Group: Film Storyline

Our story follows a girl. She is 18 years old and her name is Bridget. At the beginning of our story she makes the decision to take a gap year before she goes to university to study Criminology and Criminal Justice. Moving to America for the year, she rents a house alone, oblivious to the knowledge that the previous occupant was found hanging from the ceiling by her neck/ lying in a pool of her own blood drained from the slits in her wrists.

Exploring the house on her moving-in day, she finds a small wooden music box in the garage. As she opens it, she finds a folded white origami crane stuffed inside, the soft, twinkling music of the box begins to play. Beside the box is a large black photo album with the words ‘Best Friends’ written in bright red ink. Bridget thinks nothing of either of them placing them in a box she intends to take to a charity shop.

Carrying on with her everyday life, Bridget is ostracised from the people around her because she is a foreign outsider. Around the house Bridget begins to find multiple white cranes that she continues to throw away. Bridget begins to become suspicious and one night she dreams of the music from the music box and the young girl telling her that they are going to be best friends for all eternity. Waking with a start, Bridget begins her investigation.

Bridget enquires about the previous occupants and discovers that they all committed suicide. She fills entire walls with her newspaper clippings, post-it notes and scribbled ramblings of her discoveries. All crime scene photos of the suicides contain a small white origami crane in the background exactly the same as the ones she found in her house. She identifies the spirit contained in the music box as Jane from the inscriptions inscribed on the bottom of the box. 

One stormy evening, she begins to hear the gentle music of the music box and faint inaudible whispering. She slowly walks towards the noise. Lightening flashes and the lights in her house are cut out; the music and whispers get louder as she fearfully pushes on the door from which the noise is coming from. The open music box with the crane stood next to it wrests on the mantle pieces of the glowing fireplace. Photos are scattered across the floor, the whispering appears to be emanating from the black photo album that rests on a stand on the single table in the room. As Bridget opens the album, the whispering stops so that only the music box can be heard but it seems to be playing more slowly; inside the album are horrific images of the dead young girls she has been investigating. The whispers start again and a dark demonic-like shadow can be seen in the corner of the room, the whispers say: “be my friend”, Bridget throws the book across the room and runs to the mantle piece grabbing the music box and the crane and throwing them into the fire. A loud scream is heard and when Bridget wakes up, everything is still and back to normal.

Bridget begins to investigate who Jane really is and her motive for torturing her victims. She discovers that the music box originated from Japan and the legend told that it was owned by a small orphan child. It is believed that if you fold 1,000 cranes your wish will come true so the orphan child spent her days using anything she could find to repeatedly fold the cranes. The orphan was completely alone; her greatest wish was that she could have all the friends she wanted so that she would never have to be alone again. On the evening that Bridget discovers that the shadow figure is collecting victims to be her friends for all eternity, there is another storm. The music from the music box can be heard once more but this time, the soft twinkling emanates from the garage. The cranes seem to be scattered around the entire house imitating the deaths of Jane's previous victims. Some hang by their necks, others are drenched in thick red blood. From open windows, the storm's wind blows all of Bridget's research off of the wall except a single newspaper article. Bridget hesitantly walks towards the article making out the headline: 'Bridget was too young to have died'. Bridget rips the article from the wall tossing it in the still burning fire and begins to flee for her life. The music plays loudly through the house and, as the whispering begins again, the shadow creature torments and chases her. On realising Jane's weakness to fire, Bridget sets the entire house alight managing to run to safety. A piercing, shrill scream is the only thing that can be heard followed by complete silence. After a short amount of time Bridget moves back to England safe from the shadow creature and the cranes. The music box has survived the fire completely unharmed.