4/28

My visitors/“victims” are a group of college students, led by the impeccable Dani, whose family owns the house. I’m naming Dani after the main character in Ari Aster’s Midsommar, who (spoilers!!) in the end sacrifices her mediocre boyfriend to a fiery death and still seems sympathetic. In Midsommar, a part of Dani is unlocked by a series of events, most of them deeply traumatic, that turns her into a sunny, terrifying cultist who watches people burn. With my Dani, the brutality will be closer to the surface. I want there to be something wrong with Dani, but more right: a great listener and self-sacrificing friend who is at the same time callous and withholding of feeling, and who goes through the motions and performs perfectly in her relationships but is contemptuous of most she deals with. Dani, given the opportunity, will hurt people not in self-defense but because it’s fun for her. This will draw the concern of the group when she occasionally slips and reveals the enjoyment, and will be foreshadowed in how she treats her dog – cruelly – and the way she behaves when the animal brings her prey (uncomfortably pleased).