Concept for thriller - "Dahlia"

title card

Dahlia- concept for media thriller

Genre -crime/period/noir thriller

Tag line – The case that makes you or the case that breaks you

1947 Los Angeles and a number of violent murders have consumed every type of newspaper and radio stations and have left the LAPD baffled at who is committing these atrocities. The papers call the murder the black Dahlia after the dahlia plant was found at each of his victim’s mutilated corpses. January 15^th and woman by the name Elizabeth short is found mutilated in the Liemert park district of Los Angeles. Enter our primary protagonist known by us and the papers as the fixer, a masked vigilante who is known by the public as a menace and by the police as their main suspect. As the fixer investigates these murders he starts to uncover a conspiracy that ties back to the mysterious Elysian corporation and a new designer drug called Euphoria which has been plaguing the streets of LA for months. As our protagonist delves deeper the homicide detective James Earle is hot on the trail of the fixer convinced he is in fact the dahlia. Eventually in a long game cat and mouse fate would catch up to the fixer and he is caught by the authorities. Enter our secondary protagonist James Earle as he soon pieces together that the fixer is innocent and picks up where he left off but there are forces against Earle as he is framed for murder and must now continue the case alone as fugitive and clear his name before it is too late.

Special notes

• The film opens with a scene in which our primary protaginist the fixer is going to get caught by James Earle and his team when a flashback sequence starts narrated by the fixer telling the events up until that moment.

• The shift to the fixer and Earle as protagonists will be reminiscent of the shift used in Hitchcock’s psycho.
• The film will be film in black and white and stylised like old noir crime thrillers.
• In real life Elizabeth short was known as the black dahlia not the murderer and the murderer did not leave dahlia plants on his/hers victims- however this has been changed for artistic license.