Stop

In present-day Liverpool, MARK LYNE (40s) lives a lonely life on probation. Separated from wife JULES (40s) and son LIAM (just 18) following a mysterious act of violence nearly five years earlier, the friendless warehouse carpenter seeks to manage his semi-latent control issues through model-making, a creative self-therapy he aspires to turn into an online business. When workplace bullying and the cost-of-living crisis leave him jobless just one month before his probation ends, Mark’s tough but fair offender manager CATHERINE (40s) challenges him to remain in control and find a new job in Liverpool fast, lest he potentially be recalled to prison. Worse still, Liam’s 18th birthday is seeing him prepare for university, leaving Mark reeling from no longer having to provide financial support after Jules stops Child Maintenance payments. He is LOSING CONTROL. Wanting to secure his own home carpentry business, and prove he can be a RESPONSIBLE PROVIDER again, a desperate Mark accepts a mysterious invitation to build model sets for a new client’s passion project, in exchange for £5K he hopes to give to Liam to fund his university fees. Upon arriving in a quiet remote village in Leeds, where the COST OF LIVING CRISIS has gripped the townspeople, Mark meets his client: TIM MOULDIN (40s), a polite if eccentric model village cleaner with a love of stop-motion children’s TV. His favourite show? WHISTLE STOP WAY: a classic 90s programme about a quaint village of colourful characters living in peace and harmony. Tim loves it so much, he’s dedicated an old workroom and garden shed to making his own clay models and short films. Given shelter for a week in Tim’s rustic countryside home, and indulging in the succulent pink meat he serves up for every meal, Mark quickly finds himself warming to the strange man as he constructs a giant version of the Whistle Stop Way village, so Tim can recreate a ‘new grand finale’ for the show of his design. Their bond quickly forming over shared creative impulses and need for control over childhood trauma, Mark is the happiest he’s been in years. Until the last day, when a volatile encounter with bullying teens in the village results in Mark and Tim’s models being smashed to bits in the night. Finally snapping after years of abuse and ridicule from villagers for his off-kilter passion, a distraught Tim enlists Mark’s help in a new plan: in exchange for an increased prize of £10,000, he will help Tim teach the villagers a lesson through ‘clay play’, a strange ritualistic revenge plan for ‘making friends’. Not wishing to leave empty-handed, Mark reluctantly agrees. Over seven nights, Mark bears witness to Tim’s hit list-style takedown of everyone representing hatred of their foibles: teen delinquents, Tim’s busybody ex-manager, a disgruntled farmer and an abusive police officer form just some of their victims. Lured to Tim’s home in the night, each victim is attacked and fitted with a clay mask of a Whistle Stop Way character. As the week draws on, they quickly and mysteriously adopt the mannerisms of those characters, leaving Mark perplexed and increasingly concerned on Tim’s seemingly supernatural ability to control the behaviour of those around him. Over the week, Tim’s continual check-ups and insistence on following his designs push Mark to seek some control over their plan, but persuading Tim to give him influence falls on deaf ears – ‘We don’t always get what we want. Even if we think we deserve it.' The endgame of Tim’s plan soon rears its ugly head: he is recreating Whistle Stop Way on an uncomfortably life-size scale, making his victims his ‘friends’. As Tim’s plan grows gradually more dangerous and obsessive, Mark’s developing friendship with VERA SIMPSON (40s), a local aspiring artist with a non-verbal son GIL (7) and a traumatic past from an abusive marriage, forces him to question the legitimacy of his own controlling intentions to provide for his ex-wife and son. When Mark begins to question Tim’s toxic behaviour and attitude to Vera, who jilted his advances in the past, the animator’s behaviour gradually turns more sinister and abusive, leading Mark to realise he may be part of a grander plan than once thought. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Mark faces a dilemma: attempt to flee and face the consequences of breaching his probation, OR finish Tim’s twisted plan at Vera and Gil’s expense. And maybe his own too… A cross-genre exploration of the impact of abuse, austerity and toxic masculinity on our creative impulses and relationships, STOP melds grounded and unnerving character drama with grim, unsettling and utterly bizarre body horror to craft a tense, timely and truly stomach-churning story on how nostalgia can become the greatest threat to our safety, our sanity, and even our self-control…