In my movie, I want Tim Allen to participate in a hit and
run, only to return home to find that the person he’s run over and abandoned to
die on the side of the road is none other than Santa, and that, due to an
obscure clause in his contract, whoever kills Santa is forced to take his
place. Over the course of the rest of the film we’ll focus on Mr. Allan’s
transformation, both physical as he takes on the traditional form of Santa and
mental as he becomes more generous and jolly, as his inner Santa comes to the
fore.
The tone I intend to create, over the course of this film,
is one of existential dread mixed with a healthy dose body horror, as an
ordinary man is forced, as penance for one lapse of judgment, to watch
helplessly as he is transformed beyond his recognition, as one by one the
signifiers of identity he’s put so much stock in, both physically and mentally,
are stripped from him, as he is consumed from the inside out by the Christmas
Spirit, an angry ghost which must be appeased at all costs, and which has no
care for the life it is consuming.
Partway through act two, Allen-Clause will discover that he’s
no longer capable of taking his own life, that every time he tries the Spirit
prevents him, seeking as it does to protect its host body until such time as
the transformation is complete and it has total control, and due to this
revelation he will spend act three seeking out someone, anyone, willing to put
an end to his life while there’s still enough “self” left in him for his death,
and by extension his life, to hold some measure of meaning.
Eventually, he’ll remember how he got into this mess in the
first place, and run into a busy street, where he’ll be hit by a car and, in
his dying moments, bloated body broken, from behind his white beard, he’ll let
out a laugh, not the “Ho Ho Ho” his laugh had become, but rather the laugh of
Tim Allen, weaker and more hoarse as he dies, but still inarguably his own. In
this way the audience will know that, in death if not in life, he’s triumphed,
both over the Spirit and its horrible clause.
I believe the film will be a fascinating look at the nature
of identity, as well as a gripping horror story, and as such will release it
midway through October, just in time for “holiday season” for this type of
film. I also suspect I could bring it in with a relatively minimal budget, as I
can’t imagine Tim Allen’s terribly busy nowadays, also a plus as the
possibility of a sequel is obvious.
After all, somebody was driving the car that ran
Allen-Clause over at the end of the film.
And, no matter what lengths the host bodies might go through
to die, Santa does come every year, like clockwork. So however many hosts might
succeed in ending their lives, eventually there will be one who isn’t strong
enough to do what it takes, or lucky enough to do it in time. And that unlucky
soul will be consumed so completely that it will be as though they’d never
existed at all.
Because the Christmas Spirit will not be denied…
