LITTLE BIRD
LOG LINE
A young girl accidentally opens a portal to hell and makes a deal with the devil. The devil agrees to give Maggie the gift of flight, but there’s a catch, if she cannot master his gift within 12 days and fly away from her neglectful family, her soul is his.
ABOUT
Little Bird is a dark fairy tale with fantastical horror elements. Comps include: Let The Right One In, Donnie Darko, Pan’s Labyrinth.
SHORT SYNOPSIS
When Maggie, age 9, tries to save an injured sparrow, she accidentally sacrifices it instead and summons the devil. The devil claims that there are no accidents and offers Maggie a deal. He agrees to give her the gift of flight, but she must fly away from her neglectful family within 12 days or her soul is forfeit.
The first few days Maggie tries to fly and falls a hundred times. She gets off the ground, just, but can’t even make it over the garden wall. When Maggie blurts out to her grandfather that she can fly, he humiliates her - so the devil tells her how to get revenge. Maggie says she only wants to teach the old man a lesson but when she accidentally kills him, the devil reminds her that there are no accidents.
As the days pass, Maggie flies higher and higher off the ground, her secret self becomes more vengeful and her false smile more practised. Nobody suspects that Maggie is the one who trashed and burned her family’s dearest possessions (with help from the devil’s imps). Nobody who sees her fly can bring themselves to admit it - not her neighbour, not the priest.
When Maggie’s grandad comes up from hell to hold her accountable for his death, Maggie escapes and screams at the top of her lungs, but her mother insists that everyone ignore her - she’s just looking for attention. So Maggie decides it’s time to leave for good and flies away to a different neighbourhood. A man coaxes her inside his house and tries to make her touch his penis. The Devil soothes her - it’s okay, he’ll show her how to summon a demon to kill the pervert tomorrow.
12 days have passed. Her time is up. And Maggie has decided that in this world, she needs the devil’s help. But when she sees the little sparrow in the devil’s hands, she can’t help herself, she grabs it and runs. She makes it to the top of the tree and flies into the night sky - but the imps chase her and drag her back down, hitting every branch on the way, through the house to the darkest corner of the cupboard under the stairs.
Years later, Maggie is grown. She looks exactly as though the devil is a woman now. Maggie has returned to her childhood home for her father’s funeral. At first, she manages to play nice, but when she spies the pervert at the wake, the chasm in the cupboard under the stairs opens up again. This time, it’s her childhood self, Little Maggie, who crawls out to offer her advice. And Big Maggie starts to wonder - if the devil can condemn her to hell, can the little bird get her out?
DIRECTOR STATEMENT
I want to capture the magic and intensity of the dreams I had as a child. And to explore the duality of fantasy - on the one hand an escape from the harshness and dreariness of the real world and a way to experience all of the difficult emotions a repressed society denies us, but on the other, a means of dissociation and alienation - a dark secret about who you really are.
I’m also really interested in the way our identities and “inner voices” develop, and the idea that there is always a kind of dialogue between different parts and versions of ourselves, even through time. The devil in Maggie’s head is like an older version of Maggie growing inside her as she internalises the darkness in the world. But “little Maggie” persists and survives even after this darker self takes over.
Little Bird also explores the dynamics of neglect and the particular vulnerabilities it engenders. Little Maggie isn’t subject to any physical or verbal cruelties, but the absence of parenting leaves a hole. A space she interprets in the worst way possible. So into the hole a darkness seeps - a mirror world that refracts the hollow sanctimony of a religion that doesn’t make sense to little Maggie. She doesn’t want to be Eve, an afterthought made from a rib, created to serve and eternally condemned for her disobedience. She wants above all else to be free, but if she can’t be free she’d rather be the serpent.