Death Mask (2026) Movie Script
1
- Oliver.
Evelyn?
Oliver?
Evelyn?
It's Sam Cooke.
I brought you some eggs.
Oliver?
Evelyn?
- I'm so sorry. I don't know what to do.
- Oliver.
Evelyn, it's Sam Cooke.
Just wanted to see if you guys
needed some eggs this week.
If you do, give me a call. I'll stop by.
Thanks.
- Hello?
- Ollie?
Ollie, my love. I have news for you.
Great news. Tremendous news.
Now, I know that we have a
contract to finish a painting,
but right now, I want you
to just put that on hold.
Just absolutely forget about it.
The Sonnenberg wants
you to create an installation
for the lobby of their new wing!
They want something simple, yet radical,
and 100% Oliver Black.
And Ollie, they're going
to pay you through the roof!
- I'm listening, yeah.
- They're dedicating their new wi
to the personal works of
all the great American artists!
They want an installation
and they want it fast.
Oh, honey, I hate to put pressure on you
but it's the goddamn Sonnenberg!
We can't afford to pass this up!
Now, honey, I know, I
know this is short notice,
but do you have any ideas?
I have an idea.
- That's why
you're my favorite client.
Favorite, favorite artist.
Ollie?
Ollie, are you there?
- Yeah.
I'm just, I'm
just thinking, 'cause yeah...
I should go get to work.
- Fantastic.
How's Evelyn?
- She's great. She's resting.
- Give her my love.
- I will.
- So then.
I don't know.
I don't want you to choke.
Your hand is so cold.
- I'm in here.
It's,
it's so dark.
It's so dark.
Look for me.
Another bird flew into the window.
So, I left it open.
- Evelyn?
- It's so cold.
Ollie, can you hand me a blanket?
My arms don't wanna move.
The desire to see the
world and not be in the world.
So many tiny bodies.
It's like a fire.
Music.
That's better.
Don't you think?
- Mm-hm.
Yeah.
- Is the window still open, then?
- No, it's closed.
- Is it winter already?
How long did I sleep?
I fell asleep?
I feel like I was in the
middle of something.
Ollie.
I'm still cold.
The music isn't helping.
- So, did you,
did you see him?
- Who?
- Jesus?
Buddha?
The white light?
- No.
It's hard to describe, really.
It's, it's more a feeling.
Like a warm light.
Liquid oneness.
The senses are heightened
and the field of awareness is,
is endless.
You feel no sense of your physical body.
And yet, you feel everything.
Hear everything.
It's infinite and nothing.
But then, you allow it.
There's no more
thinking, and it's beautiful.
You're free.
- What's happening?
- What?
Hello?
They're telling me...
- What's happening?
- I'm with them now. - Who's "them"?
- The recent arrivals.
Someone's telling me something.
They're saying, they're telling
me that we have five days.
Whatever this is, we
have five days and then
you go away from me.
Be gone.
- Who's telling you?
- The guides.
It's just the guides.
Guides.
They say we'll be
reunited in the next phase.
- Next phase of what?
- Next phase.
Evolution.
It's like trying to describe a color
you've never seen
before, in another language.
Maybe color isn't it.
No. Maybe it's like music.
Because we can hear it
coming from this machine,
but we can't see it, or feel it.
And yet, it's, it's everywhere.
The sound wave is
invisible, but it's everywhere.
It's here.
And it's here. We're moving through it.
That's what it's like. It's like music.
It's everywhere.
It's so beautiful.
- Well, I wanna
see it, too. You know?
- You really wanna know what it's like?
Then come with me.
- Now?
- Now.
And now, how many times
have we driven by here,
without really seeing
what we're looking at?
Or feeling the texture
in the air around us?
This structure.
That lake.
This turn in the road.
Because you already know all of this,
you probably haven't seen any of it.
You've just gone right on by, missing it
Seeing what you thought you saw before,
and missing out on all the beauty.
And if you're on a different path,
a road you've never been down,
you don't know what's ahead of you.
You have no idea what's coming up,
what's about to happen.
And that forces you to
become very attentive,
and very present.
And it's in that moment
of not knowing, Ollie,
inside the unknown,
you're alive.
