Schizo
Thomas is a happy go lucky young man who uses powerful drugs for the first time with his two best girlfriends. When they both die, one of an overdose and the other not long after in a freak car accident, he is left alone to continue his life with his parents at their summer house by the beach. After a few mad and horrible hallucinations in which he is haunted by his two friends, Thomas is diagnosed with Schizophrenia, probably the result of his drug trip. He is prescribed new drugs that funny enough helps him to control his hallucinations up to a point where he no longer thinks they are illusions, but perhaps he is reaching out to another realm or reality, the realm of the dead. From there he becomes obsess with communicating with his girlfriends and manage to build a little laboratory in order to record the voices, images and films of his dead friends. His parents are not too happy and ultimately destroy his findings without reviewing them. Once Thomas also dies from complications in his brain, his mother suddenly understands her son's obsession and finally succeeds in communicating with him using his recording equipment.
To give you an idea for the feel of this film and Thomas, you should watch the movie Donnie Darko with the actor Jake Gyllenhaal. First of all, this movie needs to be cool and frightening, a bit like the movie Flatliners with Julia Roberts and Kevin Bacon, which is also a movie where the characters die in order to experience the after life, or I should say their Judgment Day. That movie truly traumatized me at the time (1990) because it was based on something possible. Not only it could be true, but perhaps there were many accounts of similar stories told by people who came back from the dead (I am not certain if it is the case). Also, the images were just poignant, the sick dog that Bacon had killed came back to haunt him in an extraordinary way. The tree in the dark night, the atmosphere suddenly changing to a horrible place once they are dead and having their visions, all this is well made. And what to say about the scene in the Subway and the light going off. It is in that spirit that Schizo should be made. This movie starts with the assumption that not all schizophrenic people are imagining what is going on in their hallucinations. Perhaps some of them really reach out to another realm, and perhaps the realm of the dead. So next time you see a schizophrenic talking with no one, ask yourself, perhaps there is really someone there. And the horrific part of their hallucination might be like the results of poltergeists. A manifestation that wish to be friendly but from one realm to another the results are frightening, light bulbs start exploding and things fly around the room. So when Sheila and Nicole are trying to communicate with Thomas, his brain receives a signal (that he will later record with his equipment) and the way his brain interprets it, or translates it, adds a lot of unwanted frightening things when perhaps there were originally none. All this will be discussed in the film. Now, as to talking with ghosts and record images, films and sounds, there are already organized associations everywhere in the world that have a staggering amount of proofs to offer. To name only two, here is the American Association of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP): http://aaevp.com and the Instrumental Transcommunication website (ITC) www.worlditc.org. This film is about showing to the world that it is possible to record ghosts talking and living somewhere else and that the universe the mediums are reaching can be recorded on our day to day technology. It is a film that is trying to show that there is a world out there where certain people go when they die and that we can reach out for it.
Thomas has two good friends, Sheila and Nicole, and after school one night they decide to go to an empty school stadium to play with their Ouija Board (we can see them leaving class and walk together with the board and the alcohol). While they drink and take drugs, they try to call the spirits from the other side, without really taking this seriously and without success. Suddenly strong winds appear and the Ouija board flies over the benches. A thunderstorm starts over their head even though the night sky was clear minutes before and we can see heavy rain falling on them. Nothing paranormal at this stage but they realize that Sheila is unconscious. We see them panic and Thomas use his mobile phone to call 911. Nicole is rushed to the hospital and declared dead of an overdose on arrival. The next day or so we attend her funerals. Sheila and Thomas discuss what happened, if perhaps she died because they were playing with a Ouija Board. At which point Thomas has a vision in which he sees Nicole telling him that she is not dead. A terrifying vision that started when he was looking at Nicole going down in the Earth. He does not dare telling Sheila what happened to him after the vision though he is shaky. She tells him he looks like if he had seen a ghost. And then she starts saying that if she were dead while they were playing Ouija, she would try to communicate with her friends, and propose to Thomas to play again. So the next night they both go to the stadium and find their Ouija board, no alcohol or drug this time, but a much more serious tone in their voice. The little Heart of the Ouija board starts moving around to spell the letters Nicole and they start freaking out and immediately stop playing. Suddenly the guardian of the school, hearing some voices, shows up unannounced, scaring the hell out of them. They start running out of the stadium and Sheila gets run over by a car. This poor Thomas is devastated. The next day his parents tell him that he does not need to do his final exams at school considering what traumatic events happened to him recently. He goes outside in the woods around his house and there he sees Sheila reaching out for him though he cannot hear anything. Next we see Thomas in a room with a psychiatrist, telling his story and also his visions. Then the psychiatrist with his parents, telling them that he suffers from schizophrenia and apparently sees and hears things that do not exist. He is prescribed strong counteractive drugs. Then we go back home and we learn that they are leaving for the summer house by the sea. Thomas has a little shed in the woods at the back of the summer house where he has a computer connected to the Internet. He is doing some research on Schizophrenia and finds some information telling him that perhaps these voices and visions he had are not completely the fruit of his imagination. Some schizophrenic persons realized that perhaps this was related to the EVP phenomena where you can record on normal recorders the voices of dead people, or those famous hallucinations you get. There are schematics to show him how he could achieve that. In no time he has built some apparatus to try and record his hallucinations and communicate with Sheila and Nicole. He starts by putting on record his DV camera and another sound recorder in the shed and asks simple questions. Are you here? Can you hear me? At first he gets nothing. On reviewing the film and listening to the recorder he clearly has recorded some answers on a very low frequency, and he had to play the sound in reverse and the images also on his computer to realize that. He can see them, Sheila and Nicole, telling him they were somewhere else, they could still see him and talk to him though he was not listening and therefore could not hear them. So he tries to record again and this time he asks more specific questions: are you dead? Am I becoming crazy? Are you just in my imagination and why then can I record your voice and see your image on film? He gets interesting results. Then Thomas goes into town with his parents where he tells them that he was able to record the voices and see the images of Sheila and Nicole. He wonders if his schizophrenia could actually be just another way to reach out to his friends that are dead but still living in some other realm. His parents are not happy by what they hear and once they are back home they call the psychiatrist to find out more about this. The psychiatrist tells them that he could possibly have such powerful visions that they somehow get recorded by ordinary equipment. Though this is rare, it is not unheard of. Ultimately this is too much for his mother and when she visits her son in the shed, in a rage she destroys his tapes and his computer (all the evidence). That night, on the shore, Thomas can again see his friends and they are inviting him far into the sea. He plunges and starts to swim very far in the distance. The next day his parents find him dead on the shore. The hospital says that he drowned because of complications in his brain. Both parents are very depressed. The next day his mom goes into the shed. She looks at all the equipment and she has a thought. Perhaps she can communicate with her dead son. She asks the husband to get the computer fixed even though he is not too happy about all this. She finally gets to see the evidence she thought she destroyed and she can see what her son was doing in order to get the evidence. She starts doing as he was doing and with the help of her husband she finally gets an answer. Thomas is well, alive, but somewhere else, in the realm of the dead. He is with them everyday and can see everything they do. He loves them very much and does not want them to worry about him as he his with his friends Sheila and Nicole. There is another life for them in that realm and it is OK. His parents are crying like mad but are happy.
Roland Michel Tremblay  
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