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HAUNTED

BASED ON A NOVEL BY CHUCK PALAHNIUK

By Koen MORTIER

CZAR FILM - as PROD

Horror - Development 2022

A group of aspiring writers go on a retreat, from which they cannot escape. Instead of writing, they tell each other stories about their own personal horrors, while creating more.

Festivals
& Awards

Berlin coproduction market 2018
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    • Year of production
    • 2022
    • Genres
    • Horror
    • Countries
    • BELGIUM, UNITED KINGDOM
    • Languages
    • ENGLISH
    • Budget
    • 3 - 5 M$
    • Duration
    • 90 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Koen MORTIER
    • Writer(s)
    • Brock NORMAN BROCK, Koen MORTIER
    • Producer(s)
    • Eurydice GYSEL (CZAR Film), Koen MORTIER (CZAR Film)
    • Synopsis
    • The advertisement said: “Just disappear”. “Abandon your life”. “This is your last chance”. “Become a writer in three months”.

      Eleven aspiring writers leave their homes to attend the retreat in order to chase their dream of becoming somebody. Some of them leave a note behind to be found by someone, while others just disappear as if they never existed. For most of the attendees, even Walker, the bus driver, it is a possibility to escape the rat race of life.

      Yet they do not end up in a mansion, nor do they end up on a Hemingway-like island with an ocean view and a writing table with the newest laptop on it. No, the retreat is not at all what they had in mind. Once the massive gate of the abandoned site closes, there is no way back. They are in the hands of their captor, Mr Whittier.

      Seven days after they first stepped into the bunker, they all know that they are not going to write their magnum opus; they are not going to write anything. If they survive the three-month detention organised by a devilish sadist, the only artistic contribution they are going to deliver is the story of their survival.

      Their consolation is that they can sell their peculiar story to the highest-bidding newspaper, be guests on talk shows, telling their backbreaking story, explaining how they survived not only starvation, but also torture, humiliation and the most dreadful anxieties a human being can tolerate.

      But then their tormentor dies on them. Their only possible ticket to innocent martyrdom passes away, and they still have eighty days to go.

      They kill time by telling autobiographical stories that are sometimes the reason why they ended up at the retreat, tales that could become part of their myth of success once they are rescued, once they are finally in the glare of the spotlight. Yet their backstories will be worth nothing, if their horror in the camp is not appalling enough. Fuelled by the ambition to create the cruellest story, they start terrorizing each other. And they do not stop, even when it starts costing them their sanity, and lives.

      They push their self-terrorising too far, and all die but Walker. He is the only survivor, the only one able to tell their story. And so he does.
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