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Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: (from writer) Trapped in a shrinking air pocket deep beneath the ocean’s surface, the survivors of a plane crash battle to stay alive long enough for the rescue teams to locate them.
Why you should read: (from writer) “This is my eighth screenplay, all in the action thriller genre. Submerged adheres rigidly to all of the spec script rules laid out on Scriptshadow – it is a low-budget, contained thriller with a marketable concept, set in a unique location, featuring a proactive protagonist who must conquer a potentially fatal flaw to succeed. And it all happens in a reader-friendly 94 pages!”
Writer: Dan Hall
Details: 93 pages
You know, it’s funny that this came a day after my Breaking Bad article, because just like Dan promised, there’s a whole lot of GSU in this script. When the plane crashes, it gives us a problem that leads to a goal (get out of the plane and find safety), stakes (death), and urgency (the plane is taking on water, leaving them with less and less time to survive). There are plenty of obstacles along the way (asthma attacks, major injuries, sharks), and there’s a bit of conflict as well (mainly from douchebag brother-in-law Vinnie). It’s set up, structurally, almost exactly like yesterday’s Breaking Bad episode. So it’s a perfect script to compare and see how it holds up.
3 years from 30, Alice Shaw is a first year resident at a hospital trying to make it in the E.R. unit. Problem is, she always chokes. The intensity of the situation always gets to her and if she doesn’t have a superior to help, she’s very likely to hurt someone, or worse, kill them. For this reason, she’s told by her superiors that she may want to look for a more laid back doctor gig. This upsets her to no end. All Alice has ever wanted to be was an E.R. doctor.
Easing some of this pain is the fact that Alice is getting married to Matt, who, if you did a girlie checklist of everything you’ve ever wanted in a man, would meet all the boxes. So Alice’s life isn’t so terrible after all. With the wedding being out of town that weekend, Alice, Matt, Matt’s step-brother, Vinnie (a loudmouth asshole), Vinnie’s friend (brother?) Tavon, and Tavon’s secretly pregnant girlfriend Brooke, hop on a flight together to get to the festivities.
In a harrowing (and detailed) series of events, a fire erupts in the cockpit and the plane crashes into the ocean. The plane sinks into the water until it hits an unstable reef, and since our five protagonists were the only ones in the back (due to a previously set-up plot point), they’re the only passengers to survive, along with Columbian stewardess, Gabriela.
What follows is pure unadulterated survival. The backside of the plane contains a fairly large air pocket that, for now, allows them some time to formulate a plan. But soon Brooke’s having an asthma attack and since her inhaler is in the cargo hold, the team has to start splitting up. Things, of course, go wrong (when swimming into a submerged plane, try not to get trapped by a food cart), people start getting injured (and even die), and they realize if they don’t figure out something soon, they’re blowfish food.
Despite being in the middle of nowhere, they decide their best bet is to get up to the surface and signal for help. But that plan gets tricky when some leftover sharks from Sharknado come sniffing around. I have seen where this kind of thing ends up and it’s never good. With her future husband badly injured and the other friends desperately in need of direction, it looks like Alice is going to have to overcome that performance anxiety and figure a way out of this mess.
So here’s the thing. Really snappy script. Really crisp writing. Great structure. Active protagonist. Dan promotes all of these things in his pitch and, thankfully, he didn’t lie. And there are some miscellaneous gold stars to be given as well. The plane crash, in particular, was not only harrowing, but well-researched! Usually when I see a no-apologies Thriller, authenticity isn’t a priority. You might get a writer who doesn’t know the difference between a cockpit and a pit stop and decides to guess based on his previous movie experiences. Here, the pilots are going through a checklist, they’re reacting to the fire in a believable way. Their check-backs to the control tower are believable. That kept my disbelief suspended.
However, these days, I’m always reading a script with my producing hat on. And it’s a really different way to look at a script compared to an impartial internet blogger. Impartial Internet Blogger is looking more at the writing. Producer is asking, “Can this be a movie? Will people come to see it? Does it need to be developed a lot? If so, is it a good enough idea to put in all that time and effort for?” And when I look at Submerged, I say… almost.
