After discovering their only son is gay, a Pentecostal family goes to extreme lengths to rid him of what they consider to be evil.
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After discovering their only son is gay, a Pentecostal family goes to extreme lengths to rid him of what they consider to be evil.
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This logline is written from the point of view of the family.? This would mean the story is about the family and their efforts to ‘cure’ their son.
However, normally in a story like this, the gay kid would be the lead character not a member of the family.
If this is the case, if the kid is the lead character and not the ‘family’ then I would re-write the logline?from his point of view
However, if a member of the family is the lead character, then I would narrow it down to the mother or father.
Father as lead character:
“When his son comes out, a Pentecostal father must find a cure for his wayward boy before the sin spreads to the entire family”
Kid as the lead character:
“After his Pentecostal father discovers he’s gay, a homeschooled boy must escape his house before his father’s extreme methods of curing him end up killing him.”
Obviously, your logline will differ because I don’t know all the ins and outs of your story however, I hope these two examples help.
As Richiev pointed out, telling this story from the perspective of the parents is not the norm. Not saying it can’t be done, but it might be really difficult to get the audience on side when their goal is to cure their son’s homosexuality. Admittedly, they have the biggest journey to go on but they have to be likeable within the first 15 mins of the film for the audience to stick with them. If they were faced by social pressures and scared to accept their son as different it could present a nice family drama. I see this as a drama too, currently at least.
Extreme lengths – what do extreme lengths look like on screen? We need more information to help us imagine this story completely. If these parents are torturing their son I really struggle to see how the audience will be on board with them BUT tell it from the son’s perspective and still show how conflicted the parents are and I think it would totally work.
Struggling to see this as a thriller… what makes it thrilling?
Hope this helps.