Saying Goodbye to Mr. Welcome

Institute History

  • 1994 Equinoxe Script Workshop

Description

A parent's deepest fear is that their child will be abducted.

Inspector Nolan has his own agenda of private darkness. His wife and child were killed in an horrific car accident wom years before. Shortly after their deaths a number of children went missing in the area. Nolan was put in charge of the case. None of the children were ever found.

Janey Tarrant, recently separated from her brutal wife-beating husband, Jim, has only her little daughter, Laura, to give her life meaning. Then Laura, introverted, shy, a "strange" child, goes missing and Janey's fragile world collapses.

After two months Laura is given up for dead when suddenly she returns with the news that she's "been with Mr. Welcome, who's from outer space and has got big round eyes with the sky in them—and he's going to come back for me when I'm old enough". And the nightmare really begins for Janey.

Laura refuses to say anymore about her abductor. To Janey's horror she realizes that Mr. Welcome has given Laura the live that she has never been able to. Laura eagerly awaits the time she can return to her mysterious abductor. Too long the victim, Janey prepares to shield herself and Laura from the horror in the shadows. Then Laura begins to change.

She makes a remarkable improvement in her school work—too remarkable for her age. No longer shy she teaches all her new friends (and everyone who wants to be Laura's friend) strange and complicated games. What is going on? What has "Mr. Welcome" done to her? Why does she love him so much?

When another little girl goes missing and is later found dead, Janey reluctantly agrees that Laura should be hypnotized—maybe they can find out more about Mr. Welcome.

Under Hypnosis Laura makes a journey into Hell. A journey so harrowing that Janey stops it, fearing for Laura's sanity. That night Laura decides it's time that here mother met Mr. Welcome.

In a lonely country house, Janey and Nolan come face to face with their deepest fear and find that nothing in Mr. Welcome's world is quite as it first appears.

A dark and troubling film Saying Goodbye to Mr. Welcome is the story of a woman's battle against the forces inside her that threaten to destroy all that she values. We all have our Mr. Welcome's waiting for us in the darkness, this is the story of a woman who turned on the light.

Credits

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