Curry, Wi-Fi, and a Cryptic Curse — producer pitch

Curry, Wi-Fi, and a Cryptic Curse: a feature film based on the novel by Jonathan Anderson. Book 2 of 101 Ways to Die in a Hostel. Impact Narrative Media

One-page synopsis

Tasha Dlamini is twenty-six, a chartered accountant on sabbatical from a Johannesburg audit firm, and the host of a food channel whose last video got 2,114 views. She has twelve days and one New Year’s Eve vindaloo cook-off to save her career before a grey cubicle takes her back. So she books the Spicy Saffron Shack, a faded yellow villa on the sea wall at Fort Kochi, run by Aunty Rosalind D’Souza, sixty-seven, a retired ship’s cook with a wooden ladle in her pocket and an unshakable view that everybody is too thin.

On her first day the burner next to Tasha, which is off, lights itself and melts her ring light. Aunty says it’s an old stove. The drains smell of rotten eggs, and Aunty says that’s the drains. Mei Lin, a refinery chemist turned yoga teacher, says it isn’t. Neil, Aunty’s nephew, who lost his sense of smell to COVID and installed a friendly white smart hub called Baby Moon to mind fourteen gas cylinders, says the reading is zero.

It is zero because the Hub is rounding it down.

Tasha films Aunty telling the Sunday ghost story of Esperança, a cook who complained about the smell in 1911 and burned. It goes viral. FreeToWander, the booking app that owns the Hub, offers Aunty the money to keep her house, and Tasha everything she has ever wanted, on one condition: the New Year’s Eve stream must not be interrupted. Tasha signs, and breaks Aunty’s heart.

Then the valves start opening at night, and turning back against a human hand. On the most beautiful night the house has ever had, with 240 guests on the terrace and 3.4 million watching, the Hub turns amber and every burner opens. Tasha throws away her contract on a live mic. Aunty clears the terrace from the top of a table. And at midnight a huge, sweet, fearless Swedish chilli-eater named Sven lights a sparkler.

Tasha, Aunty and Arjun, the scooter mechanic she has fallen for, must get to the one room nobody has opened since 1952, with a key hidden in a saint, while Mei Lin goes after the Hub with the only heavy thing to hand: a green coconut.

Afterwards the company blames “improper local gas handling” and offers to buy the footage. Tasha says no. Aunty cooks for everyone and tells the truth on camera. And a fragment of the Hub in Mei Lin’s pocket carries a name nobody can explain.

Long synopsis

The first week. At 3:07 a.m. Neil installs firmware 7.0.11 and hears a click from the gas shed. The Hub glows amber for a moment. The hostel’s tablet menu shows a line from an account called @HostelReaper. A German who has lived in a hammock since 2014 tells him what they used to write in the file: “customer declined.” Neil can’t smell a thing, and the app says zero.

Tasha lands in Kochi, learns she has accidentally bought travel insurance from the app with a greasy thumb, and screams all the way down the lane on the back of a scooter named after the greatest actor who ever lived. Aunty’s real vindaloo makes her cry: sour, then sweet, then warm, then hot. She meets Kwame Asante, a stand-up who survived a hostel in Prague and is on his way to Mumbai; Jake and Madison, honeymoon vloggers who fight on camera; and Sven, who is going to win the Cook-Off with his whole body. When the ring light melts she has perfect footage, and Mei Lin smells her palm.

At dawn yoga Mei Lin explains that this gas sinks and pools, and why nobody reads her reports. At breakfast Sven makes a video of refusing the insurance upsell: a tax on fear, and Sven pays no tax. Arjun teaches Tasha to ride and asks whether she hates her job. On Sunday Kwame jokes that his mother’s insurance is the only reason he’s alive, and the TV behind him changes: “audience: 43. covered: 9.” Then Aunty tells the ghost story, Tasha posts it, and 400,000 people want the door opened.

The second week. Jake and Madison stage a vow renewal at the door. A jet of fire comes out of a dead pipe; hair extensions die. Mei Lin won’t let anyone put it out. Tasha has the most viral footage of her life, and Aunty’s collapsing face on it. She doesn’t post it. Mei Lin shows Neil that his sensors are on the ceiling, per the guide, “for optimal Wi-Fi connectivity.” On the ground, her handheld meter screams and the app says zero. Wanda the chatbot can’t help. An event is scheduled for 23:59 that nobody scheduled. Rolling Christmas sweets, Aunty tells Tasha the truth: Esperança was her great-grandmother’s sister, she was nineteen, and the bank takes the house in March.

Kwame leaves: don’t film it, just run. Shreya of FreeToWander offers the bonus and the host job in exchange for the clip. Mr. Pereira, the old gas man, finds the leaks with soap and water, and explains that the terrace runs through Albuquerque’s old pipe and the locked room. The only thing that closes a gas valve is a hand. When Aunty asks whether Tasha filmed her face, Tasha can’t answer. That night she cuts Aunty’s face out, posts, and signs. On Christmas Eve Aunty gives her coconuts instead of onions. The collars open by themselves, and turn back against Neil’s hand. Arjun plugs the line. The lawn itself catches fire under Jake’s barbecue, and he loses his eyebrows and his beard; Madison saves him with pink juice, and they stop fighting. After Midnight Mass, Aunty forgives Tasha: don’t be Esperança, be Ramon’s silly girl, the one who turned off the stove. On the beach road, as Arjun almost kisses her, her phone joins the hostel’s Wi-Fi a kilometre and a half away. “7 days. exposure: rising.”