Really alive.
It's the most beautiful place to be.
Sorry to interrupt.
We always struggled dancing, didn't we?
- Well that's because you
always wanted to leave.
- I can read your intentions
with a lot more clarity now.
- Mm!
Does that mean that
you're willing to follow?
- Let's see.
Sorry to interrupt.
Are you all right?
I want this painting to be my headstone.
- "Headstone."
- Oh, it used to bother
me so much, but now,
I can see what you're
going for and I love it.
- I was just trying
to get at the truth, I guess.
- I love how much it shows
how much I was holding inside.
You know, it's not what we
express that drives us crazy.
It's what we keep buried inside.
- Alex, what in God's
name are you doing up here?
- You have not been answering your phone
so I just decided to come up!
- Wait, wait. - No, no.
Do these windows open?
- No, but it does break, so be careful.
- Oh, Ollie.
Why haven't you been answering your phon
I'm sorry, Ollie, but,
is there something that
matter with your sewer?
- Yeah, I think there might be.
I'll get it looked at.
- We can get you a studio in the city,
if you need a clean place to work.
- I like working here.
- Sweetie, I know. I know
these things take time.
But you've been ignoring me!
Can I see the work?
- I promise you, as soon as it's ready,
you will be the very
first person to see it.
- That's all I wanted to know.
You must answer the phone when I call yo
- You know what?
Not only will I answer it, I'll pick it
and I'll call you.
How's that? - I like that.
- It'll be good. - Yes, thank you.
- You know, she hasn't
always been honest with you.
- About what?
- About money.
And other things.
- What other things?
- Your work.
She thinks you've lost it.
That you're out of touch.
She doesn't understand.
- How'd you find out about this
- I can hear thoughts, somehow.
The frequency's different
when there's an obstacle in it.
Like a lie.
So
what, is this whole thing
with the Sonnenbergs a lie?
- No.
No, no. This one's honest.
I'm being shown how to
connect to different frequencies.
- So,
can you read my mind?
- Yes.
The tree has turned blue.
- Why blue?
Remember that awful hobby I picked up,
painting the Ukrainian Easter eggs?
- Oh, yeah. You were into that.
- It was so tedious.
Hours and hours, just
painting and repainting,
the same surface.
I kind of obsessed on it.
I think I was just so tense,
trying to make it beautiful.
I ended up shattering it
into a thousand pieces.
- Isn't that how they make
'em stronger, sometimes?
Didn't they do that on purpose?
- What, break them,
and put 'em back together?
- It's true in nature.
Cells have to break apart
in order to keep growing.
Muscles.
Humans.
Maybe we had to get broken
apart to be made stronger.
- I think, in the end,
I was just more interested in the egg.
Ollie.
Why did I die?
Why won't you tell me?
I wonder can you hear
the sound of that color?
Oliver, the mind can't tell the differen
between what is real and what is imagine
The mind can't tell the
difference between what is real
and what is imagined.
The mind can't tell the
difference between what is real
and what is imagined.
This is the truth of the universe.
- Hey, guys? You can come down this way.
You don't have to go in the house.
- Down that way? - Yeah.
- The hell were you thinking,
sending plumbers over here?
- It's a problem that needed
to be fixed and I'm fixing it!
- Well, next time give
me a heads up, all right?
It's my house.
Christ.
- Oliver, I want to see the work.
my God.
What is it?
- The divine essence.
Accompanied by gods from above.
Beasts from below.
The extra-dimensional emissary.
The earthbound primitivist.
It's all aspects of Evelyn.
- Evelyn? - Mm.
- Has she seen it?
What does she think of it?
- I haven't asked.
- It's not finished.
- That's what "a work in progress" means
I said it was a work in progress.
You understand that the
wax becomes bronze, right?
And that the feather
won't be there on the day-
- Well, let me know when it will be read
for the Sonnenberg to pick up.
Buy Evelyn something nice.
- Thank you, Alex.
I'll help you out.
- So, we snaked the main water line,
and somehow, something
has backed up your system,
and it won't drain.
So, we're gonna have to flush everything
Every drain in the house.
