Tim Nyquist

Logline: At a remote Christian men’s retreat in an abandoned woodland compound, an insecure young man in the midst of a faith crisis is forced to confront the charismatic cult leader from his past—an encounter that turns a weekend of “brotherhood” into a harrowing fight for his soul and survival.

Conflict & Hook: Noah, an insecure ex-vangelical facing a faith crisis, seeks permission to marry his sweetheart, Anna. Instead, her father sends him to a Christian men's retreat at an abandoned compound led by Paul, a shadowy figure from Noah's past. Pushed to his limits by toxic standards of manhood, Noah uncovers a seedy underbelly of Christian Nationalism and must fight to escape and save his loved ones.

Genre Fans (Psychological Drama & Thrillers): Audiences ages 18–45 drawn to tense, high-stakes stories centered on survival, psychological control, and trauma. This group responds to films such as Midsommar, The Wicker Man, Opus, The Sacrament, Apostle, and Martha Marcy May Marlene.

Cultural & Social Commentary Viewers: Individuals interested in political and social deconstruction. This group actively seeks out media that examines real world phenomena like the alt-right pipeline, modern political radicalization, and the intersection of masculinity and high control religious groups.

Ex-Evangelical / "Exvangelical" Communities: A highly active and rapidly growing community of individuals who have left high control religious environments. They heavily engage with, share, and support media that authentically captures the trauma, anxiety, and PTSD of religious deconstruction. Films and television such as Starling Girl, Yes, God, Yes, Saved!, Sinners, Midnight Mass, First Reformed, Silence, or The Wise Kids.

This script is unfortunately based on something that happened to me years ago when I was in the throes of my own religious deconstruction. I was asked to attend a secretive Christian men’s group just like the one depicted in this story and that event was the final straw that broke the camel’s back. In the fallout of the retreat, I was stalked and harassed by the men who ran the organization for speaking out against them and I lived in fear for years. I hid the truth of what had happened from everyone I knew. It destroyed me and ultimately led to the final phase of my religious deconstruction from the worldview under which I was raised.

The story, alarmingly, feels timelier than ever. When I was first amid my research post-event, I read everything I could about cults and how they operate. I discovered groups known as Large Group Awareness Training programs (LGATs) that were startlingly similar to my own experience, down to the layout of their well-rehearsed practices, and found that many cult experts classify these groups as “high control” or “cult-like”. Groups like the one I attended could also be labeled as “theological cults” in that they base their psychological manipulation around a pre-existing, generally accepted worldwide religion. We are now living in a world highly influenced by social media, parasocial relationships with online personalities peddling misinformation and dangerous ideology, and groups that coalesce in the physical world around those ideologies. The group I attended at the time was, I discovered, an offshoot of another organization, which itself was also branched off from yet another organization, so on and so forth. That cycle has gotten progressively worse as the years have worn on. Rather than die off, the age of social media has propelled these groups into greater heights of societal control affecting the political sphere and the rights of marginalized groups of people who are already living in constant fear. Their messaging has grown more inherently political, discriminatory, and nationalistic.

I often wondered over the years why no one was talking about men’s groups like this one because they have only continued to grow in numbers. As I researched, I found again that many men and women chose silence just like I did because they were fearful of the repercussions. Evangelical circles tend to close ranks and move toward excommunication as a tactical move to alleviate dissent. The loss of third spaces and the community that comes with it is just one of the consequences of speaking up and pushing back, with the ramifications only growing more dangerous from there. This country is more divided than ever. We are at a crossroads, fever pitch moment that I believe requires dissent; voices who are willing to speak up and tell their stories in the hopes of saving anyone who might find themselves on the brink of self-destruction.

I am looking for either a shopping agreement or development financing. I am excited by the prospect of working with industry professionals on a project I’m deeply passionate about, but if I can’t secure an attached Producer through a shopping agreement then I have enough industry clout here in the local community with other independent filmmakers who would love to get this project off the ground. I have sat on this project long enough to know I don’t want it to die on the vine alone in my head like it has for the last fifteen years before I decided to sit down and write.