I have two big problems. First, the characters are all really thin. And I battle with this all the time. I know thrillers aren’t supposed to have tons of character development. But I still have to feel a closeness and/or a connectivity to them ON SOME LEVEL so that I care about them. The GSU can be the greatest in the world, but if I don’t care about the people WITHIN the GSU, it doesn’t matter. And if I don’t EVEN KNOW the people in the GSU, that’s even worse! Yesterday’s Breaking Bad episode had an advantage of course (20 episodes to develop their characters), so we automatically cared about those guys. But that’s the big difference between why that episode was awesome and this script is just pretty good. Strong characters.
I also thought the stuff in the plane after the crash was pretty generic. An asthma attack? We’ve seen that so many times. And it takes up a good 12-14 pages! And from then on, everything in that section was pretty standard. Nothing that unique or memorable happened. It was all garden-variety “injury” and “plane-shifting” stuff. And it really brings us back to the characters. When your story slows down and it’s ONLY about your characters, they HAVE to be well-developed and deep and interesting enough for the limelight. Because they are now the only things holding up your scenes.
That’s not to say Dan wasn’t putting in the effort. April, for example, had this flaw that she broke down under pressure. But truth be told, that’s a really generic flaw. And it doesn’t really get into who she is as a person. It’s more about the surface-level issue of saving people, which is pretty thin. If her flaw was that she was afraid of commitment, for example, and this impending marriage was making her nervous, then this journey could’ve been more about her realizing how great Matt is. It would’ve been more about who she was on the inside, which is always more interesting.
As for the rest of the characters, I can’t tell you anything about them except that Vinnie was an asshole and Brooke was pregnant. I didn’t know anything about Matt. I didn’t know anything about Gabriela. I didn’t know anything about Tavon. Even Vinnie is only barely a character. He’s an asshole. But why? Because that causes conflict? Not good enough.
One way to solve this problem is to do something interesting with the relationships. Once you create an interesting dynamic between people, their dialogue is more likely to reveal parts of their lives, which in turn develops the characters. What if, for example, April used to be with Vinnie? And three years ago, she left him for Matt? Now that motivation we wanted for Vinnie being such an asshole? It’s right there. This guy stole his girl. Now we’re bringing up the past. Now we’re generating conflict both on top of and underneath the surface. And now, in those slower moments, you have something for your characters to actually hash out. It’s not JUST about hitting the plot beats.
Now where Submerged threw me was when the sharks showed up. Because up until that point, I kept thinking, “This is too thin.” “This is too thin.” “Focusing the whole story on trying to get out of the fuselage isn’t big enough for a feature film.” But then a little past the half-way point, they get to the surface, sharks start swimming around, and it almost becomes a different movie. It’s now a shark film. The whole time in the plane I felt like it needed that extra element, and then when I got it, I thought, “Wait, isn’t it too late for this?” Maybe we need to start teasing the sharks earlier, I’m not sure. But I admit, the shark angle definitely makes this more marketable. The producer side of me started to have doubts about my initial reaction.
But ultimately, my uncertainty about the half-plane/half-shark structure and the really thin character development would make this a no-go for me on the producer end. However, this is the kind of thing that one of these straight-to-video productions companies might love. And I know that’s not the dream six-figure spec sale scenario, but it’s something I’d consider if I were Dan. It might lead to enough money to spend more time writing, which means getting better faster, which means finally getting that big splashy sale.
Script link: script link taken down…
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Structure is your left brain. Character development is your right brain. You will be better at one than the other. Know which one is your weakness, PRACTICE IT, and get better. Because only being good at one side (like Submerged) leaves readers feeling gypped. Readers are greedy people. They want BOTH sides. If I were Dan, I would spend the next 4 weeks writing a character piece. Not for anyone to read, but to practice making a story interesting via character development alone. No big fancy plot! Just interesting characters. That’s how you learn. Then come back and apply those lessons to these characters. Because if you make these guys strong, memorable, and interesting, I can promise you this script will sell.
