jem at 2014-12-04 01:45:33:

BACK STORY: -- Keller’s father’s advice: “Be ready… People turn on one another and all of a sudden all that stands between you and being dead is you.” --Keller’s father, a prison guard, kills himself inside the apartment building. --Keller a drunk, threatens the Milland family. --Sobered up and found God at some point. ACT ONE Sequence 1 P.2: KELLER DOVER, a professional remodeler/repairman, takes his teenage son RALPH hunting on Thanksgiving morning so he will learn how to provide for himself in any situation. Ralph successfully kills a deer. Keller has a religious tape on in the truck. P.3-5: The Dover family—Keller, Ralph, six-year-old ANNA, and mom GRACE— walk down the street to the Birches’ house. We learn that Keller owns his father’s old apartment building. The Birches—music teacher FRANKLIN, mom NANCY, 15-year-old ELIZA, and shy seven-year-old JOY—greet them, and the families prep for the meal. [Observations: Establishes Keller as a family man, devout Christian, a survivor.] Sequence 2 P.7-9: Post-meal, the parents lounge in the living room, having fun. Everyone’s drinking, except for Keller. Anna and Joy run in, Anna asking permission for them to go to the Dovers’ house—they want to find Anna’s red whistle. Grace says they have to go with their older siblings. The girls run out singing Jingle Bells. P.9-12: Later, Keller goes down to the basement where Ralph and Eliza are boredly watching TV. They don’t know where the girls are. Keller runs home, searches the house, but the girls aren’t there, either. Everyone back at the Birches’ home, Ralph mentions the RV. Franklin, Keller, and Ralph run outside, but the van is gone, and for-sale house is locked. P.16-17: Keller, Ralph, and neighbors search the neighborhood in the dark, while Loki interrogates Alex at the police station and forensic guys tear up the van. P.19-20: The search for the girls continues. The van is clean, and searchers—including Keller, Ralph, and Franklin—comb through the woods. P.20-24: The next morning—initial aftermath. The parents are in shock. Keller interrogates Loki about Alex, and Loki says that he has the IQ of a 10-year-old and couldn’t possibly have pulled a kidnapping off in broad daylight. Keller isn’t convinced. [Observations: The kidnapping destroys Keller’s life and his identity. He is at odds with Loki.] Sequence 3 P.32-35: Alex is being released. Keller arrives furious at the police station and goes for Alex, convinced he’s guilty, and eventually manages to tackle him to the ground. Alex reveals to Keller he knows something, but Keller is quickly handcuffed as Alex and his aunt are whisked away. P.36-38: The police captain lets Keller off with a warning. Keller tells Loki what Alex just said to him. Loki agrees to go talk to him, but it isn’t enough for Keller. P.38-39: Loki questions Alex at his aunt’s house, tries to pressure him into the truth, but Alex denies he said anything. Loki calls Keller, says they’re moving on from Alex as a suspect. Keller hangs up on him. P.40-42: Grace is freaking out, accuses Keller of not protecting them like he promised. She knocks herself out with Xanax. Ralph is crying, needs his father. Keller, turning off his religious tape, drives over to the Joneses’ house, parks outside and watches. Alex eventually comes out with the dog, and when he begins singing Jingle Bells, Keller gets out of the car and confronts him with a gun. The dog runs off. [Observations: Keller acts on his own. Turns off the religious tape. Abducts Alex. Mirrors what Holly and her Husband did – lost their child and abducted Alex/Barry Milland.] ACT TWO Sequence 4 P.42-45: Keller collects a confused Franklin from his house at dawn. Keller drives them to his father’s apartment building, now falling apart and boarded over. Alex has been tied to a pipe in the shower. Franklin wants to give him over to the cops, but Keller says he’ll just clam up so they need to hurt him until he talks. Keller begins punching Alex. P.48-50: Franklin and Keller continue to beat up a barely conscious Alex, who still isn’t saying anything. Franklin wants to stop, but not Keller. P.54-55: Keller pulls up the next morning as Franklin watches a news report about the tall man, the new suspect. At the apartment, they argue, Keller convinced that the tall man and Alex are working together. P.56-60: Franklin is crying, broken by what they’re doing, but Keller reminds him of the girls, gone five days. Back home, Franklin snaps at Nancy, and (off-screen) she wrangles the truth out of him. Nancy makes them take her to the apartment, and she makes an emotional appeal to a beat-up Alex. She unties him, and he tries to escape out the window, but Franklin and Keller eventually restrain him. [Keller refuses to question if what they are doing is wrong. He has acting in an extreme manner, even convincing himself that Bob Taylor/Tall Man is working with Alex]. Sequence 5 P.60-64: Keller constructs a cell for Alex out of plywood, and he fetches Nancy and Franklin at 2am to show them how it works. He’s constructed a basic torture chamber. Franklin wants to let him go; Nancy wants to know if he’s said anything. Franklin and Keller argue over