Genre: Horror
Premise: A group of workers at an Ikea-like store find themselves lost within its maze-like interior after a late-night seance goes wrong.
About: Horrorstor was published in 2013. New Republic Pictures optioned the book to turn it into a movie in 2020. Before that, it was conceived as a TV series, with screenwriting royalty Charlie Kaufman set to adapt. The heat off the Horrorstor sale led to writer Grady Hendrix’s latest novel,The Southern Book Clubs Guide to Slaying Vampires, selling to Amazon in a ten buyer bidding war.
Writer: Grady Hendrix
Details: about 250 pages

I had my eyes on this one ever since it sold.

It’s a genius idea. Placing a horror film in an Ikea store!? Story perfection.

Why?

Because I like fresh angles into old genres. I’d never seen this combo before. And it gets more clever the more you think about it. I remember when I used to go to Ikea (back when everybody was going) and thinking, “This place is kind of like Hell.” It’s this never-ending maze that sucks you in and forces you to buy a lot of things you don’t need.

I was curious to see what the author would do with it. Let’s find out.

24 year old Amy works at Orsk, an Ikea knock-off that somehow has even lower prices than the infamous Swedish furniture store. Amy has had a tough life. She grew up in a trailer. Her mother has had numerous boyfriends. Without higher education, she’s been stuck in a cycle of barely-above-minimum-wage jobs. Orsk is the culmination of that cycle.

But even though she hates her job, she needs it. Which is why she’s freaking out on this particular morning. Word on the street is that firings are coming. And Amy is the most fireable employee there. She shows up one minute before work and leaves the second the clock strikes 5. She is the epitome of a worker who only thinks about herself.

So when she’s called in to see her boss, Basil, she’s surprised to see Ruth Anne waiting outside his office. 42 year old Ruth Anne is the hardest worker there. She can’t possibly be getting fired as well? Turns out her instincts are correct. Company man Basil tells them he’s not firing them. He needs them for a special top secret job.

Someone is sneaking into the store after hours and smearing their feces on the furniture. He needs Amy and Ruth Anne to help him monitor the building that night. Amy agrees only because Basil promises to give her a transfer to another better Orsk store in the city. So away they go.

Amy and Ruth Anne think they find the culprits but it turns out to be co-workers Matt and Trinity, who have secretly been hooking up after hours. Tonight, Trinity is leading the two on a ghost hunt, complete with a running camera. Her dream is to get a real ghost on video so she can start her own ghost-hunting show (“Ghost Bomb”). Matt, meanwhile, is clearly going along with it to get laid.

Matt and Trinity join Amy and Ruth Anne, eventually finding the real culprit, a guy named Carl. Carl is homeless and has been sneaking in here at night to sleep. But Carl swears he’s not smearing any bodily functions on the furniture. Trinity, who’s pissed off that Carl isn’t a ghost, implores everyone to join her in a seance, since seance scenes always do well in these ghost hunting shows.

At first, the seance is fun, until Carl takes on the persona of someone named “Josiah.” Josiah informs all of them that they’re dead meat. And he’s very convincing, speaking in a different voice and everything. It’s enough to get them to stop the seance. But the damage has already been done. When they try to get back to the main showroom, they keep going in circles for some reason. That’s when they realize that Orsk is no longer a fun store. It’s a giant maze and there’s no way out.

Except that somehow, Amy does find a way out. She gets to her car in the parking lot and is ready to get the hell out of there. But something tugs at her. She’s been selfish her entire adult life. Does she really want to leave her co-workers here to die? Or should she go back into this panopticon and get them out of there?

Horrorstor is, basically, a screenplay. It’s written like one so it can be treated like one for the sake of today’s analysis.

I want to bring particular attention to how the story starts. A lot of writers know they need to start their screenplays with something happening in order to grab the reader. But they erroneously believe that “something happening” means something big, such as a car chase or someone getting murdered or an exciting flash-forward.

That’s not true.

With a little knowledge, you can use more restrained story mechanisms to “make things happen” early on and pull the reader in as a result.

For example, Amy shows up to work at Orsk. For the sake of argument, I want you to imagine you’re writing this movie. You’re bringing your main character to work in the morning. How are you going to write these opening scenes to pull the reader in?

I’ll tell you what bad writers will do. They’ll show the beginnings of the protagonist’s day. They’ll show them get to work. They’ll show them talking with their co-workers. They’ll show them prepping for opening. They’ll show them dealing with the first customers.

