Maple Syrup Massacre: A Fictitious Canadian Horror Film

On a whim yesterday, for Canada Day, I challenged Twitter to pitch a 280 character plot synopsis for a fictitious Canadian horror film called Maple Syrup Massacre. Here are the five best responses that folks came up with (in no particular order):

The world of competitive lumberjacking was hard enough before a madman dressed in plaid started killing the contestants of the 2019 World Lumberjack Cup. Tensions flair as enemies become allies in a desperate shot to stop the #MapleSyrupMasscre, eh

— Zack Long (@LightisFading) July 2, 2018

I love the idea of a World Lumberjack Cup so, SO much! Kudos to Scriptophobic creator Zack Long for coming up with that one.

Joan visits her parents' COTTAGE (via canoe) to investigate their strange disappearance. Locals tell of the ghost of Johnny T, the lumberjack killed in a horrific wood chipper accident. A very cool money shot of someone being slowly drowned by thick, hot, golden sap.

— Smash Traves (@smashtraves) July 1, 2018

All horror films, particularly ones set in rural or wooded areas, should include scenes involving wood chippers. Kudos to The Smash List writer Smash Traves for the compelling visual imagery of “thick, hot, golden sap.”

Or I want a 50s style monster movie where beavers are transformed into giant beasts after having their habitat polluted by tainted maple syrup. They take over Ottawa, and there's an added level of political intrigue when the US really wants to nuke the beavers.

— Andrew Roebuck (@Winemovienerd) July 1, 2018

Bloody Good Horror writer Andrew Roebuck offered a few different proposals, but a 50s-inspired creature feature about giant beavers is so instantly iconic that it simply had to be featured. This would make for a lovely, silly little B-movie.

Stalwart mountie Nate Linden teams with grumpy American cop Nick Anson to investigate a series of murders of border security guards who were killed and suspended from trees in the nearby woods, buckets under them to collect their slowly draining blood.

— Save Black Lives. Defund the Police. (@ckvanderkaay) July 1, 2018

Chris Vander kaay, co-author of The Anatomy of Fear: Conversations with Cult Horror and Science-Fiction Filmmakers and host of the Screenification podcast on Scriptophobic, also submitted several pitches. This one, a mash-up of The Bridge meets The Predator, immediately generated a bunch of likes. I could easily imagine it as a multi-season television series on Canadian national broadcaster CBC.

Finally, Alex Heeney of Seventh Row dipped into a real life dark chapter of Canadian history to propose a film based on residential schools and the Sixties Scoop:

Way up North, in the middle of nowhere, some kind of monster goes into homes and steals children. The children are transported to a Dickensian school where their heads are shaved and every kind of abuse happens — wait, no that’s called history!! #sorry

— Alex Heeney (@bwestcineaste) July 1, 2018

This is a rather sobering reminder of the horrible mistreatment of Indigenous peoples in Canada that still remains overlooked, underdiscussed and frequently unacknowledged. Kudos to Alex for highlighting the problematic nature of celebrating a colonial, settler-centric national holiday that deliberately excludes the history and narratives of Indigenous peoples.

Big thanks to everyone for playing along! This proved to be a fun exercise and reminded me how playful the horror/Twitter community can be. Perhaps we can do this again some time…