NARRATIVE - Lather

Narrative Short

Title: Lather

Page Count: 13 pages

Project Status: In Development

Logline 

A reunion between former lovers leads to the end of a bushy beard…and a shared sense of reality. Lather is a short psychological horror-drama about obsession, fixation, and moving on from what hasn’t happened.

Synopsis

LATHER is a psychological horror-drama short that uses surreal body horror to explore the violence of fixation. Tab, 37, welcomes her former lover Milo into her apartment after twelve years apart. Their chemistry crackles, and she whisks him into her bedroom...to shave the massive beard he's grown, using a barber chair set-up. When Milo declares she's the love of his life and invites her to slit his throat, the shave spirals into a nightmare. Each pass of the straight razor peels away face-skin to reveal another lathered layer beneath. Tab descends into a manic attempt to reach something inside him...eventually sawing off the top of his head and blowing a mushroom cloud of beard-hair into the room.

Then, we realize that what we've seen is itself a layer of fantasy. As it's peeled away, we snap to Tab's actual reality: she's 22, the elaborate barbershop is a folding chair, and Milo is the clean-cut boyfriend of someone else, riddled with guilt, ending whatever this is between them. Two more alternate-future detours, routed through cystic acne and overgrown fingernails, confirm the pattern: Tab keeps trying to fix Milo — to keep him there with her — in timelines that don't exist. LATHER closes with Tab's actual boyfriend returning to their shared home, passing Milo in the hallway, none the wiser to her infidelity. Clutching her folding chair, mouth open to speak, Tab is caught at the threshold between the worlds she invents and the one she has to live in.

Team

Written by: Drew Paryzer

Seeking

Development Funds, Investors, Producing Partners, Production Company, Creative Collaborators

Contact

Drew Paryzer

drew.paryzer@gmail.com