I can see how, in one’s head, that would make sense. You’re setting up the main character and the main location. So you are achieving something.

But, what you aren’t doing is giving the reader a reason to keep reading. What’s making me want to turn the page here? To see my main character at work? Why would that be interesting? Why would I want to see someone at work? I see people at work every day of my life. Why would you think that showing more people at work would capture my interest?

Here’s what author Grady Hendrix did instead. He zoomed in on the fact that firings are coming and our main character is, likely, first on the chopping block. Not only that. But he establishes that Amy *cannot* lose this job. She’s about to be kicked out of her place by her roommates for being late on her end of the rent again.

Do you see the difference in terms of storytelling here? This isn’t just someone showing up to work. This is someone trying to avoid getting fired. Now I have a reason to turn the page. I have to see if she’s going to get fired or not! Storytelling can be as simple as that. You put out a carrot. You stack some stakes on top of that carrot. And people will keep reading. As soon as you get to the carrot, introduce another carrot. And so on and so forth.

But Horrorstor runs into some problems once it moves into its horror storyline. I don’t like when story points emerge accidentally. I like them to feel planned. Carl the Homeless Guy shows up. Turns out he’s just a normal dude. This puts the plot on ice for a chapter. We’re not sure why we need to keep reading other than the author is still typing words.

And then Trinity says, “Let’s do a seance!” It sort of makes sense in that she needs footage for her ghost-hunting show. But it’s a lazy development that comes out of nowhere. And when Carl takes on this Josiah personality, it’s too convenient of a plot beat. Seconds ago Carl was a dead story thread. Now he just happens to channel this evil entity who will power the rest of the narrative?

To be clear, Josiah was set up beforehand. He’s the warden of an old prison back in the 1800s which used to reside on the land Orsk is built on. But it still felt entirely convenient that this homeless dude happens to channel this guy during a seance that someone came up with five minutes ago as a spur of the moment idea that seemed to spring from the fact that the story had lost its plot.

But then the story rebounds when it focuses on them getting lost in Orsk due to the fact that it was building on the clever idea that people get lost in Ikea all the time and the only way out is to go through every single entire room in the building to ensure that you purchase as many things as possible. It was reminiscent of the kind of social commentary you saw in George A. Romero’s, Dawn of the Dead, with the zombies crawling back into the malls so they could consume consume consume.

So whenever our heroes were trying to find their way out, only to find themselves deeper and deeper within the caverns of the Orsk maze, I liked the book.

I also liked what Hendrix did with Amy’s character. She’s established as this woman who only cares about herself and doesn’t subscribe to the “family” theme Orsk promotes, that everyone who works there should help each other. I always tell you guys that, late in your script, your main character should face a choice, preferably one that challenges her primary character flaw.

That’s what we get from Amy. She’s in the parking lot. She’s free and clear to go. But then she realizes that, if she leaves, these people may die. Does she stick with her selfish approach to life and save her own ass? Or does she help the others?
Why hasn’t this movie been made yet?

It’s a challenging sell! Terrifier 3 is doing well because of how unapologetically it leans into the horror genre. “Scary clown” is the logline. That’s all it needs to be. Setting a horror film in an environment like an Ikea doesn’t come anywhere close to the marketability of a scary clown. It’s a risk. True, it’s a risk that, if it pays off, it looks amazing. But it’s still a risk.

What sucks is that Ikea is no longer a pop culture store like it used to be. So any movie set in one is going to feel dated.

But, you never know. I still think it’s a fun idea.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Cerebral Horror is a great screenplay “feature” but it should never be the main attraction. The reason this sold is because of the cerebral nature of the concept. People in Hollywood love that stuff. But audiences don’t care about that as much, especially when it comes to the horror genre. Imagining Ikea as Hell is fun. But it’s not as scary as a crazy clown killing people. So make sure if you come up with a cerebral horror idea, it still has something genuinely scary in it.

We also take a mini-mish-mash-monday look at this weekend’s box office!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: A woman escapes a brutal attack during an impromptu late-night date and races into the countryside with her attacker hot in pursuit.
About: This is writer-director JT Mollner’s second feature film. Before that, he had written and directed four short films over five years. The film took over Fantastic Fest in 2023, landed a theatrical release with Miramax, and is just starting to come down to affordability on streaming. Oddly enough, actor Giovanni Ribisi is the cinematographer on the film.
Writer: JT Mollner
Details: 97 minutes

Joker 2??? There’s something otherworldly going on here. I don’t know what it is. I’ve never seen anything like it before. But a billion dollar movie whose sequel fell 80% at the box office is unprecedented. Not even The Marvels did that poorly.