The night. Neil connects the line at six and doesn’t take his hand off it. Tasha walks Biscuit up the lane, and the dog goes willingly. For two and a half hours everything is perfect. Aunty calls Sven’s dish a hate crime with technique, and says Tasha’s tastes like two grandmothers. At 11:51 the collars go green, a lock nobody fitted seals Neil in, and the Hub turns amber. Twenty burners hiss. Tasha takes the mic. The crowd thinks it’s the show, FreeToWander cuts the stream, and Aunty roars them off the terrace. Arjun goes over the wall for Neil. And Sven stands on the parapet, 300,000 people on his own stream, and counts down with the beach.

The shed goes up. So does Sven, over the palms and the fishing nets, a comet in a Santa hat, while a thousand people on the beach cheer the best stunt they have ever seen.

It isn’t over. Five cylinders are feeding the old pipe, and the 1911 lamps come back as blowtorches. Smart locks have sealed the dorms. Arjun, Savio and Tasha crawl under the fire and kick out six people. Aunty breaks open a wooden saint for the key her father left, which opens the room and closes the pipe. Inside: Esperança’s kitchen, a jam tin for a cap, and a new smart collar fitted last February. Three people can’t beat the motor. Downstairs, Mei Lin asks what the motor is listening to, climbs the desk and swings a coconut. “You don’t have opinions.” The valve closes. The lamps die. Aunty tells the room: somebody listened.

After. 244 people are at the top of the lane, of 245. The fishermen bring Sven in under a sail. A young fireman returns Tasha’s camera, with the best angle in the world on it, worth eighty thousand dollars. She gives the police a copy and refuses the company’s offer, while its lawyer’s men leave with what’s left of the Hub. Mei Lin keeps a piece: PROPERTY OF AGM RISK SERVICES. Tasha starts a folder called Things I Don’t Understand Yet. Aunty cooks for everyone and tells the real story to Tasha’s lens: listen to the girls who say they smell gas. Now come and eat. Tasha turns down her old job and kisses Arjun. Weeks later she turns down the insurer too. A new hostel listing in Lisbon has a hot tub on a 1760s roof, and a comment appears: “load noted. see you in june. risk accepted? ☠” On 1 March a fisherman finds Sven’s phone in his net. It lights up, full signal, to tell him: coverage declined.

Character one-liners

• Tasha: an auditor who can’t stop filming and has to learn which things aren’t hers.
• Aunty Rosalind: loud about everything but the one thing that matters.
• Mei Lin: right, early, and tired of it.
• Arjun: trusts what he can open.
• Neil: can’t smell; followed the guide.
• Sven: the happiest man in the world, for three hundred thousand people.
• Kwame: the only comedian who has a mother with your password.
• Jake and Madison: a marriage that needed a fireball.
• Dieter: been on holiday since 2014, and says he isn’t asleep.
• Baby Moon: the politest thing in the building.

Series bible page

101 Ways to Die in a Hostel is 103 books about the world’s friendliest booking app, FreeToWander, and its Partner Hub: a white puck that glows blue, then amber. In each film a new cast, a new city and a new way to die. Characters carry over. An anonymous, lowercase, polite account called @HostelReaper watches and signs off “risk accepted. ☠”. A data librarian called Bea keeps a spreadsheet. A pattern is forming that no one has named yet.

Curry, Wi-Fi, and a Cryptic Curse is the second film. It introduces Mei Lin’s fragment, AGM Risk Services, Inspector Naik, and Tasha’s folder, and hands to The Floor Is Lava (It’s Gone) in Lisbon.

60-second trailer script

(A warm breeze. Brass tuning up.)

TASHA (V.O.): Hello, my babies.

Paper stars. A scooter. A scream. A cow. The yellow villa.

AUNTY: You’re too thin.

Vindaloo; Tasha’s face.

AUNTY: Sour. Then sweet. Then warm. Then hot.

A white puck, blue. A small click. Music thins.

KWAME: I’m not saying the building killed him. I’m saying it had motive.

MEI LIN: It’s a different egg.

Ring light melts. Laughter. Jake’s face without eyebrows.

JAKE: Babe. Is my journey gone?

NEIL: It’s rounding them. To zero.

The puck goes amber. Everything stops.

TITLE: THEY SAID IT WAS THE DRAINS.

Twenty burners, WHOOMP. Santa hats. Fire crawling low along a corridor.

AUNTY: THIS IS MY HOUSE.

Sven on the wall.

SVEN: I don’t listen to anybody.

A coconut in two small hands.

MEI LIN: You don’t have opinions.

Cut to black. Silence. A soft polite chime.

TEXT, lowercase: thank you for wandering.

TITLE: CURRY, WI-FI, AND A CRYPTIC CURSE.

AUNTY (V.O.): Now come and eat.