Three women face the darkness — two red eyes watch from the Spottsville treeline

Original Screenplay · In Development

DEVIL'SBACKBONE

Henderson County, Kentucky. 1976. Three women searching for a missing friend in the river bottoms find something the town has known about for years — and refused to name.

In Development Rural Horror Female-Driven Henderson Co., KY · 1976 Based on True Legend
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The Story

SOMETHING IN
THE BOTTOMS

It's late summer, 1976. Donna Calhoun goes missing after a night near the Spottsville Bridge. The men say wait. Her three closest friends — Rayanne, June, and Vera — go into the cornfields themselves.

What they find isn't the worst thing about this story. The worst thing is that the town has always known what lives out there in the river bottoms. And they've been leaving it alone for a reason.

Devil's Backbone is a female-driven rural horror film built in the tradition of the great American 1970s genre pictures — grounded in place, grounded in community, and afraid of the right things. It takes the Spottsville Monster legend seriously. So does the creature.

The Witch The Legend of Boggy Creek Picnic at Hanging Rock Jeepers Creepers Sorcerer
Night fog over the Spottsville river bottoms

The river bottoms, Spottsville — Henderson County, Kentucky

Henderson County, Kentucky · 1975–1976

The Spottsville Monster

Residents near the Spottsville Bridge began reporting encounters with an enormous creature moving through the river bottoms and cornfields at night. Upright, black, utterly silent. Eyes that caught the light and held it. Sightings were documented in local newspapers and have remained part of regional folklore ever since. Devil's Backbone asks the question no one in Spottsville wanted to answer: what if the people who lived there always knew?

Two red eyes watching from the darkness of the Spottsville treeline

"It wasn't moving toward them. It was watching. It had been watching for some time before the flashlight found it — or found its eyes, at least. The rest of it stayed in the dark."

Devil's Backbone — Scene 34

The Women

WHO GOES
INTO THE DARK

Rayanne Pruitt
Rayanne Pruitt
The One Who Stays
Donna's oldest friend. Practical, stubborn, the one the others follow without ever agreeing to. She carries a rifle she knows how to use and a guilt she doesn't know how to put down.
June Harlow
June Harlow
The One Who Sees
Quiet, observant, the first one to understand what they're actually dealing with. The town dismissed her mother as crazy for years. June has always suspected why.
Vera Oakes
Vera Oakes
The One Who Runs
The newest to the group. The most afraid. The one you'd bet against. Fear and survival instinct don't always look the same on a person — and Vera has more of both than anyone knows.
Three women in the cornfield at night
Into the cornfield — Scene 22

The Creature

WHAT LIVES
OUT THERE

The Spottsville creature is not a monster in the Hollywood sense. It doesn't stalk. It doesn't chase. It watches. It has been in the river bottoms longer than anyone in Henderson County has been alive to watch it back.

Jet black chitinous exoskeleton. Quills along the dorsal ridge, catching the edge of whatever light gets near. Deep crimson compound eyes. Sensory tendrils that can taste pheromones from a hundred yards — which means it knew the women were coming long before they knew they were going.

The most frightening thing about it isn't its size. It's how still it gets when it's interested in something.

Three women face the shadow in the Spottsville treeline

The moment before they understand what's watching them.

The Writers

WRITTEN BY

Neil Kellen
Writer & Creator · Cinestyle Media
Broadcast producer with 25+ years of experience and an Emmy nomination. Creator of Cinestyle Studio, writer of the ABADDON screenplay (Black List 9/10, WGA registered, Final Draft Big Break submission). Two award-winning short films. Henderson, KY.
Lewis D. Chaney
Co-Writer
Co-writer on Devil's Backbone, bringing deep knowledge of Henderson County, its history, and its folklore to the collaboration. The Spottsville Monster isn't just a legend to people from here — it's a conversation the town has been having for fifty years.
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Devil's Backbone is currently in development and available for option, production consideration, or co-production discussion. Script available upon request.
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