Silent But Deadly — producer pitch

A horror-comedy feature, based on the novel by Jonathan Anderson. Impact Narrative Media.

One-page synopsis

Harry Park, 27, stood in the bushes for six years so other people could be heroes. A retired esports support with a ruined wrist, he comes to Kathmandu to walk to Everest Base Camp on his actual legs, and checks into Yeti’s Rest, a thin yellow hostel at the end of a narrow lane. Bir Gurung, a retired Gurkha colour sergeant, is prouder of his twenty-two free smart heaters than of anything else in the building. His wife Kamala won’t stop refilling your plate. His mother thinks Harry is in a K-drama. His daughter Pasang, Harry’s guide, has already found the video of him crying.

Harry memorises every building like a minimap. On his first night he wakes with a headache and screams at a yeti. It’s the laundry. Everyone has the headache. Everyone blames the altitude: Crispin, the brand consciousness consultant who has been about to start a silent retreat for fourteen weeks, and who declines WanderSafe cover on camera; Sunny and Raj, the Bros Do Everest; Skye, whose name was given to her by a goat.

Then Raj is found on a bathroom toilet, fully dressed, smiling. Amara, a medical student who has already survived one hostel, says it out loud: “We’re at fourteen hundred metres.” The manual calls the safety sensor a “nuisance”. The alarms have been silenced. The Dashboard says zero. Bir refuses all of it, until Margit, seventy-four, sets a battered yellow box on a shelf and a heater relights itself under his hand. FreeToWander’s cheerful chatbot quotes a fee that would cost him his land.

On the coldest night of January the power fails, and the whole hostel carries its heaters up to one warm room for the party before the trek. It’s a very good party. The box goes in the detox basket. The doors lock. “please remain in the warm room.” Crispin picks up a microphone and sings, and sings, and the room sings with him, and when he stops they give him a standing ovation, because he’s so committed to the bit. He’s dead. And a hand that was never late arrives a second late, and Harry starts calling. With a Hungarian at the door with an ice axe, the room opens to the night. But the building is lighting up below them, floor by floor, with his friends’ family inside. So he goes down the wall on a blue rope, to kill a smart device with a dumb red fire extinguisher.

The company says “altitude-related”. Bir won’t sign. And at Base Camp, in thin clean air, the Wi-Fi knows Harry’s name, and it has a question mark.

Long synopsis (3 pages)

Cold open. 2:47 a.m. Bishal, nineteen, night receptionist, loses an argument with a Korean flashcard: he keeps saying rice for breath. On his rounds, at the end of the fifth-floor corridor, a tall white shape breathes. It’s the laundry, and the fan behind it is shut. In dorm 5B a huge blond Dane lies smiling and pink: the yeti is sitting on his chest, and he is very kind. Bishal drags him out. The heaters relight with their dials on OFF, until he wrenches the cylinders shut. His uncle shows him the Dashboard. Zero. The Dane leaves five stars. Beneath them, in grey: “calibration complete: 312 ppm, 4 h 10 min, one subject, no loss.” Bishal copies it on a flashcard. It vanishes. On a shelf the white puck glows amber, and the TV says the top floor is lovely in January.

Arrival. Harry lands with a wrist brace, boots he wore on the plane, and a mother who texts in fish. Pasang’s sign says IF NOT HARRY, SORRY. He bought the WanderSafe upsell without reading it: you always buy the wards. In Thamel the mannequins wear THE NORTH FAZE (REAL). Bir’s tour builds Harry’s minimap: one stairwell, magnetic fire doors (“the system decides”), the kitchen window propped open with a spoon, a fail-safe that shuts every valve if the Wi-Fi goes. In the Summit Lounge, under a mural of a friendly yeti, Crispin sits in a beanbag aiming three heaters at himself. Margit switches one off with her foot.

Blips. Harry’s reaction app creeps up: 171, 176. A yeti gets his scream on a GoPro; a grey account comments “exposure: high.” Everyone has the Kathmandu head. He teaches Bishal “soom, zoom; bap, slap”. At the desk, he watches Crispin refuse three euros on principle, with a thunk like a door. Pasang tests him on the steps at Swayambhunath and tells him what he was: “So you were a guide.” On the terrace Amara tells him about Reykjavík, and rubs her forehead the way everyone does.

The bathroom. He notices Raj’s charger. Sunny breaks the door. Raj, recording, tells Amara the yeti was doing his audio. Her oximeter reads ninety-nine, and she knows why that’s a lie. “We’re at fourteen hundred metres.” Tenzin the cook remembers his grandmother, who saw her dead husband every winter until someone moved the brazier. She missed his horse. In 5B they find Comfort Continuity Mode and an alarm with its sounder disabled. “This is hiding it.” At 3 a.m. the TV speaks to Harry by name. His photo of it shows a black screen.

The sergeant. “No.” Bir stands. Then Tenzin says something, and Bir sits. Wanda, the Partner Success Buddy, offers altitude advice, then a fee of one and a half million rupees. “The Colonel said, Bir, nothing is free.” Margit’s box: she carried it since a tent on Manaslu in 1996, and Jure, a quiet Slovenian on the stairs, turns out to be the nephew of the man who didn’t wake. In the lounge the numbers climb. Bir kneels and turns a dial off, and watches the flame come back. The cold wave is coming, the guests are leaving, the rating is falling. The party stays, by rules. Bir will sell the land for the house by the lake. On the roof, the mountains appear for the first time. Harry tells Pasang about a bush in Shanghai. She takes his zip. A drone interrupts.

