Synopsis
CASCADE is a suspense thriller. It is the story of a teenager at a crossroad; struggling to choose between the familiar small-town world she knows and a new opportunity she’s not sure she can handle.
It’s the summer after senior year in Clearwater, a blue-collar town; the halcyon days before adulthood. It’s a time 17-year-old Alexis wishes would never end, because the end of summer means making life changing decisions and revealing her secret ambitions to go to college in a new city with new friends, leaving her mom Amber, her boyfriend Jesse, and the life she knows behind. But there’s something deeper holding her back: a life spent navigating an absentee father Nick, who is also the leader of the notorious biker gang, the Dark Saints. She wonders if she’s good enough for college. Can she make it? There’s a part of her story with him she wants to end, and the opportunity will soon come for Alex to prove she’s more than an abandoned little girl.
After a heated encounter with her father, Alex accepts an invitation for a weekend wilderness trip with Jesse, his rowdy friend Vince and Vince’s girlfriend, Em. This decision changes her life forever. The discovery of a downed plane filled with cocaine in the forest plunges the teens into a series of extreme events. The charismatic Vince makes a case for why each of them should take the drugs. He persuades Em to carry and reveals Alex’s college admission to Jesse (a secret she’d only told Em). Alex disapproves of Vince’s plan but fails to convince the others to follow her—a major turning point for all of them.
Alex’s world in the wilderness is one of escalating violence and danger, where characters are menacing and the environment hostile. Alex is in a state of unbalance and high alert. The pace ratchets when Alex and her friends encounter the drug smugglers searching for the plane and are forced to flee for their lives.
But when her friends are captured and Vince is murdered, Alex leans into her strength, her courage, and her ingenuity to best her opponents. With their lives at stake, killing becomes a viable option. Rather than challenge the callous survivor’s instinct she’s culled from her father, Alex owns it.
The action intensifies until the final dramatic twist, when Alex comes face to face with the kingpin drug runner: her father Nick. But now, it is Alex who has the upper hand. She uses her knowledge of Nick and his biker gang and her renewed conviction to negotiate her way out of their predicament ensuring the safety of her and her friends. With rekindled confidence, Alex makes decisions to move her life forward.
CASCADE’s protagonist is on the run; chased and hunted by ruthless criminals. As Alex looks death in the face, she must embrace her natural instincts and use them to her advantage. Her coming of age is a harrowing journey where the audience is drawn in and invested.