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Genre: Action/Horror/Sci-Fi
Premise (from writer): After a mysterious virus ravages Los Angeles, a father and daughter trapped in the evacuated city attempt to escape from a horde of infected canines.
Why You Should Read (from writer): I moved to Los Angeles to pursue acting and creative writing. This is my attempt at a feature-length screenplay. The premise is World War Z meets Cujo. Here’s a tagline for the movie: “Welcome to the dog days of summer.”
Writer: Jesse Zamorano
Details: 110 pages
Virulence came at us about a month ago and just barely lost out to eventual winner, Endwar. But the great thing about Scriptshadow is that, due to my laziness, you can ALWAYS MAKE A COMEBACK!
You never know when I’m going to be too tired to look for Amateur Offerings on a Saturday morning and have to dig back into previous posts to find a script to review. Jesse Zamorano caught the lucky stick square in his jaws. And now it’s time to see if this leash-loving scribe-barker can take advantage of it.
Virulence definitely has a “movie” premise. People trying to make it out of an infected city is a time-tested idea. And Jesse was smart enough to add a twist. Instead of the typical zombie takeover approach, he made the enemy man’s best friend.
Our best friend – aka our protagonist – is Ethan Walker. Ethan charges into L.A. two weeks after a viral outbreak that’s sent every dog in the city on a human meat mission. These dogs are no longer our best friends. To be honest, I wouldn’t even call them acquaintances.
Anyway, the city is nearly evacuated when Ethan comes looking for his ex-wife and daughter. The good news is his ex-wife is dead. Ha ha. I kid. But no, she is. His 15 year-old daughter, Sam, however, has managed to survive.
So Ethan and Sam set their sites on the last of the evacuation boats, which are heading out of Santa Monica soon. That’s an ultra-touristy beach town here in LA that has, like, zero parking. Just a warning if you ever come here.
On their way, they bump into some military jag-offs who tell them that the beach is no longer taking survivors. They have to go back into the city to Staples Center, which is acting as a de facto Los Angeles Bed & Breakfast. Just as they’re about to head back, a group of “Reapers,” a band of criminals who’ve basically taken advantage of a deserted LA, gun down the military squad.
Ethan and Sam barely escape and drive to Staples Center, where along the way they pick up a group of six teenage girls who they nickname the Girl Scouts, and then a group of three African-American boys who call themselves the “BPR” (the Black Panther Revival).
When it becomes clear that the military is not coming to save them unless the Lakers decide to play, they come up with a plan to use a tunnel underneath LA to drive to the ocean, where they figure their chances are a lot better than they are here. Spoiler alert. They’re wrong!
Virulence has a kick-ass opening scene where a diseased dog eats a baby. I mean kudos to a writer who’s not afraid to go there. I was hooked immediately.
Unfortunately, after that scene, some choices started creeping in that made me say, “This feels like a beginner writer.” I’m sure that’s of interest to you guys. What are the tip-offs that give you away as a neophyte in the craft of screenwriting?
Well, the first tip-off was the Reapers. Now the thing is, if this scenario happened in real life, there would definitely be criminals taking advantage of it. But the Reapers were a more stylized villain that was inconsistent with the realistic tone established at the beginning of the script.
Also, they go against the premise. The star villains here are supposed to be the dogs. That’s the concept you promised us. To deviate from that so early and create this new band of uglies who were even worse – that didn’t feel right. And it basically made this The Purge: Anarchy. Which isn’t what we came to read. We came to read about killer dogs.
The thing I find with new writers – especially writers tackling genre material – is that they like to throw anything in the script that sounds cool, regardless of whether it fits in nicely with the rest of the story. That, to me, is what the Reapers felt like.
Then there was the Black Panther Revival stuff. Why are we bringing up racism in this story? It was so thematically random, that it brought you right out of the script. So the second lesson here would be to know your concept, know your theme, and stay on-point with both.
If you’re writing a straight-forward romantic comedy, don’t throw a ghost subplot in on page 60. If you’re writing a heavy drama about alcoholism, don’t throw in a song-and-dance number on page 75. And if you’re writing a movie about killer dogs, don’t include a racism subplot.
Finally, we have these girl scout characters. First of all, I don’t think these characters were necessary. They were a totally a random addition. To add insult to injury, despite meeting them on page 50, we don’t get formally introduced to them until page 86! Not giving characters proper introductions when they’re introduced is a flashing neon sign for “beginner screenwriter.”
I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but I think the key to getting this script right is SIMPLIFYING EVERYTHING. Get rid of the girl scouts, the Black Panthers, the Reapers. Unless you want this to take place 2 years in the future, where the idea of a unique mythology is easier to grasp. But the dogs took over Los Angeles just TWO WEEKS AGO. There’d still be a level of normalcy to this world.
Go back to the core of your story: A father and his daughter trying to escape a city full of killer dogs. All your story choices should stem from that.
That’s the thing that drives me crazy about aspiring screenwriters is they’re always trying to cram a million things into their script when the better choice is almost always to stay minimalistic. Keep it simple. That doesn’t mean you can’t bring in other characters. But bring in characters that feel honest and realistic.
Strip this down, focus on the broken relationship between a father and his daughter, and you might have something. And look, Jesse, I’m talking to you now. Nobody else. You’re a good writer. You have a very visual crisp style that’s honestly a joy to read. But you need to make better story choices. Good luck!
Script link: Virulence
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: In monster-in-a-box movies (movies where your protagonists are stuck in an enclosed area with a monster or monsters chasing them), the bigger the box is, the more threatening/dangerous/terrifying the monster needs to be. In a small house, the “monster” can be one man with a knife. But if the box is an entire city, with millions of places to run and to hide, a single man with a knife is about as scary as a Jack Terrier puppy. The threat must grow exponentially with the amount of space. I’m not sure I was ever that afraid of these dogs. I kept saying to myself, “Can’t you just get in a car and drive east?” There are a BILLION streets in LA. And they all seemed to be empty here. So I didn’t understand what was so difficult for these characters. I needed evidence that these dogs were so terrifying, that walking just a couple of blocks in the city was the equivalent of death. I needed to be more afraid.
