Depression and suicide are still mysteries of medical science that have yet to be truly understood. KNIGHT WATCH uses its narrative to explore the complexities of mental illness, and how someone on the outside can learn to understand the people afflicted, either in the right or wrong way.

"The Knight kills. It's what it does." -Blair

 

The Plot

This character drama disguised as a sci-fi horror story follows Blair Dreyfuss, an ambitious and reckless astronomer and professor at a university in Los Angeles. She works alongside her equally brilliant but secretive husband, Andrew, who struggles with serious depression, something Blair struggles to understand. When she isn't proofreading other professor's work (and proving most of them wrong), she spends her nights drinking with an emotionless fling behind her complicated husband's back. After a failed suicide attempt, Andrew is put in the hospital, and Blair inherits his stacks of secretive research. The subject? THE BLACK KNIGHT SATELLITE, a supposed ancient UFO that's been puzzling scientists and scholars for over 13,000 years, and what seems to have driven Andrew to madness. In an effort to truly understand her husband, Blair digs deep into the mystery of the Knight, only to find herself falling into an obsession brought upon by bouts of sleep paralysis and visits from a strange, dark presence in the night. As Blair goes deeper into the research, she begins to discover that her husband had other secrets besides his work. Her search brings her to the darkest parts of conspiracy, where she meets with a student of Andrew's, Nora, who claims to have been visited by the Knight, too, but who may have a stronger connection to the mystery than Blair realizes. Everything comes to a head when the Knight injurs Nora, and Blair must decide if discovering the truth about the Knight, her husband, and her new ally is worth the psychological consequences of saving Nora's life. Blair forced to reckon with the reckless life she leads because of her distance from her husband before the terrifying presence of the Black Knight consumes her psyche.

The Short

This short proof of concept finds Blair in a low point after exhausting all the "proper" means of research, forcing her to dive into the depths of conpiracy to find Nora and ask for answers. But the video chat they have takes a chilling turn when something alien talks Nora in her small house, and all Blair can do is watch.