Alex and what to do. P.69-74: Loki begins tailing Keller. Keller parks near the apartment building and begins walking toward it, but when he notices Loki goes instead into a nearby liquor store. Coming out with a bottle of whisky, Keller confronts Loki. He explains away his suspicious items/behavior and says he doesn’t know where Alex is. Keller seems to be losing hope of finding the girls, and he begins to walk home. P.74-76: A drunk Keller arrives home, finds Grace passed out in bed and passes out himself. He dreams of Anna and wakes up with a start. Eight-year-old BILL BREWER tells his mom there’s a man in their pool. His father, PAUL, goes out to investigate when Keller bursts through the surface of the water and lumbers off. [Keller relapses into a drunk, paying the price for hiding Alex from Loki.] Sequence 6 P.76-82: Police boats dredge the water as an exhausted Loki studies his computer screen. He reads a story about Keller’s dad and finds an address. Keller uses the shower water to torture Alex, hears him saying, “I’m not Alex.” Keller is nearly broken himself. Loki arrives and Keller attempts to escape; when he realizes he can’t, he pretends he’s been sleeping there. He gives a suspicious Loki a tour and is just leading him upstairs when Loki’s phone rings; it’s the discount department store clerk telling him the tall man has just left. Loki rushes up to the second floor, gives it a quick look, sees nothing and leaves. P.85-87: Franklin and Nancy leave the police station in tears. Loki asks Keller to come in and identify his daughter’s clothes. Grace hasn’t come, and Bob Taylor has apparently confessed to killing the girls. Keller finds Anna’s sock and blames Loki for not doing enough. P. 87-89: Eliza has told Ralph that the girls are dead, and Keller makes Ralph swear to shield Grace from the news. Keller promises to find Anna, but Ralph accuses him of spending his time drinking. [Keller refuses to believe his daughter is dead. The family is coming apart: “Keller grabs Ralph and slams him into the wall, knocking over a dollhouse.”] Sequence 7 P.91-92: Nancy goes to the apartment and gives Keller poison to kill Alex with. She says she wants to protect what’s left of her family and keep her and Franklin out of jail. But Keller isn’t willing to give up hope. P.92-94: Keller drinks whisky and debates what to do with Nancy’s package. He hears Alex say, “They’re in the maze.” But he won’t say where, just laughs instead. At the police station, O’Malley gives Loki Taylor’s bloodied maze drawing. P.94-97: Keller goes to the Joneses’ house and acts contrite. Holly allows him to come in. Keller mentions something about a maze, but she doesn’t react. Threads begin coming together: Holly’s husband kept snakes, and Alex hasn’t spoken much since some traumatic childhood incident involving them. P.102-104: Keller pushes a snake through the PVC pipe at Alex. Finally it sounds like Alex is going to say something, and Keller pries a piece of wood off. But Alex says very little, nothing that Keller understands. [Uses Alex’s fear of snakes against him to no avail. Similar to Holly and her Husband.] Sequence P.106-112: Grace receives the phone call, tries to get it together. Keller arrives home, and she tells him about Joy. At the hospital, they push past a cop to reach Joy’s room, and they pepper her with questions. But instead of answering, Joy touches Keller and says he was there. When Keller sees Loki, he bolts. Quick car chase, but the cops lose him. ACT THREE P.116-124: Holly, an ice pack on her hand, opens her front door to find Keller. A bag in hand, he offers to fix up her house as an apology. But in the kitchen, he confronts her about the girls. She produces a gun. She makes him handcuff himself and drink the drug-laden grape-aid. She implies she has Anna, and she says that Alex was the first kid she and her husband kidnapped (and his name used to be Jimmy or Barry). They’d also kidnapped Bob Taylor. And they did it after losing religious faith. She forces Keller into a hole in the backyard, but not before shooting him in the thigh. He finds Anna’s whistle down there and passes out. It starts to snow. P.125-131: Loki wants to find Keller, but O’Malley sends him to notify Holly. As Keller tries to escape from the hole, Loki arrives and Anna wakes up. Keller gets out and Loki is about to leave when he thinks he hears someone crying out. Loki enters the front door while Keller comes in the back. Loki sees a photo of Holly’s husband, realizes it’s the corpse they found. Keller finds Anna but then wakes up to realize it was a hallucination and he’s still in the hole. But Loki’s actions are real, and he discovers Holly injecting the poison into Anna’s arm. She shoots Loki, hitting him just over the eye, and Loki shoots her dead. [Keller has no control over his situation. Has 24 hours to live] Climax P.137-139: Two techs work in the backyard of the Joneses’ house. Loki arrives, and the cops say the ground’s too frozen to do much. They leave, and Loki stands alone in the quiet and dark. He’s just leaving when he hears something faint. It’s a whistle. [Observation: an act of faith, using the emergency whistle he gave to Anna].