Shadow Play (1986)

Writer Morgan Hanna is having flashback nightmares about the death, believed to be a suicide, of her fiancé Jeremy Crown that happened seven years prior. Thinking she had overcome her grief, she began suffering from writer's block. Her contracts and agent were becoming increasingly impatient.

She went through the motions, talking to a therapist and trying to work through her pain that obviously still plagued her. Having repeat nightmares of the tragic night she lost her beloved. She began writing about her experiences and received a letter from Millie Crown (who would have been her mother-in-law) asking her to visit and come out to Orcas Island to be near her, expressing how much she missed her son's beloved. Morgan decided to take Millie up on her offer and flew out to Washington State from New Your City to finally reunite with the family. During the drive back to Millie's house, they drove past the lighthouse that Jeremy fell from. The past wounds were everywhere. The memories were everywhere. Once settled in, there Morgan began writing out a play that, as the story unfolded, seemed to write itself. Writing a free-form of poetry about the unshakable bong between her and Jeremy and how she felt robbed of all happiness because of something that she couldn't understand or explain. She had been carrying around this pain of not knowing why he would kill himself. As she worked more on her play, the more the spirit of Jeremy drew closer. Morgan began seeing him in glass reflections of windows and doors, and felt his presence right there with her the whole time. Millie had arranged for Morgan to work with the local theater company to put on her play that would consist of five different voices and characters speaking in turns as one character that had been shattered. All shadowed in black as the constant rotation of a lighthouse beacon turned. Morgan's play was mainly all about the events that happened regarding the lighthouse and the vows her and Jeremy would make with each other if he had lived. As the haunting intensified, Jeremy would eventually inhabit the body of his brother John Crown, to be able to make love to her. But John had eyes for Morgan for an apparent long time. When John wanted to talk with Morgan the next day about wanting to take care of her and that he loved her, she became distraught and tried to explain that she was with Jeremy and that he (John) wasn't real to her. John then becomes angry and reinforces the belief that Jeremy is gone and that he killed himself. Morgan is on the verge of a nervous breakdown and succumbs to the task of finishing the play and afterward, she'd go back to the lighthouse and join Jeremy. Once the play had been performed in full by her actors, that she could see the whole thing all the way through before leaving, Morgan felt resolution to everything and praising her cast for their moving performance, she would go to the lighthouse. John had raced after her, suspecting she was going to kill herself and desperately went to the lighthouse to stop her. Once he arrived he found Morgan standing by the railing where Jeremy had plunged to his death years ago. In desperation he told Morgan that it wasn't her that he wanted. That Jeremy didn't leave her. That it wasn't her that failed him. That he didn't take his life. John then calls out to Jeremy that he is there. Suddenly as she heard those words, she looked at John with what had to have been a sudden shock that hadn't quite finished resonating within her. A sudden realization that all this time she had been blaming herself for not knowing of Jeremy's despair and for not going with him when he went to the lighthouse to meet up with John. What Morgan learned as a flashback of that night unfolds, is that it was really John that was going to jump. Feeling like the incompetent little brother that would never be able to find the happiness that Jeremy had been so blessed with. It's explained that Jeremy, in an attempt to stop John, accidentally falls over the railing himself and to his death. Once all this is revealed, all the weight of the tragic event that took Jeremy from her, had lifted off of her and she was visibly free of what was haunting her for a very long time. Breaking away from a spell and rushing back down the steps of the lighthouse, Morgan headed back to Millie's. Free of doubt and finally having the knowledge that it wasn't her fault. That John's lies to the family about what happened was to mask what really took place. Morgan being relieved, shocked, shaken, and crying tears through a laughter that could be described as one being freed from a life sentence. Going back to Millie's house to plan and start her life again without the crippling burden that plagued her, she found the final piece of the play written for her by Jeremy's ghost.