Evil Dead Storyboard
Script Document:
Dark Comedy in which a freshly-deceased young woman and a long-dead body, who, find themselves stuck in eternal suffering together, decide to see if they can find their way back to the living world. Very dry humor, condensed pace.
Audrey (Freshly dead, wants to get back to earth so her toddler won’t be raised by their aunt and also because eternal suffering is rather unpleasant.)
Ted the Head (Pejorative) Kinda henchman-y, “Groucho” sort of accent. Originally an upside-down, rotten corpse who Audrey was hung besides. Audrey takes his skull.
Single mom wakes up in hell after dying, escapes with head of rotting body next to her (Ted, guide and comedic relief.)
Be sure not to make Audrey too reactive or soft, her motivations are empathetic but she needs to be the driving protagonist and Ted the deuteragonist. If Ted becomes the main actor of the story then rewrite that part. Their dynamic should be two middle-aged adults, as if having met at a bus stop or the DMV, with Audrey being new to death and confused but determined and Ted having been here a long time but not as motivated to get out. There is no romantic or familial tension between Audrey and Ted and any writing implying such should be immediately removed. Remember Ted is a rotting corpse and Audrey is, while also dead, visually and emotionally just a regular American woman in her late 20’s.
Time out readings, try and get a sense of how long the period for each dialogue clump is.
Wake up:
Pov, fuzzy, blurry, like looking through tears. Upside-down view of an endless fog of bodies, in various states of rot. Chained and hung by the ankles, their arms hanging free just above the floor. Upside-down it all looks like they’re floating.
Hard cut to the previous POV character, an adult woman, AUDREY, who groggily begins to stir back to consciousness. As awareness returns to her she becomes terrified, squirming around and twisting to look around around. She begins to thrash, panicked and audibly hyperventilating, until she bumps into the body closest to her. She shoves it away.
Ted “Ow!”
TED is almost entirely decomposed, with nothing on him but black, sludge-coated strands of muscle and exposed bone. Audrey screams and tries to lean away.
Audrey “Leave me alone!”
Ted “Try leaving me alone!”
Audrey’s screaming peters out, mostly out of fear. There's a quiet moment.
Aud, terrified “Where am I?”
Ted “We’re dead. You died. Please stop screaming.”
Audrey begins to panic again.
Ted (Slightly sympathetic but agitated) “It sucks just as much for everyone else, you don’t need to make it worse.”
Aud (Quietly) “What am I doing here?”
Ted “Hanging out.”
There’s a long, uncomfortable pause before Audrey begins to try and reach for her legs, to break free, but falls back down.
Aud “Do I just rot here?”
Ted “That’s my experience, yeah.”
Aud pauses. “I uh, left a kid behind. Will I ever know-?”
Ted “I don’t think so. Since I died I haven’t been anywhere but here.”
Aud “Could you help get me down?”
Ted “No muscles, sorry. But I’m happy to lend a hand.”
Audrey walks herself over with her hands to where Ted is hanging and reaches for an arm, which easily falls off.
Ted (Upsettingly amused by this) “Classic!”
Adrey wedges the arm up through the knot around her legs, using it as a pull-bar to pull herself up and undo it.
Come with:
Ted “Oh god no do I look like I can walk? Get over here for a sec. I have an idea.”
Ted “Grab my head.”
Aud “What?”
Ted “You’re carrying me. Grab my head.”
Ted “The mind is in the head and the soul is in the heart. We only need one of those.”
Audreys hands try to grip the slick outside of the rotten skull but can’t get a grip.
Ted “Listen to me. Get your fingers around my chin, you can put your thumbs in my eye-holes if you gotta”
Aud (Nauseous) “I feel something?”
Ted “That’s brain, ignore it! Pull!”
After pull-down, Ted on floor,
Audrey vomits, obscured by the foreground. Ted's head falls to the floor with an overstated wet thud, and rolls onto his side
Ted “This is so! much! better! When you’re upside-down for too long, the maggots, they kinda pool in your skull.”
Audrey takes a minute to steady herself, wiping her mouth off with her arm.
Aud “You know the way out?”
Ted “I think I know the way in, that’s a start.”