Starting with the ones
on the top floor, 'cause I...
- Um, no.
Actually, we don't use
one on the top floor.
Just the one off the kitchen.
Get to it this way, though. I'll show yo
- All right. Get this.
Yeah, yeah.
yeah, it looks whatever's
affecting the drain down here
is coming from the pipes upstairs.
You think I can take a look
at that second floor bathroom?
- Like I said, we don't use it.
It's turned off, so...
- Look, I know it's tough
having guys work in your house,
but if you just let me take a look,
I think I can fix it, get outta your hai
- Yeah, no, I appreciate it
because I know I have to pay,
each time you come but it'd be better,
'd make more sense to do it that way,
but this is not a good time.
- Look, I don't wanna-
whatever you put in that tub
was the culprit.
I cleaned up for ya. Scraped it all out.
Put some drain cleaner down her.
I wouldn't flush it for an hour or two.
Tomorrow morning, probably be best.
- All righty, then.
Thank you.
- Have a good day.
- Oh, my God. You're back.
- We can't ever do
anything like that again.
- But it, it worked.
I almost...
- They won't let it happen.
They said it shouldn't happen.
- Why? What if I want to go?
- It's not your time.
- Who gets to decide that, if not me?
If I want to be with you
more than I want to stay here.
- I know, baby, but not yet.
You're not finished.
- This is all dead to me now.
I want to move on with you.
- I know, but I have to go alone.
Please don't. There's nothing to negotia
Don't think there's anything you can do.
- Then why did you come back?
Why didn't you just stay there?
- I came back to say goodbye.
- No!
I need you, here.
I have you in everywhere.
In in my work.
It's... - Oliver.
You've been so busy,
but now you need to stop.
You need to stop being
so busy and just rest.
Rest and let all the pain in.
Let it in, so you can let it go.
Then you can begin again.
I love you, Oliver.
That's all we are, you know, is love.
- It's not so easy to feel
that when you're all alone.
- Love is everywhere and in everything.
Connect with that and then
we will always be together.
Connect with that.
I always pick up a feather when I see it
'cause a feather is a
message from the spirit world.
It means the spirits are with you,
depending on the feather that you find,
or the feather that finds you.
So, whenever you see a feather, you'll k
that I'm near you.
- Oliver.
Evelyn?
Oliver?
Evelyn?
It's Sam Cooke.
I brought you some eggs.
Oliver?
Evelyn?
- Eddie Sonnenberg, may
I present, Oliver Black.
- It's nice to meet you.
- A pleasure to meet you.
Actually, have we ever met?
- No.
I know your work.
- Yeah, you just seem familiar.
So, come on in.
So, the Russians.
These portraits represent a
cross section, a random sampling
of those who were considered
to be counter-revolutionaries.
So, Stalin had his secret
police round them up,
document them with photographs,
and then taken out and shot in the head.
So, they all know they're about to die,
and they're in immediate sense of awaren
of their own mortality.
And so you get to see, in each face,
that I was completely
mesmerized when I was working,
by the confluence of
different emotional states.
The fear and the anger.
The regret and the?
Well, everything going on in there.
Because?
So, I tried to?
I sanded them down in
between each pass 'cause I loved
the idea of collaborating
with the law of accidents.
So every time I sand, I'm losing somethi
that I put in there and
then I put something back
and I take it away and I
put it back and I take it away.
So, there'd be windows
through which the audience,
the viewer would feel that
they were being haunted.
- Oliver, let's forget about
the Russians, for now.
Come on.
I can't wait for you to see this.
- I've always felt that modern times
are lacking in terms of the?
What am I trying to say?
I am sure the work I've
been doing for all these years,
of building up all the
layers and burying them,
in order to excavate back
in order to reveal them,
in order to try and?
My version of signaling through the flam
in order to find that place
where the spirit meets the bone
in order to do the soul justice,
it seems like a form of
madness, but this is my attempt
to do the soul justice.
- Oliver.
It's perfect.
- I'm so glad you like it.
I knew that you would,
but I'm still really happy.
Congratulations, Oliver.
You have absolutely captured her spirit.
- Thank you.
- Congratulations.