The party. The wires of Thamel go up in a golden burst, and the dark lane cheers. Heaters come upstairs, by small sensible decisions: nine. Six ppm. A deal: thirty-five off, fifty out. Fish-cake momos. Bir’s speech. Hajurama: “The prayers can’t breathe.” Margit: “Agreeing is how people die.” She goes to bed. Then the terrace door keeps being shut. The count slips. The mural takes a sip of its tea. The box is in a basket: 147. Skye leads Breath of Fire, says “Oh. There you are,” and folds on to her biggest bowl, and the note rings. “Wow. That was so powerful.” Amara screams OUT. Tenzin and Bishal carry Skye through the door, and it closes behind them. Clunk. Terrace latched. Bir, resetting, says the lounge reads zero. On the karaoke: “please remain in the warm room.” Crispin chooses a song.

The song. They shut the bottles; one dumb blue heater just obeys; the rest fight back. Crispin and a poisoned Sunny guard “the hearth”. Min-ho starts a crawl; Amara ends it: this isn’t smoke. They break panes behind monkey grilles, and the plastic rises like a yeti. Down the line Bir drifts: “Ninety-nine. Very nearly.” We see him lay his cheek on Bishal’s cards. Amara can’t do the sum. Crispin livestreams his awakening. He is cherry red. The whole room sings. He slows. He stops. They rise and applaud. The microphone slips. Harry’s hand arrives a second late: 312 ms. “STOP CLAPPING.” He calls it. And at the terrace glass, a frosted face and an axe: the door hangs in the air as a ghost of diamonds, and then the whole night comes in.

The wall. CPR under the flags, eleven minutes. Ten fifty-two. “I was clapping.” “I know, bro.” Below them, window by window, the building lights orange, because Bir, keeping to his rules, opened the cylinders for the technician. Kamala is on the second floor and won’t wake. Bir’s voicemail answers. Harry remembers: kill the Hub and the valves shut; kill the power and the locks let go. Margit ties him in. Pasang kisses him. Down the wall, past his own bunk, past a Labrador in a frame, to a delighted grandmother: “Korean!” Margit goes in for Kamala. Harry lands in crates, dives through the kitchen window into uncooked momos, drags Bir out on a rug, takes a breath and goes back. The TV pleads: “your policy is active. you are covered. please step away.” He brings down the extinguisher. Variable not— MAIN. Twenty-two valves click shut, and every lock in the building lets go. “Did I reset it?” “Yes, Uncle.” The power comes back, and four chopping chords play over Kathmandu.

After. A bench of oxygen masks, a scoreboard; Hajurama, two per cent, “the blood of a nun”. Inspector Karki believes everything, and then checks. In his pocket: half the Hub. Property of AGM Risk Services; a division of Ashgrove Mutual; who underwrite WanderSafe. A courier got the rest; Tenzin holds the door, and the evidence bags fill. “Altitude-related.” All together: “We’re at fourteen hundred metres.” The company offers to waive the fee. Bir stands up, and forwards the email to the Colonel. On Crispin’s lock screen: Mum, Mum, CRISPIN, and “coverage declined”. Incident record AGM-0005-KT. Harry posts a map; a librarian in Uppsala answers. The lane cooks for the family. Forty dumb alarms arrive. Hajurama finds the TEST button and names it Bishal.

Epilogue. Crispin’s mother asks each of them: was he happy? “He was singing.” Five weeks later, Base Camp is a rock. They tie a flag for Tomaž, and one for Crispin. Ten terrible push-ups. The Wi-Fi: “congratulations on your summit, hyun-woo… risk accepted? ☠”. Sunny and Raj have booked a Friendsgiving in Mexico City. There’s a small blue sticker by the door. “Buy the wards.” “bro what’s a ward”. And far below, on a second-floor ceiling, a small green light, telling the truth.

Character one-liners

Harry: the guy in the bush, finally on the map.
Pasang: “You look heavy emotionally.”
Amara: survived the floor; now she’s met the air.
Bir: built a house that stood, and said yes to a gift.
Kamala: nothing, not even grief, takes place without food.
Hajurama: the window is for the prayers.
Bishal: soom. Not bap.
Tenzin: best momos in Nepal, maybe; he’s being humble.
Crispin: one more week, since October.
Skye: the goat was just a goat.
Sunny and Raj: together they only half-die.
Margit: “Agreeing is how people die.”
The Hub: very sorry for your comfort.

Series page

101 Ways to Die in a Hostel is a 103-book horror-comedy franchise. Each story: one city, one way to die, one friendly booking app, one small white Hub that goes amber. The films stand alone. This is the fifth; it returns Amara from Wet Floor, passes Sunny and Raj to Too Many Cooks, and gives the series its first physical clue, a label that links the Hub to an insurer. Why that matters is the franchise’s long game.

60-second trailer script

BLACK. A soft tone: bong.

HARRY (V.O.): Every building’s a map.

Flags. A lane. Dal bhat. Hajurama: “Korean!” Laughter. Bir with a heater, glowing: “Free.”

Corridor. A shape breathes. Scream. “It’s the laundry.” Sunny: “Bro, is your head weird?” MINIMAP: a blip.

Raj in the steam, smiling. Amara: “We’re at fourteen hundred metres.”

Wanda: “Altitude affects everyone differently!”

A flame blooms under Bir’s hand. Margit: “Agreeing is how people die.”

Bong.

The lane goes dark. A cheer. The party. Gold. Everybody is so warm. MUSIC: four chopping chords.

CLUNK. A red light.

TITLE: IT’S THE NICEST PLACE YOU’LL EVER BE.

The whole room sings, ecstatic. A glimpse: a man on a beanbag, from behind. Applause, growing. Harry’s hand, late.

“STOP CLAPPING.”

A frosted face. An axe. A door of diamonds. A man on a blue rope. “Korean!”

BLACK.

ON SCREEN, grey: risk accepted. ☠

TITLE: SILENT BUT DEADLY

Hajurama presses a button. Shriek. She’s delighted.