April 2025 – Red Lightning

Title: Grey Owl 2: The Spirit of the Flame
Written by: Joseph Christian Jukic
Directed by: John Carpenter
Starring: Pierce Brosnan, Trevor L. Carpenter

Genre:

Eco-mystical thriller / Supernatural Western

Tone:

Eerie, spiritual, and atmospheric, blending mysticism and environmental urgency with bursts of survivalist action and moral reckoning. Think The Revenant meets The Thing with a deep ecological soul.

Logline:

Decades after faking his identity and finding redemption as an environmental hero, Archie Grey Owl (Pierce Brosnan) returns from exile as strange fires ravage the northern forests. Haunted by visions and hunted by corporations and spirits alike, he must pass the flame of wisdom to his estranged protégé, River Carpenter (Trevor L. Carpenter), a cynical urban Native filmmaker searching for truth—and his own soul.

Treatment:

ACT I:

The story begins in the eerie, mist-shrouded forests of Northern Ontario. Time has passed, and the legend of Grey Owl has faded into myth. Archie (Pierce Brosnan), now in his 80s and living off-grid, receives word of unnatural fires tearing through sacred lands once protected by the Anishinaabe people. Animals flee in unnatural silence. The rivers boil.

Meanwhile, River Carpenter (Trevor L. Carpenter), a moody and brilliant young Indigenous filmmaker, is stuck in Toronto making propaganda for corporate sustainability campaigns he secretly despises. He’s haunted by dreams of a man in a feathered hat speaking in riddles. When his grandmother dies, he inherits an old journal—one written in Grey Owl’s hand.

River follows the clues to the wildlands, seeking answers. When he meets the aged Grey Owl, he’s shocked: the man is still alive, and the forest seems to recognize him.

ACT II:

As River films their conversations, Grey Owl warns of a “second fire,” a prophecy told to him by an old medicine woman: after the burning of the trees, there will be a burning of the soul. The balance is tipping, not just ecologically but spiritually. Corporations are drilling into ancient shale beds that are cursed ground.

Strange occurrences escalate: animals behaving oddly, ghostly sightings, even a blood moon that never seems to set. A private security force, led by a cold-hearted enforcer named Dalton Pike (cameo suggestion: Michael Shannon), arrives to “secure the perimeter.” They’re digging not just for oil—but something buried deep and old.

As River bonds with Grey Owl, he begins to change—hallucinations become visions. The land speaks to him in dreams. Meanwhile, Grey Owl reveals he was never just an imposter; his transformation into the protector of the forest awoke something older in him. “Sometimes, pretending becomes becoming,” he says.

ACT III:

The spiritual climax comes during a solar eclipse, where the “fire from below” erupts—a combination of fracking disasters and spiritual retribution. The land begins to shake. A spectral moose, the guardian spirit of the region, appears to River and demands a sacrifice.

Grey Owl, weakened and ready, walks into the fire to save the forest, whispering, “The flame must pass.” His spirit merges with the land.

River picks up the hat. He doesn’t imitate the old man—he becomes his own version. Not Grey Owl. Not a fraud. But Flamekeeper. The new protector.

Epilogue:

River’s documentary The Spirit of the Flame becomes a viral sensation, waking people up worldwide. But he’s already gone—off-grid, deep in the forest, where a new generation of young activists begins to gather around campfires, listening to the flame whisper its truths.