- I wonder can you
hear the sound of that color?
- Oliver.
Evelyn?
Oliver?
Evelyn?
It's Sam Cooke.
I brought you some eggs.
Oliver?
Evelyn?
- I'm so sorry. I don't know what to do.
- Oliver.
Evelyn, it's Sam Cooke.
Just wanted to see if you guys
needed some eggs this week.
If you do, give me a call. I'll stop by.
Thanks.
- Hello?
- Ollie?
Ollie, my love. I have news for you.
Great news. Tremendous news.
Now, I know that we have a
contract to finish a painting,
but right now, I want you
to just put that on hold.
Just absolutely forget about it.
The Sonnenberg wants
you to create an installation
for the lobby of their new wing!
They want something simple, yet radical,
and 100% Oliver Black.
And Ollie, they're going
to pay you through the roof!
- I'm listening, yeah.
- They're dedicating their new wi
to the personal works of
all the great American artists!
They want an installation
and they want it fast.
Oh, honey, I hate to put pressure on you
but it's the goddamn Sonnenberg!
We can't afford to pass this up!
Now, honey, I know, I
know this is short notice,
but do you have any ideas?
I have an idea.
- That's why
you're my favorite client.
Favorite, favorite artist.
Ollie?
Ollie, are you there?
- Yeah.
I'm just, I'm
just thinking, 'cause yeah...
I should go get to work.
- Fantastic.
How's Evelyn?
- She's great. She's resting.
- Give her my love.
- I will.
- So then.
I don't know.
I don't want you to choke.
Your hand is so cold.
- I'm in here.
It's,
it's so dark.
It's so dark.
Look for me.
Another bird flew into the window.
So, I left it open.
- Evelyn?
- It's so cold.
Ollie, can you hand me a blanket?
My arms don't wanna move.
The desire to see the
world and not be in the world.
So many tiny bodies.
It's like a fire.
Music.
That's better.
Don't you think?
- Mm-hm.
Yeah.
- Is the window still open, then?
- No, it's closed.
- Is it winter already?
How long did I sleep?
I fell asleep?
I feel like I was in the
middle of something.
Ollie.
I'm still cold.
The music isn't helping.
- So, did you,
did you see him?
- Who?
- Jesus?
Buddha?
The white light?
- No.
It's hard to describe, really.
It's, it's more a feeling.
Like a warm light.
Liquid oneness.
The senses are heightened
and the field of awareness is,
is endless.
You feel no sense of your physical body.
And yet, you feel everything.
Hear everything.
It's infinite and nothing.
But then, you allow it.
There's no more
thinking, and it's beautiful.
You're free.
- What's happening?
- What?
Hello?
They're telling me...
- What's happening?
- I'm with them now. - Who's "them"?
- The recent arrivals.
Someone's telling me something.
They're saying, they're telling
me that we have five days.
Whatever this is, we
have five days and then
you go away from me.
Be gone.
- Who's telling you?
- The guides.
It's just the guides.
Guides.
They say we'll be
reunited in the next phase.
- Next phase of what?
- Next phase.
Evolution.
It's like trying to describe a color
you've never seen
before, in another language.
Maybe color isn't it.
No. Maybe it's like music.
Because we can hear it
coming from this machine,
but we can't see it, or feel it.
And yet, it's, it's everywhere.
The sound wave is
invisible, but it's everywhere.
It's here.
And it's here. We're moving through it.
That's what it's like. It's like music.
It's everywhere.
It's so beautiful.
- Well, I wanna
see it, too. You know?
- You really wanna know what it's like?
Then come with me.
- Now?
- Now.
And now, how many times
have we driven by here,
without really seeing
what we're looking at?
Or feeling the texture
in the air around us?
This structure.
That lake.
This turn in the road.
Because you already know all of this,
you probably haven't seen any of it.
You've just gone right on by, missing it
Seeing what you thought you saw before,
and missing out on all the beauty.
And if you're on a different path,
a road you've never been down,
you don't know what's ahead of you.
You have no idea what's coming up,
what's about to happen.
And that forces you to
become very attentive,
and very present.
And it's in that moment
of not knowing, Ollie,
inside the unknown,
you're alive.