And, the thing is, we all knew why The Marvels didn’t live up to expectations. The original Captain Marvel was sandwiched between two of the biggest movies of all time, Infinity War and Endgame. Its box office was guaranteed.

A major culprit in the failure of Joker 2 has to be the marketing. I was walking into the movie at the Westfield Mall here in Los Angeles and I bumped into someone I knew. She asked me what movie I was seeing and I said Joker 2. She was shocked. “Wait. That’s out??” She said. She had no idea. Not only that. She was a huge fan of the first film.

If your marketing isn’t able to let fans of the first movie know when your sequel is coming out, that’s a major failure on your part.

As for the movie that’s beating it this weekend, Terrifier 3, I don’t know whether to celebrate or castrate this film. It looks like it was put together by a couple of college buddies with 20 bucks and a clown costume they found in their parents’ basement. I’ve always encouraged the “make your movie any way possible” approach so, on the one hand, that’s awesome. But, as a movie, it looks less baked than the sweet potato I threw in the oven for 15 minutes last night. Terrifier 3’s success makes me want to conclude that scary clowns are box office magic but the tanking of Joker 2 says otherwise.

I will say that Todd Phillps’ refusal to screen his movie likely did it in. Whenever you’re making a complicated risk-taking movie like Joker 2, feedback is invaluable. He could’ve gotten important notes that told him what was and wasn’t working and recut it. But he said, nope, this is my vision for better or worse.

There’s a screenwriting lesson to take away from this. Always get feedback! If someone as successful as Todd Phillips can be wrong about creative choices, I got news for you: YOU CAN BE WRONG TOO. There’s nothing wrong with finding out what your script’s blind spots are.

Okay, let’s move on to Strange Darling.

Strange Darling is a perfect movie to review on Scriptshadow because it shows that it’s possible to get that coveted theatrical release despite having an indie-sized budget.

The script does several great things on the screenwriting side that all of us can learn from. Before I get into what those were, let’s summarize the plot, since I know a lot of you didn’t see the film.  You should know that the movie is, in itself, a spoiler.  So read at your own risk.

The script starts off with a crazed serial killer dude in a truck, chasing down a battered woman in a car on a two-lane road in the middle of nowhere. The guy finally screeches to a stop, gets up on the back of his truck, aims a rifle, and shoots out one of her tires, resulting in her crashing.

The crazed dude then chases her into the forest. She finds an odd older couple (they do Scott Baio puzzles together) living on a farm. They let her in. And we cut back to last night. We realize we’re on a date with the guy and the girl. They just met. She seems to be into some weird aggressive sex stuff. She asks if he’s down. And away they go to the motel.

Back to the present, but a little later on. The crazed guy is now in the house, gun out, hunting this woman down, looking in every nook and cranny of the home, shooting anything that looks even remotely suspicious. Cut back to the past, later in the date, and now the girl is asking the guy to do all sorts of violent sexual things to her. It’s getting weird. She’s getting suspicious.

Cut to the present again and now we see that the farm owner is dead. And this is when we realize we’ve been duped. The guy isn’t the bad dude. The girl is. She’s a serial killer. And when we cut back to the past, we see that he only barely survived her attack. She had to run and he’s been chasing her all day. This all culminates in a wild unexpected ending where you genuinely have no idea how things will conclude.

This was a really exciting movie. It has that 90s indie “can do” filmmaking spirit to it. I think they even shot it on film, giving it a weathered gritty look. The script is very clever in the way that it feels big (there’s a lot of chasing in this movie) but, in order to keep the budget lean, it stealthily inserts these long close-up centered dialogue scenes. It really is a perfect exercise in finding that balance.

Let’s talk more about that screenwriting because I think a lot of people continue to believe that screenwriting is 90% about dialogue. Dialogue is important, don’t get me wrong. I wrote an entire book on it. But the dialogue is the weakest part of this movie. Yet it didn’t matter. Because the storytelling was so strong.

So that’s your first lesson. Focus on writing a great story. Make sure it has a strong plot engine, that the characters are interesting, that the developments are exciting. Throw in a couple of twists to keep the reader off-balance. If you do that well, you don’t need to be a great dialogue writer. As this film proves.

The big screenwriting lesson to come out of this movie, though, is that you can elevate a basic story by playing with time. These are always the movies that tend to get screenwriters mentioned in the reviews.

