Dark Paradise

The story of DARK PARADISE revolves around Ash, a towering African-American man, who fought in the Vietnam war and never left. Instead, he continues to roam Vietnam almost like a ghost, living off the land, doing the work that the Vietnamese people don't want to do for free, in order to make amends and appease his conscience, which can never be appeased. We begin with him entering a tiny, isolated village by the sea, forgotten by time and the world, it has not changed much after the war, except that the villagers have all been touched by Agent Orange and profoundly affected in one way or another.  That very first night, an enormous splash awakes them all and as they come to the beach they see something enormous in the water. Some say the Americans are back again, that it is some kind of chemical, others that it is an experiment, others that it is God's gift, and some that it came from the sky, an alien being! Children swim in it, delighting in its warmth. But then Ash notices a dead branch come alive and things begin to go wrong. A grieving widower digs up his dead wife and carries her into the ocean and she rises up, but it is not his wife. The villagers begin to accuse God and finally Ash - the American, the Magic Man who came back to finish what he started so long ago. It is as if the thing in the water makes the past, with all its nightmares and pain, flesh! Things intensify to terrifying proportions as Ash tries to find a way to deal with the past and make things right.