Really alive.
It's the most beautiful place to be.
Sorry to interrupt.
We always struggled dancing, didn't we?
- Well that's because you
always wanted to leave.
- I can read your intentions
with a lot more clarity now.
- Mm!
Does that mean that
you're willing to follow?
- Let's see.
Sorry to interrupt.
Are you all right?
I want this painting to be my headstone.
- "Headstone."
- Oh, it used to bother
me so much, but now,
I can see what you're
going for and I love it.
- I was just trying
to get at the truth, I guess.
- I love how much it shows
how much I was holding inside.
You know, it's not what we
express that drives us crazy.
It's what we keep buried inside.
- Alex, what in God's
name are you doing up here?
- You have not been answering your phone
so I just decided to come up!
- Wait, wait. - No, no.
Do these windows open?
- No, but it does break, so be careful.
- Oh, Ollie.
Why haven't you been answering your phon
I'm sorry, Ollie, but,
is there something that
matter with your sewer?
- Yeah, I think there might be.
I'll get it looked at.
- We can get you a studio in the city,
if you need a clean place to work.
- I like working here.
- Sweetie, I know. I know
these things take time.
But you've been ignoring me!
Can I see the work?
- I promise you, as soon as it's ready,
you will be the very
first person to see it.
- That's all I wanted to know.
You must answer the phone when I call yo
- You know what?
Not only will I answer it, I'll pick it
and I'll call you.
How's that? - I like that.
- It'll be good. - Yes, thank you.
- You know, she hasn't
always been honest with you.
- About what?
- About money.
And other things.
- What other things?
- Your work.
She thinks you've lost it.
That you're out of touch.
She doesn't understand.
- How'd you find out about this
- I can hear thoughts, somehow.
The frequency's different
when there's an obstacle in it.
Like a lie.
So
what, is this whole thing
with the Sonnenbergs a lie?
- No.
No, no. This one's honest.
I'm being shown how to
connect to different frequencies.
- So,
can you read my mind?
- Yes.
The tree has turned blue.
- Why blue?
Remember that awful hobby I picked up,
painting the Ukrainian Easter eggs?
- Oh, yeah. You were into that.
- It was so tedious.
Hours and hours, just
painting and repainting,
the same surface.
I kind of obsessed on it.
I think I was just so tense,
trying to make it beautiful.
I ended up shattering it
into a thousand pieces.
- Isn't that how they make
'em stronger, sometimes?
Didn't they do that on purpose?
- What, break them,
and put 'em back together?
- It's true in nature.
Cells have to break apart
in order to keep growing.
Muscles.
Humans.
Maybe we had to get broken
apart to be made stronger.
- I think, in the end,
I was just more interested in the egg.
Ollie.
Why did I die?
Why won't you tell me?
I wonder can you hear
the sound of that color?
Oliver, the mind can't tell the differen
between what is real and what is imagine
The mind can't tell the
difference between what is real
and what is imagined.
The mind can't tell the
difference between what is real
and what is imagined.
This is the truth of the universe.
- Hey, guys? You can come down this way.
You don't have to go in the house.
- Down that way? - Yeah.
- The hell were you thinking,
sending plumbers over here?
- It's a problem that needed
to be fixed and I'm fixing it!
- Well, next time give
me a heads up, all right?
It's my house.
Christ.
- Oliver, I want to see the work.
my God.
What is it?
- The divine essence.
Accompanied by gods from above.
Beasts from below.
The extra-dimensional emissary.
The earthbound primitivist.
It's all aspects of Evelyn.
- Evelyn? - Mm.
- Has she seen it?
What does she think of it?
- I haven't asked.
- It's not finished.
- That's what "a work in progress" means
I said it was a work in progress.
You understand that the
wax becomes bronze, right?
And that the feather
won't be there on the day-
- Well, let me know when it will be read
for the Sonnenberg to pick up.
Buy Evelyn something nice.
- Thank you, Alex.
I'll help you out.
- So, we snaked the main water line,
and somehow, something
has backed up your system,
and it won't drain.
So, we're gonna have to flush everything
Every drain in the house.
Starting with the ones
on the top floor, 'cause I...