Think about it. If this was just about a guy chasing a girl, the screenwriter gets zero credit. But because of the out-of-sequence nature of the script, you leave this movie thinking about the script. That puts you in a powerful place as a screenwriter since screenwriters usually get the blame when a movie is bad and never get the credit when it’s good.

The other big tip here is a bit controversial. So, if you’re easily triggered, step away. The note is: Take advantage of society’s expectations. Once society has a locked-in belief, you can control them with your storytelling. Strange Darling does an exceptional job at this.

Society, at the moment, is partial to the ‘toxic masculinity’ narrative. Therefore, if a violent event has occurred between a man and a woman, what are 99% of people going to assume? They’re going to assume that the violence is of the man’s doing. Writer-director JT Mollner knows you will assume that and uses that expectation against you.

When we realize that it’s actually the girl who is the serial killer, our entire world flips upside down. We did not think that was possible. It’s a great midpoint twist that not only supercharges the movie, but ensures you will not forget the movie anytime soon.

I always like to say that using an audience’s expectations against them does double-duty. It doesn’t just set up the great twist where you reveal things are the exact opposite of what they assumed. But it sets a storytelling precedent whereby the viewer can no longer assume what’s going to happen. Anything that unfolds after that revelatory moment is a mystery because once the reader knows you can do that to them, they know you can do it again. Indeed, the movie ends on a note we weren’t expecting.

If you’re missing those gritty indie movies from the 90s, this movie will be your jam, and bread, and butter, and maple syrup. It’s that good!

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I always tell writers to think about marketing in regards to the script concepts they choose. But Mollner disagrees. Here is his take on the topic from The Hollywood Reporter: “I actually disagree. If I had been thinking about how to market this movie while I was writing it, I may not have written it. It’s so difficult as an artist to discipline yourself to sit down and write and complete a screenplay. I’m compelled to do it and I have to do it, but it never stops being a grind. The only way I’m able to get through that process is to have it be something that totally inspires me, artistically, or somebody hires me to adapt a novel. It then becomes fun because it’s a high level of work. But when writing something original, it’s got to really get me excited. I’ve got to love the idea, and it’s got to gestate in my brain and in my heart for a good period of time before I finally have to write it.”

I’m still offering October screenplay and pilot consultation deals.  $100 off my full rate.  Plus an extra $50 off if it’s a horror-related story.  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com if you’re interested!

And I tell you the screenwriting secret that got the writer the job.

This past week, I stumbled upon an interview between Star Wars Theory and Stuart Beattie, the original screenwriter of the Obi-Wan movie. Beattie is best known for penning the Michael Mann Tom Cruise collaboration, Collateral. He was also involved in several of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies. Beattie came on to Theory’s popular Youtube channel to discuss his original vision for an Obi-Wan movie before the feature was canceled (and later resuscitated to become a TV show).

Let me take you back to a time when The Force Awakens came out and made 2 billion dollars. When Rogue One, which was just some random Star Wars special effects’ dude’s idea, made another billion dollars. Anything that Star Wars touched turned into an Erewhon Hailey Bieber smoothie – pricey but oh so sugary good. Things were so optimistic inside the company at the time, they were knee-deep into development on a Jabba The Hutt movie. Guillermo Del Toro even wrote the thing! As Jabba would say: “Tu babba gu janna.”

So of course – OF COURSE – back in 2017 they were going to make an Obi-Wan movie. Obi-Wan was the most popular thing to come out of the prequels and fans wanted more. But then the one-two punch of Last Jedi and Solo hit and, in the time it takes for Joker 2 to move from theaters to streaming, hope crumbled. Unicorns turned into rancors.

But then, a lifeline! The Mandalorian premiered on Disney Plus and everything was delicious once more. Baby Yoda was the juiciest lifeline in the Mouse House and we all got to drink from his backwards yodeling cup.

Star Wars had always been thought of as a big-screen franchise but now the company could see all these new avenues appearing on the small screen. Which meant that Obi-Wan was CPR’d back to life. But, with new mediums come new writers. So, Beattie was cast aside and most of what he wrote was tossed in the Death Star trash compactor. Instead, we got Leia. As a baby. And a chase scene that brought back memories of the Star Wars Christmas Special.

Now, due to this interview with Beattie, we finally know what that Obi-Wan movie was going to look like. Presumably, it would’ve been light years better than the uneven low-budget TV show that came and went faster than a pod race practice lap.

