Sink

LOGLINE

A closed-off young woman returns home to the remote Canadian Oil Sands to bury her estranged father. But when his bitter legacy resurfaces as an ancient evil that feeds on trauma, she must finally confront her past…

…or drown in it.

A NEO-WESTERN HORROR WITH A MONSTROUS TWIST.

A haunting and emotionally resonant film with casting opportunities for compelling female characters, SINK intertwines familial drama with environmental horrors. It explores our collective sense of despair in the face of climate change and the perverse hold oil has on every aspect of lives—the true monster lurking under the surface.

THE HORROR OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Oil powers war machines and fuels our economies. Its byproducts have revolutionized medicine and technology, convenience and connection. It’s in our clothes, our homes, and even the breast milk that nourishes our children. We built an incredible new world on a wish from a monkey’s paw...

And now the bill has come due.

There has never been a more urgent time to tell stories about climate change in unexpected and engaging ways. By drawing a connection between climate change and conversations around generational trauma, addiction, and mental health, we can reach audiences with a story that’s more than a bunch of ominous statistics or yet another disaster film. Because when we acknowledge and face the anxiety, hopelessness, and pain we all feel, we can begin to imagine another path forward.

SINK follows WREN (27), a young woman who left home at nineteen to escape a domineering father and a dead-end future in the Athabasca Oil Sands—the most environmentally destructive source of oil in the world.

When her father’s body is pulled from a toxic run-off pond at the SOLCOM refinery where he worked, Wren returns home to her resentful brother LIAM (24), a small-time drug dealer, and their ailing mother SYLVIE (47) who has been in a catatonic state for nearly ten years.

Back home, Wren struggles to reconnect with people from her past who are suffering from the twin devastations of climate change and the opioid epidemic. She becomes consumed by disturbing hallucinations connected to memories of her father and when she discovers a list of names in his old journal—other workers who died in the same toxic pond—she begins to investigate the circumstances of his death. Her search leads her to WENDELL (54), a paranoid man living on the fringes who tells Wren about “the Bakken”, a monstrous entity that lives within the oil and feeds off humanity’s pain and despair. The only way to hide yourself from the Bakken, he believes, is to mask your pain with drugs.

The night of her father’s funeral, Wren is attacked by the Bakken and her friend DONNA (27) is brutally killed. Wren races to the police station to get help from PAUL (28), her cop ex-boyfriend. When they return to the scene, they find Donna’s body but no sign of the Bakken. As Wren sobers up in the light of day, she starts to doubt what she saw and reluctantly returns home with Paul. However, unbeknownst to her, Paul has been infected by a piece of the Bakken while examining Donna’s body.

At the house, the Bakken uses Paul to take possession of Sylvie and consume Liam—finally revealing its true monstrous form. As the Bakken kills Paul and two other police officers, Wren is able to narrowly escape when she heeds Wendell’s advice and intentionally overdoses on pain medication to hide herself. Determined to save Liam, Wren returns to the toxic run-off pond where her father died and is pulled into a surreal world beneath the surface—coming face-to-face with the Bakken.

In a final confrontation, the Bakken takes the form of her father and tempts her with a promise to take all her pain and suffering away. Instead, Wren chooses to embrace the Bakken, acknowledging the pain she and her father share and promising to carry it for the both of them. Through this act, Wren unravels the hold the Bakken has on her family and is able to save Liam. In the film’s final moments, the two siblings drive away from their hometown seemingly free from the Bakken's clutches and the weight of their past. But when they stop for gas along the highway an unnoticed puddle of oil stirs, hinting that the monster within continues to survive.

THE ATHABASCA OIL SANDS

The hub of Canada's oil industry and the most environmentally destructive source of crude oil in the world. This is a vast and disturbing landscape, flattened by bulldozers, dredged, and sifted beyond recognition—resembling more the surface of an alien moon than any place you’d find on Earth. At the edge of this frontier of climate destruction sits the grey, oil-stained city of Fort McMurray. A place of floods, wildfires, and home to over 100,000 people.

All grey skies and concrete, we were inspired by neo-western films like No Country for Old Men, Sicario, and Wind River in bringing this strange and dangerous frontier of climate devastation to life. The moody, melancholy feel of our setting is contrasted by intimate, character-driven scenes full of lingering looks and unspoken truths

A MONSTER OF OUR OWN MAKING

A primordial evil that feeds on suffering. Unearthed by our addiction to oil and bound to us by our greed. The Bakken is drawn to what’s broken in each of us.

And it’s waiting for Wren to come home.

COMPS