to do so. The villagers have over time noticed that the Yeti is always searching for specific materials, so some deliberately leave offerings to help it with its goal, even though the villagers don't actually know what it's up to. The rags that it wears are the remains of some kind of uniform that it wore as a member of the ship's crew. Over the last 200 years, it's also slowly tried to develop an understanding of human anatomy and biology to compare the effectiveness of medicinal ingredients with its own alien anatomy. The Yeti's fellow crewmates were stored in suspended animation pods, but as the reserve power has slowly run out on the ship over the last couple centuries, the life support systems of the pods have failed one by one, leaving the Yeti as the only survivor. The Yeti is from a highly advanced civilization, and as such has a hearing aid as it is deaf in one ear, and contact lenses since it is nearsighted.
I don't have a name for any of the characters yet, but I wanted the protagonist to be a female scientist who slowly pieces together the Yeti's true nature as an intelligent being by piecing together the evidence she finds over the course of the movie. She learns about the ways the villagers engage with the Yeti through their rituals, runs tests on the strange inorganic gizmos left behind by the Yeti to discover they're actually accomodations for the Yeti's disabilities, and winds up forming a simple pidgin language with the Yeti in the third act to communicate with it. She winds up helping it for the last third of the movie and is one of the only surviving members of the research team by the end of the story. I also wanted her to stand out among the other characters in terms of her appearance, so I gave her an eyepatch. I figured it would be a cute allusion to the old saying: In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I'd use literal blindness as an allegory for cultural insensitivity, having the protagonist acknowledge that she's out of her depth in this foreign culture, but still tries to communicate with the Yeti and winds up helping it get back home as a result.
I have a tendency to write brash dickhead antagonists. This guy is no different. Just like everyone else, I don't have a name for him yet, but I want him to be a snobbish older guy, maybe with a posh british accent. He doesn't think much of the protagonist and even less of the villagers living near the research base. He's revealed progressively over the course of the story to be a huge xenophobe and misogynist. I wanted to put all the negative stereotypes of the scientific community into one guy so the audience would be really satisfied watching him get gored by the Yeti in the third act when the tension hits its peak and he ascends from foil to proper villain. He's incredibly dismissive of the native people and considers them to be backwards savages with nothing worthwhile to offer the researchers. He thinks nobody else knows what they're doing and treats people like garbage when they screw up, even when it's an honest mistake. He never misses the chance to put someone down if he thinks they've slighted him. Over the course of the story, he starts generally dismissive, then starts making snide comments at the expense of his inferiors, then moves on to loudly chewing them out in front of everyone to deliberately humiliate them. In the third act, the Yeti gouges his eyes out (symbolizing how blind he is to the civilized nature of the villagers and the Yeti itself) and he wanders through the caverns surrounding the Yeti's crashed ship in a literal blind rage with a fashioned spear, hoping to kill the Yeti. By this point, the protagonist has learned of the Yeti's true intentions and tries to help it, resulting in a confrontation where the Leader tries to kill her and winds up falling to his death in the cavern.
I needed an interpreter character who serves as a communicative medium between the researchers and the native villagers. He'd get injured and 'kidnapped' by the Yeti at the end of the first act, but by then he would have taught the protagonist the basics of forming a pidgin language and how to communicate nonverbally with other people like the villagers. I don't need much more for him in the story, but I figure the Yeti 'kidnaps' him when it sees him get injured while it tries to raid their base for supplies during the night, and takes him back to its base in an effort to nurse him back to health. He survives in the base with the Yeti's help and winds up being reunited with the protagonist at the start of the third act. He winds up surviving to the end, but I don't have much in terms of a personality for him yet. I'll definitely have to figure that out once I've come up with a name for each of the characters
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