Alternative Measures (Psychological Thriller)
Logline: A couple with a failing marriage are taken hostage at gun point and forced to reexamine their relationship through a sequence of sick and twisted methods.
It’s a beautiful day on Park Place; the neighborhood is brimming with riches and happiness. All is well for the picture perfect neighbors, but for Mark and Michelle Davidson, life is hell. Once an ever loving happy couple who had just seen the arrival of their first child, The Davidson’s are rapidly slipping out of love with each passing day. Mark avoids all of Michelle's fire fueled confrontations; he has a high paying job working for his father, one in which he hates, and his wife for the most part, stays at their rather lavish yet emotionless home, working on her passion in the form of painting in all its obscurity. Sex is absent, passion is fleeting, and arguments are neverending. The only real and superficial problem they have is trying to find a replacement nanny for the one Michelle just fired.
As fate would have it, a chance encounter puts Mark in touch with a beautiful young woman, Ivy. Mark and Ivy share an immediate connection. After a bit of deliberation, Michelle, who is hopped up on wine and pills for most of her waking hours, agrees and Ivy is welcomed into their home. And as Michelle’s ventures in her artwork falter, she receives an unexpected call from an interested buyer. A meeting is set and Michelle soon encounters Kayden, a charming and attractive art dealer that is well traveled. On both levels, these strangers who have entered the lives of the Davidson’s begin to charm them and tap into their guilty and denied pleasures.
It all comes to a thrilling culmination when one evening Michelle returns home after a meeting. Upon opening the door, a gun is pressed into her back and she is led into the home against her will. The tables turn and Mark and Michelle are taken hostage. Mark is stripped of his dignity and humiliated as Michelle is abused, raped, and degraded. Tied up and bound and with his wife’s life on the line, Mark must rise above his cowardly existence in order to save both his wife and their only child from this psychopathic duo. But in a surprise twist, there seems to be a familiar man above them all that is pulling at the strings of this entire operation.