My flick is called "House of Dusk". Brad Dourif is Maxwell Clements, writer and recluse. For 20 years, he's had a small and "cult" following, steady but never mainstream. Many have wondered about him and where he gets his ideas, but none have seen more than a passing glimpse of him, occasionally wandering the gardens of his dilapidated old family mansion. Enter Monica Belluci as Allison Shane, fan and aspiring writer. Allison is determined to get in to see Clements, even to the point of sneaking over the wall and into his estate. Creepy it may be in there, unkempt and overgrown, but she is undaunted. As she is trying to peer into the dirty windowpanes, the door opens, and Clements confronts her. He turns her away, seeming upset at the intrusion and yet furtively paranoid, and Allison presses her case. Eventually, he sees she will not take no for an answer, and steps out on the patio to talk to her...perhaps he welcomes the company after all. They speak and converse long into the afternoon, and before either of them realize it, it has become late; the sun is about to set. Clements gets very agitated, and drags her inside the house...but not before she hears sounds from the depths of the gardens the likes of which she has never heard before.
Before her eyes, the furnishings in the house subtly change, and what was merely unclean before becomes grimy and decayed. Clements himself shifts as well, becoming almost bolder, now. She wanted to know the source of his stories, he says? Well, she's gonna get a first hand view, and he sweeps back the curtain to the large picture window overlooking the terrace. What was once overgrown garden is now a portal to a seemingly endless city, dark and foreboding, and here and there punctuated with immense citadels. Clements reveals to her that, some time ago, he discovered that our world is merely an illusion, and that the truth is this endless city he refers to only as Metropolis. This portal, he says, opens at night, and many are the nights he has wandered into the city, recording what he saw for later stories, only barely managing to find his way back out. Many things he reveals about this place, most of which Allison does not believe, but Cements ignores her, getting more and more agitated, finally opening the door and screaming at some moving figures slithering at the edges of the rift. Without warning, he is snatched up and taken into the rift by something that only somewhat looked human, and Allison must follow them, if she is to ever learn the way back to the world she calls home before the sun rises, cutting them off.