To make a long story short, the bulk of Beattie’s movie focuses on two things. One, Obi-Wan has lost his connection to the Force and must find it again. And two, an excursion to a transport station – a sort of “airport” in the middle of the galaxy – where aliens from all walks of life switch spaceships before they head off to their final destination. Obi-Wan meets some Force-Adjacent aliens there and they help him reconnect with the Force so he can take on Vader in the third act, who is getting close to finding his young son, Luke Skywalker.

Now, I don’t know about you. But that doesn’t sound very exciting to me. I mean, props to Beattie for coming up with a place that nobody else in Star Wars has come up with before in this transport station. But it’s not exactly… The Death Star. It’s a place of annoyance. Frustration. Waiting. Are those words I associate with Star Wars? Well, these days I guess they are. But you know what I mean. Annoyance isn’t able to compete with… A TERRIFYING SPACE STATION THAT CAN DESTROY ENTIRE PLANETS! On the fear factor hierarchy that’s a bit above, “Oops, I missed my space flight. I’ll have to rebook it for the 9pm.”

Why am I bringing all this up?

Because when you become a professional screenwriter, your primary job will be pitching your take on stories that other people own. You may not ever get a chance to pitch a Star Wars movie. But you could have to pitch a Voltron movie, a Gremlins reboot, an It Ends with Us sequel that no longer has the male lead since the two main stars don’t get along anymore, a more accessible version of the trippy “Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” by literary genius, Haruki Murakami.

The better you are at finding fresh exciting story angles, the more jobs you’ll get.

But, every once in a while, you’ll be tasked with an impossible pitch – something that doesn’t have any viable stories left. Let’s be real here.  NOTHING HAPPENED during Obi-Wan’s time on Tatooine between Episodes 3 and 4. He didn’t go on any more adventures. And even if he did, how could those adventures possibly be as interesting as what happened in A New Hope, or what happened back in the prequels?

A movie should always represent the most important moment in the protagonist’s life. Even if you could convince yourself that Obi-Wan still had adventures during his time on Tatooine, what are we talking here? The 7th most interesting adventure he’s been on? The 8th? Heck, I’d even watch a movie where Obi-Wan and Anakin got trapped in that nest of Gundarks we heard about in Episode 2 over missing a series of flights on a transport station.

But then what do you do as a screenwriter? Do you just not show up to the pitch meeting? Do you call Kathleen Kennedy and say, “Hey Kathleen, I’ve loved Star Wars my whole life and it’s been a dream of mine to write a Star Wars movie but, you know what? There aren’t any Obi-Wan stories left to tell here. My advice is you scrap the project.”

Of course not. You give it the old college try.

And Beattie did the number one thing I believe writers should do in a pitch meeting like this. Don’t focus on the plot. I mean, DO focus on the plot. But not as the heart of the pitch. Instead: Figure out the CHARACTER ANGLE and pitch that first! Because, beyond this world where you’re trying to get a movie made, there’s a more immediate goal, which is to WIN THE WRITING JOB. I have no doubt that Beattie won the job because he came in there and pitched CHARACTER over STORY.

He said: “What if Obi-Wan has lost his connection to the Force? And the movie is about getting it back.”

NO QUESTION IN MY MIND that that’s what won him the job. Cause everyone else who came in probably pitched some iteration of Obi-Wan and Vader having some secret battle. They probably pitched many expensive Star Wars set-pieces. But that stuff gets boring in a pitch. You want to connect with the person in front of you on an emotional level. If you can do that, they’ll then see all these other things (fight with Vader, cool set pieces) through that lens. And that’s a way more powerful lens.

Cause the truth is, this movie wouldn’t have been any better than the TV show. You cannot build a story out of a character’s 8th most important adventure in their life. You just can’t. So it’s a losing proposition before you even get started.

BUT!

As far as winning the job? That can certainly be achieved with this character-driven approach.

By the way, you can prepare yourself for this future of pitching production companies by practicing pitching your own properties right now. Get good at that. Tell people about your ideas and, if you’re not getting the responses you want, make changes to your pitch and try other things until you can see them responding positively to you.  Move things around.  Focus more on character.  Get rid of the parts that people looked bored during.

But for crying out loud – pick ideas that highlight the most important adventure that your character has ever been on. Otherwise, it’s always going to feel like we’re watching something second-rate.

If you’re looking for notes on your latest screenplay or pilot, I will give the first THREE writers who contact me 40% off my full rate.  So that would be $299 for a consultation.  I will take another $50 Halloween discount off if it’s a horror script!  E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com right now to sign up!

