Crustaceous

LOGLINE:

Moncton tough guy Devon Leroux travels to the forbidding seaside town of Shellbrook in search of his missing girlfriend, only to find the haunted Maritime town is home to mutant lobster cultists devoted to a Lovecraftian horror awakened by warming waters and dark rituals, bent on global destruction.

SYNSOPSIS:

A darkly-comedic homage to Lovecraftian horror, CRUSTACEOUS takes the terror of Cthulhu and injects it with the charm and absurdity of the black sheep of Canada’s scenic Maritime provinces, New Brunswick. Set in the fictitious fishing village of Shellbrook, home to salt-of-the-earth locals, sprawling ocean views and an outcast group of mutant cultists bent on summoning Cephalophore, the long slumbering deity of the lobsters.

Rumours of a strange religious group taking root in the once thriving lobster fishing community are common knowledge, but for most locals, another crackpot cult in the boondocks is commonplace. This time, however, the cult in question is more than a band of religious outsiders: should the dark rituals performed by the cultists be completed and the elder being be awakened, the entire world will face total annihilation.

The world’s only hope lies in the hands of our hero, Devon Leroux, a deadbeat with little motivation in life other than working for his sister Genevieve’s contracting business, collecting his paycheque, coming home to crush a few cans of Alpine, and repeating this routine until he lays to rest. However, after Riley, Devon’s sometime girlfriend, goes missing during an ill-fated getaway to the coast, he sets his sights on tracking her down and making things right with the woman he knows he never deserved. Determined to find Riley, Devon follows a path of clues leading him to Shellbrook. His occult-obsessed colleague Arnie offers to help him in his search.

Arriving in Shellbrook. Devon and Arnie discover the cultists, a group of cloaked fanatics in a state of being slowly malformed into lobster-like humanoids by the influence of Cephalophore’s dark powers drawing ever nearer. Their hands have become lobster claws, their flesh is eroding away, revealing a exoskeleton forming beneath. Led by deranged boomer lobster leaders Abram and Pearl McCleggan, the cultists, including a mutating Riley, are performing their final rituals to summon Cephalaphore to the shore, along with the catastrophe he brings with him. Our heroes are torn between stopping the cultists’ rituals and freeing Riley, eventually realize they cannot have one without the other.

All the while, Cephalophore scuttles slowly across the Atlantic Ocean floor, drawn toward the cultists’ harbinger calls. If he makes it to the shore, the massive weight of his shell and claws, buffered with eldritch magics, will bring a tsunami with him. His breath will make gales to spawn a hurricane, perpetually ravaging the world until there is nothing left, save the cultists, now fully encased in shells as monstrous mutations.

CREDITS:

Creator & Producer: Sandy Hunter
Writers: Steven Suntress & Matt Mott
VFX: Skyler Michaels
Production Design: Jared Carney