There's Something Inside
A strange creature seeking shelter for the night finds itself 20,000 feet in the air
on an airplane wing with one passenger inside bent on its destruction.
Whether you’ve ever seen the Twilight Zone episode, “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” starring William Shatner or the “Twilight Zone: The Movie” version starring John Lithgow, you know the gist of the very popular tale: Man sees a gremlin on the wing of an airplane plane but nobody believes him. The man believes the gremlin is there to destroy the airplane and decides to take matters into his own hands, no matter how crazy he looks. But, if you’re like me, you’ve always wondered why the gremlin was there in the first place? What were its motives?
Well, in this Twilight Zone-themed short writer Mark Renshaw answers that question with his clever take on the tale – writing it from the perspective of the gremlin.
The story opens with our gremlin roaming an airfield, minding its own business, innocently looking for a place to take a nap. He finds a nice, cozy spot under the wing of a plane. But, when he wakes up, he realizes that he’s 20,000 feet in the air! Confused and frightened, he looks to one of the plane’s windows and sees the Shatner/Lithgow character staring at him from inside the plane. And it’s clear that this passenger has some bad intentions towards our gremlin.
As clever as this premise and its execution was, what I was most impressed with is that this script pretty much has zero dialogue – and yet, I was completely absorbed into this story throughout.
For any filmmakers who are TZ fanatics like me, this would make an excellent fan film and will be sure to rack up some Youtube/Vimeo views.