Sundown
Sundown
A Horror Feature Film
SUNDOWN asks the question…
What if a witch had dementia?
Logline:
In a remote care facility, a retired Sheriff battling dementia begins to see horrifying visions tied to a new patient, but as his grip on reality weakens, and patients and staff disappear, only he can stop her, even if it costs what’s left of himself.
About:
More elderly people are alive today than at any other time in history. There have never been this many people living for this long. That means the need for skilled nursing and memory care is also at an all time high. Everyone is affected by this. We’ve all seen loved ones struggle through different physical and mental challenges in their final years, and it’s often horrific.
The horror genre confronts our greatest fears; aging, loss of control, our bodies not belonging to us. So what about a horror villain that is struggling with these same things? A horror villain that has lost all control and discernment.
So what would happen if a witch had dementia?
Lyle
Our protagonist: Once a proud county Sheriff, Lyle now finds himself in a fragile state. He is physically weak, mentally unreliable, and haunted by a violent past he can’t fully recall.
Ava
Torn between love and exhaustion, Ava struggles to care for her grandfather as he slips into dementia
Violante
Violante Desdera is a frail, near-silent woman suffering from advanced dementia. Decades ago, she was a weapon used by a drug cartel. She hums a strange melody that infects the mind of whoever hears it.
Cold Open
Decades ago, near the U.S.–Mexico border, Sheriff’s Deputy LYLE BOUDREAU responds to an abandoned warehouse believed to be a cartel dump site. Inside, he and his partner CARL SUTTNER discover something far worse: men, women, and children bound, carved with a strange half-closed eye symbol on their foreheads.
The only survivor is a small boy, covered in blood, who whispers a name: “La Reina.”
Suddenly, a hypnotic melody fills the warehouse. Carl becomes entranced, carving the symbol into his own flesh before violently killing himself. Lyle nearly follows, raising a trembling shotgun barrel to his own head just as sirens arrive.
Present Day
Now nearly 80, Lyle resides temporarily at Villa Mesa, a struggling skilled-nursing facility in the desert, recovering from a brain bleed and showing early signs of cognitive decline. He insists he’ll be leaving soon. The staff is polite but stretched thin. Budget cuts loom.
Lyle’s granddaughter Ava, early 20s and preparing for the police academy, is his only family. She manages his care, paperwork, and increasingly erratic behavior while trying not to lose her own future. Their relationship is fraught with past secrets.
That evening, police and EMTs arrive with an unidentified elderly woman found wandering the desert. She is restrained, terrified, and nearly non-verbal.
When Lyle sees her wrist, once adorned with silver bracelets and bearing a familiar, strange tattoo, his blood runs cold. He recognizes her.
That same night, one of the EMTs who transported Violante mutilates himself in his ambulance, his body almost emptied by a self-inflicted wound. As the sun sets, Act One ends with a question:
Is Lyle losing his mind… or is he the only one who knows the truth?
As darkness falls, Villa Mesa begins to fracture. Lights flicker. Ventilation rattles. Televisions glitch. And residents mutter unfamiliar phrases that only Lyle remembers: “You are not you.”
Violante appears fragile, confused, frightened, and sometimes childlike, but strange details surface. She hums softly when alone. Symbols appear drawn in marker on mirrors and walls. Staff members report disorientation, headaches, and auditory hallucinations.
An orderly steals one of Violante’s silver bracelets. Alone in her bathroom, he finds the mirror covered in half-closed eye symbols. Violante’s melody overwhelms him. Under her influence, he drinks industrial cleaner, duct-tapes his own mouth shut, and dies convulsing on the tile floor.
Lyle begins investigating the facility despite his failing body and unreliable memory.
Ava discovers Lyle’s old case files and learns the truth: the massacre was never solved. Lyle was quietly forced into early retirement after psychological evaluations.
Lyle hallucinates his dead partner, Carl, and confesses to his old friend that he’s recognizing patterns identical to the warehouse killing: mass suggestion, ritual, and ancient horror. In return, Carl confronts him with brutal clarity: “You’d better get your mind right. If you don’t, people will die.”
Lyle realizes the true horror:
His mind cannot be trusted… but it’s all up to him.
A man named Malvo arrives at Villa Mesa after hours, posing as concerned family. In truth, he is Violante’s brother and cartel enforcer who once used Violante as a weapon, her song employed to torture and kill their enemies and control territory.
Violante was discarded when she became unstable. Malvo wants her back, not to save her, but to reclaim what she once was.
During a facility-wide AC failure, the security guard discovers dead crows clogging the vents. The melody pipes through the ventilation system. Residents wander the halls. Some harm themselves. Others hum.
As for Violante, her broken and reeling mind sees Ava as the daughter she lost in childbirth and takes her hostage. The facility is no longer safe.
Ava is in danger. Malvo is on the loose, and Violante’s powers are uncontrollable.
As Lyle searches for Ava, Villa Mesa becomes a maze of darkness, emergency lights, and echoing voices.
The night spirals into chaos. Violante’s darkness spreads, blurring identities, compelling self-destruction, and forcing characters to confront who they truly are beneath memory and fear. Malvo breaches the facility, accelerating the bloodshed, and is determined to take his sister, no matter who must die.
Lyle, facing the collapse of his own mind, must act one final time as a lawman, trusting instinct over memory. Ava steps into her future, choosing whether to believe in her grandfather and fight, or surrender him to the system that sees him as already gone.
Malvo finally confronts his sister, desperate to take his “weapon” back home. But in her scattered mind, she sees him as a Devil come to rip her from Ava, the “daughter” she never had. And with this, her mad song enters his mind. Overwhelmed by madness, Malvo hallucinates a ravenous murder of crows pecking at his face and eyes. As Lyle watches, the madman stabs himself to death with broken glass.
As Villa Mesa goes mad around him, Lyle spots Ava outside in a trance from Violante’s song. Police arrive, but her voice infects their minds, crashing their patrol car into a tree.
With gasoline quickly encircling a group of spellbound patients and staff, Lyle confronts Violante, not just as a monster, but as a mirror: both eroded by time, violence, and a shared darkness. Lyle struggles with her, attempting to muffle her evil hymn. She rips at his face, they fall together, and we hear the horrible snap of a bone. Her neck is broken. Violante dies in Lyle’s arms, not as a monster, but as a scared, old woman.
Evil is confronted but not neatly defeated. As the sun rises, Violante has died. Malvo is dead. Ava is safe. And Villa Mesa begins to heal.
But as for Lyle, his story of Sundown ends with an unsettling truth: dementia may be the ultimate horror story.