I have a great story line for a movie script that would never get green-lighted in Hollywood. It goes something like this:

A woman in her retirement years moves into a haunted house and we see her moving in, opening boxes and puttering around tidying up. In each room of the house, there’s something scary that terrifies the audience. She goes in the bathroom to put supplies away and the door creepily closes behind her, but she doesn’t notice. We see furniture flying around in a room she just left, she hears a noise, but shrugs and keeps on working. We see a ghost walking down the darkened hallway and it literally passes right through her, but she keeps on humming and hangs a nice picture up there.

There’s an old mirror in her bedroom that came with the house and she puts her rocking chair down, and then while cleaning she finds a doll hidden away in a closet, and puts it in the rocking chair because she thinks it makes the place look homey. The picture below is what the audience sees…

Day after day, week after week, month after month and then year after year all the old horror / ghost story movie tropes are danced out of the dusty Hollywood basement. Ghosts pop out everywhere, jump scares galore, poltergeists throw stuff at her, she doesn’t notice because she just keeps checking things off her to do list and minding her own business.

The audience is terrified, but there’s no payoff at all. The woman is happy and content in her home and nothing bothers her.

Less a Hollywood blockbuster, but more a metaphor for a way to live a contented life. It’ll never sell…