State: story bible, pilot script, 7 episode outlines

Tagline

They come in waves.

Synopsis

The story takes place on two different time levels: 2011 and 2023. In the summer of 2011, in a small German town, Hildi is on her way to a birthday party and mysteriously disappears during a short power outage. Meanwhile, cousins Daniel (22), an aspiring horror writer, and Barbara (20), an up-and-coming sound designer, are recording ambient sounds at a local forest.

On the following day, Barbara notices a strange noise in her recordings, while their grandfather, Gerhardt (73), mentions how similar the woman’s disappearance is to that of their grandmother, Maria, which happened thirty-eight years ago. This propels Daniel and Barbara to investigate on their own, believing that something supernatural may be involved. When the police find Hildi’s body and a suspect who confesses the murder, Daniel and Gerhardt refuse to accept this, while Barbara moves on. Gerhardt has a stroke, and Barbara blames Daniel, leading to a bitter fall out between them.

Twelve years later, Barbara (32), now a successful true crime podcaster, and Daniel (34), a frustrated ghost writer, meet again in their hometown for Gerhardt’s funeral. Barbara wants to tell the story of Hildi's death in her podcast, and invites Daniel to join for an episode. During the production, they edit their old audio footage and gather new evidence suggesting that there’s more to Hildi’s case. New supernatural phenomena occur as they find connections between the case and their grandmother’s disappearance.