As a deadly winter seals them in, a frontier girl suspects the kindly strangers offering food and comfort are feeding on more than just gratitude.

SYNOPSIS:

The Pale Ones follows Edie, a fiercely observant 14-year-old frontier girl, whose family is trapped in an unending 1850 prairie winter that starves the land and unravels their minds. As their food dwindles, her father ventures into the storm and never returns, leaving Edie to care for her feverish baby brother, fragile younger sibling, and increasingly unstable mother. When a ghostlike elderly couple arrives with impossible warmth and food, Edie alone perceives that their presence heralds death rather than salvation... the “Pale Ones” feed on surrender, coaxing families into gentle, willing extinction. One by one her family succumbs - first the baby, then her mother - and Edie flees into the blizzard with her brother, hunted across the frozen prairie by the beings who wear kindness like a mask.

This project includes minimal locations and characters.