- Um, no.
Actually, we don't use
one on the top floor.
Just the one off the kitchen.
Get to it this way, though. I'll show yo
- All right. Get this.
Yeah, yeah.
yeah, it looks whatever's
affecting the drain down here
is coming from the pipes upstairs.
You think I can take a look
at that second floor bathroom?
- Like I said, we don't use it.
It's turned off, so...
- Look, I know it's tough
having guys work in your house,
but if you just let me take a look,
I think I can fix it, get outta your hai
- Yeah, no, I appreciate it
because I know I have to pay,
each time you come but it'd be better,
'd make more sense to do it that way,
but this is not a good time.
- Look, I don't wanna-
whatever you put in that tub
was the culprit.
I cleaned up for ya. Scraped it all out.
Put some drain cleaner down her.
I wouldn't flush it for an hour or two.
Tomorrow morning, probably be best.
- All righty, then.
Thank you.
- Have a good day.
- Oh, my God. You're back.
- We can't ever do
anything like that again.
- But it, it worked.
I almost...
- They won't let it happen.
They said it shouldn't happen.
- Why? What if I want to go?
- It's not your time.
- Who gets to decide that, if not me?
If I want to be with you
more than I want to stay here.
- I know, baby, but not yet.
You're not finished.
- This is all dead to me now.
I want to move on with you.
- I know, but I have to go alone.
Please don't. There's nothing to negotia
Don't think there's anything you can do.
- Then why did you come back?
Why didn't you just stay there?
- I came back to say goodbye.
- No!
I need you, here.
I have you in everywhere.
In in my work.
It's... - Oliver.
You've been so busy,
but now you need to stop.
You need to stop being
so busy and just rest.
Rest and let all the pain in.
Let it in, so you can let it go.
Then you can begin again.
I love you, Oliver.
That's all we are, you know, is love.
- It's not so easy to feel
that when you're all alone.
- Love is everywhere and in everything.
Connect with that and then
we will always be together.
Connect with that.
I always pick up a feather when I see it
'cause a feather is a
message from the spirit world.
It means the spirits are with you,
depending on the feather that you find,
or the feather that finds you.
So, whenever you see a feather, you'll k
that I'm near you.
- Oliver.
Evelyn?
Oliver?
Evelyn?
It's Sam Cooke.
I brought you some eggs.
Oliver?
Evelyn?
- Eddie Sonnenberg, may
I present, Oliver Black.
- It's nice to meet you.
- A pleasure to meet you.
Actually, have we ever met?
- No.
I know your work.
- Yeah, you just seem familiar.
So, come on in.
So, the Russians.
These portraits represent a
cross section, a random sampling
of those who were considered
to be counter-revolutionaries.
So, Stalin had his secret
police round them up,
document them with photographs,
and then taken out and shot in the head.
So, they all know they're about to die,
and they're in immediate sense of awaren
of their own mortality.
And so you get to see, in each face,
that I was completely
mesmerized when I was working,
by the confluence of
different emotional states.
The fear and the anger.
The regret and the?
Well, everything going on in there.
Because?
So, I tried to?
I sanded them down in
between each pass 'cause I loved
the idea of collaborating
with the law of accidents.
So every time I sand, I'm losing somethi
that I put in there and
then I put something back
and I take it away and I
put it back and I take it away.
So, there'd be windows
through which the audience,
the viewer would feel that
they were being haunted.
- Oliver, let's forget about
the Russians, for now.
Come on.
I can't wait for you to see this.
- I've always felt that modern times
are lacking in terms of the?
What am I trying to say?
I am sure the work I've
been doing for all these years,
of building up all the
layers and burying them,
in order to excavate back
in order to reveal them,
in order to try and?
My version of signaling through the flam
in order to find that place
where the spirit meets the bone
in order to do the soul justice,
it seems like a form of
madness, but this is my attempt
to do the soul justice.
- Oliver.
It's perfect.
- I'm so glad you like it.
I knew that you would,
but I'm still really happy.
Congratulations, Oliver.
You have absolutely captured her spirit.
- Thank you.
- Congratulations.
- I wonder can you
hear the sound of that color?