You know what they say.  Mole people, mole problems.

Genre: Horror-Thriller
Premise: When his homeless brother is violently slaughtered by a mysterious killer, a plumber looks into his murder and learns that it’s connected to a group of people who live deep underground.
About: Today we have a writer with very few credits. But the credits he does have are of high quality. He has written five episodes of titan TV series, Succession. This script got him onto the bottom end of the Black List.
Writer: Nathan Elston
Details: 111 pages

Hey!

It’s Halloween Month.

You know what that means, right?

Horror scripts and CANDY.

I went to Salt & Straw today. For those who don’t know, this is a bougie ice cream spot here in LA. They let you sample all of the flavors. So I asked them for their best Halloween flavor. They gave me something called The Great Candycopia.

There have only been seven times in my experience here on earth where I transcended this plane and existed inside another higher one – a place so heavenly, the air tasted like In and Out double-doubles. The Great Candycopia brought me there for an eighth time. And I will always remember that experience for what it taught me:  The meaning of life.

Now that that’s taken care of, it’s time for me to bring you to another plane – that being a review of Molepeoplemoleproblems.

28 year old Jack lives in New York. He’s barely making ends meet as an assistant plumber. We see Jack look the other way when his boss extorts a client by price-gouging her at the end of the job. His boss reminds him afterwards that if he even thinks about complaining, he’s got a hundred guys ready to take his place in a heartbeat.

That night when Jack is home to take care of his dementia-ridden father, he gets a call from NYPD who tells him that his brother, Patrick, is dead. Not only dead. But his eyes have been chopped out! What’s up with that!

Jack goes downtown to take a look. His brother was homeless and the two had a difficult relationship to say the least. But he still wants to know what happened so he heads off to find some friends of Patrick’s. Soon he’s following a guy named Edwin down an operational subway tunnel. The two go down several holes until they’re in some deep deep DEEP unused NY tunnel and Edwin shows Jack Patrick’s bedroom.

No sooner does that happen than Edwin is attacked by some crazy subway-dwelling psychopaths who rip his eyes out. They then chase Jack through the depths of these tunnels and Jack stumbles upon some enclosed room where a woman is being held hostage. He tells her he’ll come back for her and manages to escape back to the surface.

But when he tells Edwin’s friend, Jimmy – who’s strangely neutral about his buddy’s demise – about the ordeal, Jimmy says to forget the girl. In fact, get the heck out of New York. These mole people are serious dudes and now that Jack knows where they live, they’re going to come after him. Even up here! Torn by the threat and his promise to the woman, Jack must decide whether he’s going to see this to the end or not.

Here’s the reality about missing people in fiction.

You want to lean into the missing people main traits that create more investment from the reader. Those traits are: WOMEN or CHILDREN.

Most readers (and viewers) aren’t going to care if a man has gone missing or murdered.

There are sub-traits you can utilize that result in more investment. However, there are sub-traits you can utilize that result in less investment as well.

One negative sub-trait, for example, would be homelessness. The average viewer does not care about homeless people. The media pretends they do. But they don’t.

This script is built around a murdered MAN who was HOMELESS.

That’s a negative main trait and a negative sub-trait when it comes to investment. So, already, you’re starting below ground level, no pun intended.

This isn’t a game, guys. The creative choices you make when building your story have benefits and they have consequences. The more weak creative choices you make, the less invested the reader will be. The more strong creative choices you make, the more invested they’ll be.

We saw this at the beginning of the week with Joker 2. A few key creative choices that weren’t good (a so-so love story, a court case with unclear stakes, several subplots that should’ve been cut) doomed the movie.

But when you’re talking about investigative storylines that are built around murder or missing persons, the data is clear. You want women or children to be the ones murdered or missing. And the more positive sub-traits you can pile onto those victims, the better.

To the writer’s credit, after the brother’s body is discovered, he introduces an imprisoned female character. Which happens fairly early in the script – 38 pages in. This makes us much more likely to care. However, we know nothing about this woman character. She’s just a random person. So she has no sub-traits that are going to increase our investment.

Luckily, the script also has this mystery at its center. Who are these mole people and why do they want to rip peoples’ eyes out and murder them? That did make me kind of curious, which helped keep those pages turning.

But, at the same time, I never fully cared about what was going on and part of that was because I’ve been reading scripts about scary people living in the abandoned New York subway system for over a decade. Not a ton of them. But probably between 7-10 scripts. And every one struggles to feel big enough. They all feel like “almost movies.” The stakes never seem high enough. The threats never seem scary enough. The plots never have satisfying enough reveals.

