Darkness Visible

SETTING: The English canals are usually thought of as full of picturesque, brightly coloured boats, but off-season an eccentric underclass’s grubby vessels predominate – a rarely-seen alternative world. After summer departs the canal waters and the surrounding woods become shadowy and haunted. It’s an unexploited English milieu full of potent cinematic contrasts: misty backwaters and exquisite open landscapes, dark tunnels and high aqueducts, bleakness and beauty, ripe with ancient magic and contemporary malevolence. STORY SYNOPSIS: Conrad, a semi-feral, uneducated 12-yr-old boy, wanders the autumnal canal-side forests capturing and killing birds with which to perform a mysterious ritual, using the bird’s severed wings to fashion a strange garment. But his spell goes wrong, interrupted by older boys that Conrad has to fight, and beat. Returning home along the canal towpath to the narrow-boat he shares with his neglectful alcoholic mother, Willa (late 30s), he begins to suspect he’s being followed by a large, underwater creature. The creature, it’s suggested by Rak, his spooky old Russian mentor living in a nearby boat, is a Vodyanoy, a water-demon, a malign spirit summoned by his miscast spell, instead of his disappeared father who he intended to bring back. Meanwhile, his self-centred mess of a mother meets Harry, a charming, good-looking younger man, who she falls for and invites on to the boat. He arrives with a fifteen-year-old ‘daughter’, Pearl, full of unexplained fearfulness. Harry seduces the blindly love-struck Willa with a vision of a new life together abroad, persuading her to sell her boat to provide funds. And so, they begin the four-day journey to take the boat to its buyer – and, it increasingly seems likely, their probable deaths at Harry’s hands. For Harry has already acquired an oversize corpse secreted in the boat’s hold. Too large to be removed whole, it can only be disposed of by gruesome gradual dismemberment and disposal in the water. The underwater creature follows this inadvertent regular feeding, supplemented by the ritual sacrifices Conrad makes trying to ritually enlist its help in the battle against Harry. Conrad, though yet unaware of Harry’s murderous tendencies, vehemently opposes the boat’s sale, the trip and everything about Harry, but tries in vain to sabotage the journey, or leave - held back by his love for his baby sister. His hatred for Harry extends to Pearl. But he gradually discovers that she is more on his side than Harry’s, as she slowly gains the courage to share her own terrible situation. Harry initially under-estimates Conrad, for Conrad is not without his own dark side. As time passes the similarities between him and Harry begin to outweigh the differences. Has Conrad actually found a new father, and Harry a protégé/son? And would the increasingly fearful Pearl and Willa survive such an alliance? Conrad is undoubtedly damaged, but what in his past has made him this way? Clues accumulate which will eventually reveal the answer to this, along with the mystery of his missing father. In the final act, secrets are fatally revealed and the battle climaxes in violent conflict as the narrow-boat disappears into a long, dark, Victorian canal tunnel. But there are still more dark twists in store. AUDIENCE’S EMOTIONAL JOURNEY: Like all good love stories we begin seriously disliking the eventual object of our affections. When we meet Conrad he is cruelly trapping and dismembering birds to use in a fiery ritual and the creation of a macabre outfit. But he does not commit a dramatic character’s one unforgivable crime – being boring. What the fuck is this kid up to? Why? What’s made him this way? Our initial revulsion transforms into intense curiosity. The best characters are flawed, and our feelings about them are rarely simple or wholly positive. Because he’s only a 12 yr-old we don’t blame him – What kind of an upbringing’s made him like this? Where are his parents? Why isn’t he at school? He’s poorly clothed, skinny, deprived-looking – we can’t blame him, can we? Because Conrad’s got one of those faces (like the lads in Kes or 400 Blows) that makes us feel a warmth. He’s got his own unique way of doing things, an attitude. He’s a kid we want to stick with and find out what the hell is going on with him - what weird dark shit is he going to pull next? Then we meet Willa, Conrad’s mess of a mum, and start to understand why Conrad might be this way. We learn his Dad’s gone awol, leaving him alone with this inept woman. That’s what Conrad’s ritual was all about – a son desperately trying to bring back his absent Dad. We feel for Conrad. Cos he’s far from all bad – he rescues a duckling, keeps it, feeds it, looks after his baby sister far better than his mum does. He’s hungry, left alone to fend for himself - we really feel for him. Then his mum brings a new dad on board – Harry, the charming sociopath. With the mysterious creature following in the waters below, this seriously fucked up ‘family’ set off on a journey down the canal. We’re rooting for Conrad to use his dark, fearless nature to triumph in the inevitable battle with the murderous Harry, and cement his growing (though initially disastrous) relationship with Pearl. All while we try to figure out the puzzles the plot poses: - What happened to Conrad’s father? - What made Conrad so damaged? - Is the monster real or imagined, natural or supernatural? - Whose side is it on, if any, and what will it do next? - And, of course, who’s going to live and who’s going to die?