narrative · 2026 DraftUnproduced

Milk Then Blood

A false pregnancy sparks a community's holy hunger.

Role

Writer

Genre

Religious Body Horror

Status

Feature Screenplay / Feature Screenplay / Draft 1 / 112 Pages

About the Project

After years of infertility, a woman becomes the center of a religious frenzy when her body begins to mimic a pregnancy, forcing her to confront the belief system that once gave her hope, and the horrifying price of reclaiming her body from those who worship it.

Plot Summary

After years of infertility and disillusionment with her insular religious community, Hannah Branwen has accepted a quiet, childless life as a preschool teacher. But when her body begins to mimic the signs of pregnancy, her deeply devout husband, heretical mother and the church around her declare it a miracle. Despite medical confirmation that she is not pregnant, the community embraces her as the vessel for a divine child, thrusting her into a spiraling storm of spiritual fervor, buried grief, and bodily control. As Hannah is pushed to perform belief she no longer holds, she begins to uncover the rot beneath the commune's sanctity: forced motherhood, covered abuse, and a brutal ritual cloaked in scripture. Entangled in betrayal and myth, she must decide whether to submit to the role assigned to her, or reclaim her body in the only way left to her. A psychological horror rooted in grief, faith, and feminist resistance, Milk Then Blood asks: Can a body still belong to you if others believe it serves a higher purpose?

Why This Exists

Milk Then Blood exists because I'm haunted by what it means to mourn something that never actually happened, a life imagined, a future rehearsed, a love that still took up space in the body even after it was declared impossible. The story began with the idea of pseudocyesis, but what kept pulling me back was the emotional violence around it: how quickly other people can claim your pain, name it for you, and turn it into proof of something they need to believe. Hannah's "pregnancy" isn't a twist. It's a trap. It's the moment private grief becomes public property, and the world starts speaking through her body louder than she can.

At its core, Milk Then Blood is about bodily autonomy under pressure, how faith, family, and community can feel like love while quietly becoming custody. It explores inherited expectation, the performance of belief, and the way systems (religious or otherwise) weaponize tenderness to enforce obedience. The film sits in the tension between miracle and manipulation, between comfort and coercion, asking: what happens when your body is treated as a vessel for someone else's meaning? And if everyone around you insists your pain is sacred, how do you reclaim the right to decide what it means, and what you are willing to destroy to get yourself back?