I’ve thought a lot about why that is and I’m still not sure. But part of it is that these people are underground and so, as long as you stay above ground… YOU’RE FINE! Even when one of these guys come up to Jack’s apartment to attack him, it doesn’t feel scary because it’s just a normal guy attacking him. There’s nothing special about him. I don’t know. I wasn’t scared for Jack.

It’s not like, say, It Follows, where you genuinely felt overmatched. Everywhere you went, that evil following entity could be there. I was scared for those people.

By the way, that leads to another horror trope that helps in a movie like this – making the protagonist female. If she’s female, we feel more fear for her. Had that attacker broken into the apartment of Hero Jill as opposed to Hero Jack, I would’ve definitely been more on the edge of my seat.

But Jack?? Jack is 28. He’s strong. Why would I feel fear for this guy? This is why most horror protagonists are female.

To the writer’s credit, the script makes a bold choice at the end. I didn’t see it coming. But it couldn’t erase the issues I detailed above. This script needed MORE. It’s another FINE script. But to be a script that affects people, it needed to be a lot bigger.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: I think a lot of this could’ve been solved by making the initial missing person Jack’s girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend) who is an addict. She went using again. That’s why she was hanging out with the wrong people. That’s how she ended up getting taken to these underground tunnels. Now you’ve got an emotional connection between the protagonist and the missing girl. I still don’t know if we care enough about mole people but it certainly would’ve added more investment to the story.

What I learned 2: If you want to improve the chances of an idea like this selling by as much as 10-fold, make it supernatural. If the things underground were supernatural, this could be a 3000 theater wide release. Keeping it realistic makes it feel too tame. It just never shook the Richter scale.

YES! I’m finally reviewing it!

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: After the humans win the war against the robots, we get a highlight reel of the major moments that led to both the rise and fall of the machines.
About: Robopocalypse is one of the most famous properties ever purchased by Hollywood due to the fact that Steven Spielberg was announced as the director. The book was optioned in 2011. Drew Goddard was hired to adapt. Chris Hemsworth was hired as the male lead with Anne Hathaway in the main female role. The 200 million dollar film was scheduled to be released in 2012 by Disney. But Spielberg delayed it and then, a year later, left the project. The book’s writer, Daniel Wilson, to this day is hoping it makes it back onto some studio’s radar.
Writer: Daniel Wilson
Details: 350 pages

As I look back at Spielberg’s output over the last decade, I keep thinking of how it could’ve changed for the positive if he had directed Robopocalypse. The name alone screamed “GIANT SUMMER MOVIE” and felt like a perfect strike for the best mainstream director of our time.

So when he suddenly abandoned the sure-fire hit to send audiences into 2 hours of cryo sleep with Lincoln, I was disappointed. The funny thing is, I had no clue what the story for Robopocalypse was other than there was going to be a robot apocalypse. But that was the genius of it! It’s one of the great titles in title history, like “Monster-In-Law.” You knew EXACTLY what the movie was about just by hearing the title! It would’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars. Heck, it might STILL make hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I decided to finally read the book and do some detective work (along with some serious speculation) to discover why Spielberg may have left the project. And you know what? I think I figured it out. Before I share that with you, here’s a quick breakdown of the book.

We start out deep in the northern part of Alaska as soldiers dig out some sophisticated computer equipment from a giant hole in the ground. We’re told by soldier Cormac Wallace that the “New War” is over. The humans have defeated the robots. They are recovering the central computer, Archos, that controlled the attack. As a result, they will have all the major recorded events that led up to the war.

The book then is a “curation” of the most important events Cormac found in the hard drive. Everything from official interviews to events that security cameras caught on city streets are all on file. This allows the author, Daniel Wilson, to write a bunch of short stories. It is both the best thing and the worst thing about the book.

These stories include the first robot attack, which takes place in a convenience store where a robot bludgeons an employee to death. Another story follows a group of workers at a factory who play a prank on their weird older boss, kidnapping his love robot and bringing it to work, where it proceeds to attack the older man, biting his face off. We see the night in the city when all the cars – which are all computer controlled now – just start riding up on sidewalks, mowing down as many humans as possible.

