PRISM is an indpendent feature film delving into mysteries of existence

Only one of us can stay

Story Notes

A lot happens in this last scene. I'll just cover some of the more implicit action.

The entity is unshackled but not yet free. It cannot get too far away from Cage. If it did the connection would cease and Mason would be free. (a problem in and of itself)

Leanna walks in unsuspecting. Her mind is racing with thoughts of where to move Cage and how to convince Bill to keep her in the loop. She doesn't notice Sarah laying unconscious at the end of the hall, nor Mason's door standing wide open. She walks right into a trap.

The entity is now in posession of a human with more than enough capacity for evil. Its intention all along has been to force Cage to lapse his concentration and focused willpower long enough for to allow detatchment and escape. Cage must choose to let go. The enitity intends to frighten or shock Cage into doing so by threatening or killing Leanna in front of him. Everything appears to be working out even better than planned.

Suddenly though, Bill appears, and he's holding the prism. This was not part of the plan and the entity scrambles, realizing that this is too much of a coincidence. Higher forces must be at work. The entity frantically attempts to wrest control of the situation.

In the struggle bill strikes out with keys in hand and punctures Mason's shoulder. To everyone's amazement, Cage reacts in pain.

This loophole was just what the entity was looking for. Bill is struck down, Leanna is stunned on the floor. The entity has a window of opportunity to capitolize on this new information and shock the boy awake.

With a massive focused effort the entity stabs the pen through Mason's hand. Cage awakes abruptly, holding his palm and screaming. With Cage awake there is nothing preventing the entity from killing the boy and severing the connection between itself and the prism.

But Leanna has been watching all of this. At once all of the clues, all of the hints and intuitions of the past few days, of her whole life, become clear. What is required is a single focused act of will on her part. The willful destruction of the prism and by extension, the entity which is bound to it.

In this moment the entity and Leanna both realize what must happen. He must kill the boy before she can destroy the prism. The sun is just rising outside of the window.

As the entity launches its puppet towards Cage, arm raised to stab the boy, the rising sun like the finger of god shines through the cracked window glass, paints a full specturm of light across Mason's face. The eyes are the window to the soul as they say. The puppeteer is stunned as Leanna forcefully and with clear intention, smashes the glass prism to pieces on the floor. Mason's body crumbles in mid air, slams against the bed and falls to the floor.

Filmmaker's Notes

There's more to smashing a prism in slow motion than you might think. We actually never smashed a glass prism. We mad a bunch of sugar prisms and ice prisms for smashing. They smashed great, and after just a little bit of coaching our athletic leading lady was able to smash 'em on cue and on the mark.

And that's neither the sun not the finger of god in the window. It's a great big HMI on a two story tall specialized C-Stand.

Interviews

Selected Scene Explorations

Thoughts and Spooky Production Stories:

HInts and Inspirations.