Screenplay Q & A
What was the genesis of Spirit of Darkness?
It all started with the idea of a haunting entity that becomes desperately isolated when a tsunami kills all the people it enjoys tormenting. With that foundation, I wanted to explore three themes: 1) a multi-generational haunting, 2) a realistic scenario of a documented supernatural occurrence reaching international notoriety, and finally, 3) watching the world—including a satanic cult—debate the “ghost vs demon” question before the audience learns that the entity is actually neither.
Why set the story in 1978?
A ghost could appear in the middle of Times Square today, be captured by 5,000 iPhone cameras, and yet few would believe it. Digital graphics, CGI and now AI have eroded the credibility of all visual evidence; I wanted to set the story in a time when a Super-8 film would constitute indisputable proof. The time and location of the story also tie authentically into my personal childhood and my mother’s purported encounters with supernatural forces, described here.
Can you tell us more about Janet?
At the beginning of our story, Janet is more inclined to defer to patriarchal authority figures like her pastor or the cult leader. Although she lost her father as a baby, no memory of a father is better than Janet’s memories of repeated disappointment from an eccentric mother. To compensate for her own dysfunctional childhood, Janet strives to maintain a “normal” suburban family, for whom she has placed her own career on hold. Hoping to forgive and forget her mother’s imperfections, she seeks to reconnect with Leola, inadvertently triggering a reintroduction of the Ghost into her life. We learn that Leola’s mental instability, eccentricity and former prioritization of male companionship over motherhood, was balanced by a massive personal sacrifice to protect Janet and her children. As Janet comes to terms with her complex relationship with Leola, she is forced to become increasingly self-reliant, and ultimately ventures out in the third act to resolve the terror on her own.
Could an attentive viewer anticipate Ghost’s true nature?
Absolutely. There are at least a dozen hints throughout the screenplay pointing to Ghost’s origin. I want the audience to be surprised, but not be gob-smacked by a resentful feeling of implausibility.
Do you believe in ghosts or demons?
No. Which is funny, because I love movies about ghosts and the devil. But I do believe that intelligent life exists outside our planet, and while interstellar travel is highly improbable, to me it is far more likely that we are visited by aliens than spirits of the dead.
