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Title: SKELETONS

Reference number: 8558

Date: 2009

Director: [d. Nick Whitfield]

Sponsor: [ EM Media and Scottish Screen]

Producer: [ Tracy Brimm, Kate Myers]

Production company: [ A Forward Films Production in co-production with Edge City Films]

Sound: sound

Original format: HDCam

Certificate: 15

Colour: col

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 94.02 mins

Description: “It’s simple, this job: stick to the rules, tell them everything, leave and never come back.” A pair of travelling salesmen wander in and out of people's lives, performing a Procedure whereby hidden secrets and lies are exposed. When they arrive at a remote family home and can't seem to get the job done, they discover that you can't always get away from your own skeletons.

Winner of Michael Powell Award for Best New British Feature Film at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, 2010.

See film website at http://www.skeletonsthemovie.com/ [last accessed 18/10/2010]

Credits: [w. and d. Nick Whitfield
p. Tracy Brimm, Kate Myers, Paul Welsh
exec. p. Suzanne Alizart, Robbie Allen, Anna Seifert-Speck

Shotlist: DAVIS and BENNETT work for Veridical. They specialise in carrying out “the Procedure”; a combination of skills and specific tools allowing them to literally extract skeletons out of people’s closets. “Stick to the rules, tell them everything, leave and never come back” is Davis’ mantra. Bennett gets more emotionally involved in the cases. He constantly tries to warn clients of the dangers of the Procedure, and hates to leave when the Procedure delivers particularly bad news.

Their first job in the story takes them to an engaged couple where they explain the rules of the extraction. Two special granite rocks are used as tools and a personal object, normally a client’s wardrobe, completes the circuit. This extraction divulges nothing too serious.
The next job is for a new age hippy couple, Olly and Hermione. Davis and Bennett begin the extraction and find themselves in their clients’ past memories. They are able to literally step into Hermione’s shoes as she secretly attends Latin dance classes, then into Olly’s as he hires a prostitute. Hermione is devastated by what they reveal.

The two men separate for respite week. Davis takes himself to his home – a dirty docked boat. Bennett spends the week at his mother’s home.
A week later, Bennett comes to collect Davis. The boat is a dump, he is dishevelled and generally confused by how fast the week has gone. They carry out the routine ‘cleansing’ of each other where they review each other’s past week by using a circuit. Bennett discovers Davis spent the week ‘glow-chasing’; with the use of an old family photograph, his own personal object, he repeatedly returns to a comforting childhood memory. Glow-chasing is a dangerous addiction that can lead to long-term psychological impairment and end with the user “going Bulgarian”. Bennett is furious and threatens to tell THE COLONEL, their boss at Veridical. When the Colonel arrives to give them their next assignment Bennett holds his tongue. The Colonel is suspicious but gives them a graduation job that will take them onto bigger things.

JANE lives with her daughter REBECCA (21) and son JOJO (8) in a remote house in the country. Her husband disappeared eight years ago. She spends her time digging up holes in her garden in the hope that she will discover his body. Jane has not left the house because she fears missing him if he returns and her last hope is that Bennett and Davis will find out what happened.

It looks like a textbook case to Davis although there is something about the home that makes him uneasy. Davis and Bennett have to stay the night as the preliminary readings are inconclusive. Unsettled by Rebecca’s sly aggressiveness towards him during dinner, Davis leaves the table early. When Bennett follows, he discovers Davis glow-chasing. Bennett is furious; Davis is becoming a danger to both of them.

Next morning, Davis notices that the flowers in their bedroom have wilted overnight. He concludes that the house is on a Corpse Road; an area of heightened supernatural activity affecting the ability to carry out extractions. They call the Colonel and are told to await his arrival. Davis recalls a similar problem from an older case. He determines creating a ‘bypass’ could solve the problem. Davis gives Bennett his rocks and photograph, claiming he is ready to give up glow chasing. Rebecca, seeing this exchange, takes the photo while they aren’t watching.

The bypass seems to work and Davis convinces Bennett the procedure is now routine. Bennett gives Davis back his stones and they go ahead with the extraction. But Rebecca distracts Davis from outside by showing him the photo she’s stolen. He removes his goggles to get a closer look and when he turns back to the extraction underway, his eyes are unprotected and the impact causes him to go Bulgarian. The Colonel arrives to hear screaming and is furious with the two of them for not waiting.

Davis can only speak Bulgarian and drifts in and out of memories of the family’s past. Unwatched, Rebecca steals the stones and runs away. She instinctively puts them into a circuit and is propelled into Davis’ past. Davis is there also and is furious with her for entering his memories. As they drift between each other’s past, she discovers the comfort he finds in going back to his family and he gets a glimpse of her past. He discovers she is running away in the present and orders her to wait.

Davis awakes in the real world, still Bulgarian. He goes to find Rebecca, she looks after him as he drifts in and out of consciousness and takes him to the city. Bennett, unable to cope with Jane’s grief at the disappearance of her daughter, breaks his own rules and carries out an unsanctioned, solo extraction. Meanwhile, Rebecca has reached her destination and shows Davis what she saw three years ago that silenced her, the discovery that her Dad had a new life and a new family. Bennett and Davis see the truth unfold – one in the present, the other through the Procedure. Rebecca speaks for the first time since her discovery and admits that silence allowed her to avoid telling her mother the truth. Bennett is desperate to tell Jane the truth. However, the Colonel won’t allow him, as Bennett’s extraction was illegal. He lies to Jane about “complications during the procedure”. But on his return with Rebecca, Davis gives Bennett the address for Jane’s husband telling him that Bennett will now have to look after her. They inform the irate Colonel that they are going freelance.
Rebecca follows Davis back into his glow and challenges him to let go of his past and live in the present. Davis says goodbye to his past and rejoins Rebecca in the present.
Months later, Davis and Rebecca are partners in “the Procedure”. They return from a work trip to the house where they are greeted by Bennett who now lives with Jane and JoJo.