Idea

[mandor700]

I had this idea for a movie:

There is this governess/nanny/maid who lives with a wealthy family to look after and school the young children. The young children are haunted by boogymen and warewolves and whatever else, the adults dont believe them because they cant see them. But the governess can see them because of her experience with children/childish nature. She usually just beats them up with a fire poker. But then the monsters start attacking and killing adults in the house and everyone suspects the nanny.

Any imput (Good and Bad) would be much appreciated.

[DAD]

There are several directions you could go with this. One would be to have the nanny actually feeding the fears of the children and be the one conjuring their fears into reality. Another would be that one of the parents is the one that is actually bringing the demons to bear on the family. You could also use the tried but true haunted/possessed house metaphore and have the demons be connected to something that happened in the house many years before the current family owned it and by bringing the nanny into the house it triggers the demons to come awake (she's the relative of someone who was a servant in the house and slaughtered the original owners?). The fact that the nightbeasts are manifesting themselves as werewolves and vampires and zombies and such could be explained though various plot tricks. Like: Whatever movie or tv show they happen to be watching spawns a manifestation? Just some ideas to mull over. All in all not a bad premise. Needs a lot of flesh to be added though.

[mandor700]

Thanx man, another way I thought it might go was that it was the previous nanny that had given the children these ideas as a way of diciplining them (The old "If you make a face and the wind changes you will stay like that") the new nanny hates the old nanny of cause because of the extra work involved. I thought I would make it that the old nanny dissapeard under misterious circumstances.

[bizzarro]

Sounds like Henry James on crack. I mean that in the sweetest possible way. Do yourself a favor: Check out Turn of the Screw. I'm not gonna tell you that it's one of the classics of 19th century literature, 'cause I know you already know that. And I'm not gonna tell you that it's one of the most influential ghost stories of all time and that it's been the basis for several hundred films, plays, operas, etc, 'cause I know you already know that, too. All I'm gonna say is that it sounds an awful lot like this idea. Hey, at least it's in the public domain.

[mikeysbistro]

Nice start to the idea.

IF the characters come out alive in the end, who's going to save the day? the children? or the Nanny? Does anyone die in the end?

Also are you thinking of a psychological or more physical horror movie? You could go either way from your description.

I thought it would be cool if the Nanny had a love interest, make him the gardner or the UPS guy so he's around. I also thought he could be a butcher so you could have some fun scenes where he gets to kill some of the monsters ... cuz he's good with knives, maybe hang them up in his freezer, basically make him really creepy, but then turn out to be good. If you can swing it, get Crispin Glover

Of course a butcher boyfriend might be too Brady Bunch :-)

You could also add in a priest or nun, either as an ally to help defeat the monsters or foe who tells everyone the monsters don't exist until it's too late!

Maybe the priest/nun starts as a foe then becomes an ally later on ... plus you can use a lot of good quotes from the bible as part of your dialog to enhance the whole good vs. evil theme.

Also a good image I thought of, would be a shot from the children's window of a ghastly ghoulish body hanging execution style from a big tree, have it swinging in the shadows, then all of a sudden light it up with lightning, showing the rotting maggots, skin-less musculature, and half severed broken neck - then when the characters look back it's gone! - you'll have to work it into the story.

Just some thoughts.

[mandor700]

hey mikeysbistro thanx for the imput, finaly someone with constructive thourghts that he dosent mind sharing.

I thought of being different and slicing it down the middle, so its a phycological horror from the parents point of view because they are getting attacked by things they cant see. But in the childrens/nannies point of view its puerly phisical because they can see the monsters and know the nanny can beat them to hell and back. I also thought this would make for some interesting plot twists like if the parents piss off the children they could imagine/dream about the monsters comming to get the parents.