My favorite story was when one of the main characters, a congresswoman, is driving her family to her father’s country house to escape the beginning of the war when she gets a call from her father to head to the Indianapolis Speedway instead. She then sees a pickup truck shooting towards her from behind and then it pulls up to the side of her momentarily and we see this woman inside, crying hysterically, banging on the windows for help. The car then shoots forward, steers into the oncoming lane, and plows into another car, each blowing up.

Our rattled mom then does a U-turn to head back to the new destination but meets a roadblock of another crash up ahead. There’s a man from one of the cars lying on the side of the road so she hurries out to see if he’s still alive. He’s dead. And his phone is in his hand. She hears a message from his wife. It says that she needs him to turn around and meet her at the Indianapolis Speedway.

Eventually, the book evolves into a semi-narrative (I say “semi” cause it’s still, essentially, a series of short stories) that follows the resistance and its eventual discovery of Archos’s location. The main regiment that Cormac is a member of teams up with some Native American soldiers and they head to Alaska, where they battle terrain that has been carefully prepped with robot defenses. A lot of people die but, as we already know, the humans win.

Official Concept Art

There’s an obvious freedom that comes from not being tethered to a narrative. You can write any short story you want. This allows you to only write the best of the best stories to come out of the war. The problem is, when you don’t have a narrative that pulls it all together, when you don’t have a main character who is guiding you through it all, the reader starts to dissociate from the story. That’s because every time we, the reader, start a new chapter, we’re starting over.

If I had to guess, I’d say that’s the reason the movie didn’t get made.

The book gives you the concept but it doesn’t give you the narrative. As a result, you can go in any direction you want. You can tell the story from anybody’s point of view. While that seems tempting, you are then moving away from the book since you’re not including all of the short stories. What are you really adapting, then?

I bet that what happened was Drew Goddard did that first draft and it sucked because he had too much choice. He could do anything he wanted, which blinded him from finding the best angle. That draft was sent to Spielberg. He probably realized it was the wrong take. And Spielberg knows that good scripts take time. He ultimately decided not to invest that time. So the project was dropped.

Another problem is that the book starts with the war being over and the humans winning. I understand that they did this with the World War Z book as well but I think it’s a terrible way to go into a story. You have zapped any and all suspense the second you tell us who won the war. Why are we even reading then? It’s an odd storytelling choice that I’ll never understand.

And we saw that, in the script development of World War Z, after trying to utilize the original structure through several writers, they realized it was a stupid idea and decided to tell the story in chronological order instead. Which is what you need to do here. I don’t know if Goddard tried to do that on his first pass or not. But if he didn’t, there’s no doubt that’s the reason the draft sucked.

Just like any short story collection, the book works when the short story is good and doesn’t work when the short story is bad. Luckily, there are a lot more good stories than bad here.

There’s a terrifying plane scene where the onboard computers link two planes up to collide and the pilots have to desperately figure out a way to avoid it. There’s a horror chapter where a little girl’s toy bot becomes evil. There’s a story out in Afghanistan where an American and Afghani soldier must team up to take down a determined psycho robot. Wilson has a good eye for dramatically entertaining scenarios.

The only thing that annoyed me was that Wilson would occasionally cheat. For example, he starts out every chapter saying something like: “This event was recorded by a series of public cameras and the sound was recorded by numerous nearby cell phones.” He would then write the story like this: “John had a lump in his throat the size of the Grand Canyon. He was never good with pressure but now he didn’t have a choice.” How is it that public cameras and recording cellphones know that John had a lump in his throat and was really nervous? That makes no sense.

It’s not a huge thing but if you’re going to create these rules to your story – where you’re pretending that all of this was available due to public recordings – you can’t change those rules in order to write descriptive prose. You have to treat it like it’s just the facts. Unless you want to break the suspension of disbelief.

But look. They should still make this movie! With the fast rise of AI, the subject matter is more relevant than ever. All you need is to get a good director and a good writer to read the book then sit down for an 8-hour brainstorming session where you hash out what the best story angle is. There are a dozen angles that could work. Then you go write the thing. I could have a draft for you in a month if you want.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: My approach to adapting something like this would be to write down all of the scenes in the book that you could imagine would make great movie moments, the kind of images or scenarios that you would see in a trailer. For example, that scene of the woman trapped in her truck banging on the windows crying to get out as it passes our protagonist’s car – that’s a trailer moment right there. It totally sells the movie. Come up with as many of those as possible and then see if there’s a version of the story where you can include them all. If you can’t find one, then find one that includes MOST of them. If you still can’t find one, find the idea that incorporates as many of them as possible. Cause those moments are your film-sellers. So that’s what you want to build your story around.