The Witch's Castle (2012)

The Witch's Castle

2012 (tentative), (1.85:1), Drama/horror/crime, color.

Crew
Director/Writer: J.L. Carrozza.

I've been interested in doing this, a film inspired by the real-life, horrific murder of Indiana adolescent Shanda Sharer, for some time now. I first read an account of the murder online when I was around 16. It was so vivid and horrific I've forgotten few details of it to this day. The imagery of its occurrences stuck in my head like a well-aimed arrow and the crime was so savage that I could see the details of what happened as vividly as any film. I remembered this and thought it would make an interesting, if highly disturbing film, but I didn't think I wanted to make it myself. But then a short while later I began to toil with the idea of actually making it as an early, low budget feature since with its rural locale and small cast of teenaged characters, the story suits that format quite well. I wrote a very rough 60 page script in late 2004 to early 2005 that was of poor quality. Did a more nihilistic draft in my drug and tobacco-fuelled college days in 2008 and then the most recent, 100 page draft in mid 2009. Currently gearing up for another one soon that will be considerably expanded in its characterizations and looser in its accuracy.

The film will be a dark journey through the underbelly of suburban America and a character study on people with sociopathic tendencies. I've been interested in those themes since Dream House and it will be taken even further in The Witch's Castle, but in a more realistic, grittier and less satirical manner. Though this statement is controversial, I strongly believe that psychopaths are and always have been the biggest blight on mankind's legacy. Almost every historical atrocity can be traced to a psychopathic perpetrator or a psychopathic leader who ordered it. Not only are most if not all serial killers afflicted with this mental abnormality, I believe many past and present historical figures who negatively impacted history are/were psychopaths. It makes sense since every negative regime, capitalist, fascist, socialist or militarist all share very similar traits in terms of what they were like to live in: life based entirely on fear and control, two of the psychopath's favorite mental weapons. The perpetrator of this film's crime, Melinda Loveless, was very likely a psychopath, as was her intensely abusive father Larry before her. The film, like Dream House and Alison in Wonderland, will also be a much more brooding meditation on the "abnormality" of so-called "normal" American society. If something like the Shanda Sharer murder and the numerous other shockingly brutal small town killings that often involve young people and make the headlines can occur in a comfortable suburban society, could that society be a far less safe and healthy one than its denizens pretend?

As far as the new script goes, as with the old drafts, the names have all been changed so I can take more liberties with the story and to lower the risk of lawsuits from those still living. The next draft will be retooled to provide a less accurate but thusly less litigable adaptation. It's now merely inspired by the crime and people involved as opposed to based on them. The Shanda Sharer character's age has been changed to around 14 from her actual age of 12 thus making the story more filmable. The third and fourth girls who were there that night: Hope Rippey and Toni Lawrence have been combined into one character and the characters have all been fleshed out. There will be more exposition, the violence is toned down and most of the torture removed to make it more watchable. Really, the film is going to primarily be a drama about four teenage girls from variously dysfunctional backgrounds whose fractured lives lead to them coming together in one place: the titular Witch's Castle, with one of the four girls not surviving the night. For its visual look, my current idea is to shoot it on Super 16mm for an "earthier" look, but I will probably alternate with digital cinematography to keep the costs down. The feel will be to many far more gloomy/nihilistic than Alison in Wonderland , but that is not totally the case. As said before, both expose the facades of "security" in Americana. Like two figures bound to the Devil in the iconic Waite Tarot deck we stay bound to our destructively egoic ways because they make us feel safe on some level but we have the complete freedom of choice to stop any time we wish. Alison in Wonderland is about the choice the break free of it. The Witch's Castle is about staying chained to it and what that can bring.