Film Treatment: Gaslight
Logline: It seemed like an open and shut case, a triple homicide with one survivor to tell the tale, but now their star witness is keeping dark secrets.
Gaslight centers around the term “gaslighting”, a phenomenon where a man uses emotional and mental manipulation in order to make a women feel crazy for reproaching or accusing him. This term was popularized by numerous female journalists during this past November election, as Trump made victims that came forward with sexual assault allegations sound insane, or downgraded their physical appearances in order to make the act appear impossible or improbable. In this story, Briar is gaslighted by Michael, the accused because his arguments center on her credibility as a witness based on the fact that she survived this traumatic event. He makes the court question her because he basically frames the situation around her psyche during the crime and after. This is an important topic to broach because it happens so much in our partriachial society and is used as a tactic to discredit women’s experiences.
Briar is the sole survivor of an attack that takes place at a hotel hours away from her small town. She had been staying there with her three girlfriends, all teenagers in their third year of high school. For her birthday, Briar’s parents allow her to stay the weekend with her friends at the hotel along the beach. During their stay, Briar runs into Michael, one of her older brother’s college friends. Her older brother goes to an ivy-league college, so her friends are excited by the idea of having an older, rich boy over in their hotel room to drink and hang out. Unfortunately, the night ends in tragedy as Briar and her friends are brutally attacked in their hotel room. Briar is found bloodied and traumatized, but survives. All of the aforementioned events are seen through distorted flashback, solely through Briar’s vantage point. Now, we are in the present, several months from the attack. A young state prosecutor is preparing a murder case against a young, attractive college man. Briar has accused Michael of being the murderer of her friends. However, when pressed for more details, Briar remains silent about many details about the events of that night, but she is certain that Michael is the one who did it. Since Michael is from a wealthy family, he is able to afford the best defense team. The state is concerned about the unwillingness of Briar to take the stand against him because of her refusal to speak on everything that happened that night. It is clear to everyone that she is hiding something. She expresses extreme guilt at what happened to her friends, but as to what she feels guilty about is not certain. Soon Michael’s defense team begins pointing the finger at her, as her guilt begins to incriminate her.
The character of Briar represents the realistic victim. Most people believe that if something truly horrific or traumatizing happened to them that they would be strong and direct in pursuing their assailant’s punishment. However, people don’t know how they are going to react until it actually happens to them and there is no one, sole way to cope or deal with trauma. Many people don’t take into account the pressure and re-traumatization that happens when you get interrogated or repeatedly questioned about a traumatic event. A good percentage of rape victims don’t even want to prosecute their attackers because of the fear of being outed as a victim of rape, the scrutiny of the investigators’ questions and the anxiety of not being believed. In this way, the film explores why witnesses are not always as perfect and accurate as we expect them to be. And for women, there are much more expectations put on them as victims or witnesses.
The film will be depicted as realistically as possible. The teenagers will speak like teenagers and dress like teenagers. Some portrayals of teenagers in the mainstream media are heavily produced and usually played by actors in their late twenties, but this film would seek to accurately depict teenagers that look like actual teenagers. The young girls’ wardrobe will be sexualized to an extent that any young female girl would sexualize herself in pursuit of catching the eye of an older guy. However, this is done because it will become a plot point in the film. The defense team will try to discredit Briar by saying that her friends and her were trying to seduce their defendant and were participating in illegal activity and thus should not be seen as victims. This is an important image of the film because it plays on the double standards with young men and women and the victim blaming that goes on whenever there is sexuality and substances involved.
