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Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise (from writer): When a desperate man drags his depressed wife and step-daughter to rural Germany for family support; what he discovers instead are dark cult roots, an isolated hippy haven, and the terrifying realization that they may not be free to leave alive.
Why You Should Read (from writer): My name is Alex Ross, and my screenplay, HEXEN, won the grand prize in the Script Pipeline competition (out of 3,500 scripts) and is also highly rated on the Black List as “top unrepresented horror”. Here’s why I would like the script to be reviewed: I see HEXEN as a fresh take on a very stale and predictable genre. It’s a throwback to the thrillers from the 70’s (Rosemary’s Baby, The Shining, Don’t Look Now), but with a modern, realistic approach. It purposely breaks the tired “rules” of horror storytelling, which audiences have come to expect by now. A main protagonist vanishes half-way through, character’s motives are ambiguous, and the ending is left somewhat open-ended. Say what you will about the script… one thing it’s not, is predictable. However, it has alienated some who are looking for something a little more mainstream, and I’m finding it difficult to find industry pros who can see outside the box, and who are willing to take a chance and get behind it. I need all the help I can get…
Writer: Alex Ross
Details: 97 pages
Swweeeeet. We’ve got a contest winner here! Always fun to see which script beat out thousands of others. No time to waste so let’s get to it!
40-something Julian Nichols never expected his life to turn out this way. He recently got laid off. He and his wife, Anna, have grown so distant, they barely talk anymore. And they’ve got a beautiful young daughter, Jenny, who they’ve got to support with no income.
That’s why we meet them at the airport. The family is headed to Germany, where Anna used to live. She had a tough childhood, growing up in one of those commune-cult situations with a crazy fucking dad who thought mass-suicides were the bee’s knees.
They’ve gotten word that her father is on his deathbed and if they come and show their faces, sign a few documents, that large piece of land he owns could result in a desperately needed slice of the profit pie. Neither of them want to be here, but it’s a necessary evil.
Once they get to the secluded commune-turned-farm, they start meeting the folks that run the place, including Anna’s brothers, alpha-male Christian and mentally disturbed Thomas. Rounding out the Trio of Weird is Michael, a large man who has a strange fetish for calling people “moron.”
Julian’s surprised by how forthright Christian is. He tells him the whole story about their fucked up commune life and how Anna’s dad used to video tape her 24-7. Not creepy at all. But the longer the stay goes on, the sketchier Christian gets. He and the rest of the former compounders like to do drugs. Like, a LOT of drugs.
It isn’t long before Julian and Anna realize every drink they’ve had has been spiked, and therefore they start hallucinating, trying to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. Julian also wants to get to the bottom of where the fuck Anna’s dad is. He needs that money and he can’t get it until they deal with these documents.
What Julian will soon find out is that documents are the least of his worries. This friendly drug-loving bunch may not have left compound life behind after all…
I’d say all the way up to page 45, I was tagging Hexen as a double-worth-the-read. I thought the setting was scrumptious, the conflict was original, the suspense (something we’ve been obsessed with all week) was off the charts. And even the one thing that, if the writers master the other stuff, they eventually fail at – the character development – was strong. All the characters here had rich and intriguing backstories that added sweetness to an already sugary story.
And I’ll tell you the exact moment I knew I was dealing with something good here. It was the introduction of Christian. We see him through a child’s eyes. Jenny, the daughter, spots him butchering a still squealing pig for the compound’s food supply. I’m a huge believer that you sell a character not through what they say or what they look like or what they’re wearing (although those help). You do it through action. Meeting Christian butchering this pig immediately set up who he was.
Alex continued this throughout the script. For Thomas, the half-retarded brother, we see him playing with a group of young girls. When Jenny pricks her finger and it starts bleeding, the other compound girls say, “Lick it and make it better.” So Thomas looks both ways, sticks her finger in his mouth to “stop the bleeding,” and pulls it out, blood free. Whenever a writer is looking to convey character through action, he’s ahead of 80% of writers out there.
And then there was the suspense. It’s almost like Alex went forward in time to read my Pay-As-You-Go article, then went back and wrote this script. There were so many mysteries about this compound, about the people in it, about our heroes’ own histories, about what these compound people were going to do to our heroes. With all these unanswered questions, we had no choice but to keep paying.
In fact, Alex was so good with suspense that even when I stopped enjoying the script, I STILL had to see what happened next.
Wait a minute, Carson. You were so excited about this script a second ago. What do you mean when you “stopped enjoying it?”
Here was my problem with Hexen. It started out strong. But then it got sloppy. Once the script brought in the drug angle, and characters started hallucinating, the strong and sure hand of the writer seemed to get replaced by a genetically engineered jello man afflicted with Parkinson’s. It was almost like Alex stopped trusting himself. It was one drug-induced scene after another. Lots of hallucinations. Lots of “did that really happens.”
And don’t get me wrong. A good drug-induced vision can kick ass. The Rosemary’s Baby drug-induced group-rape scene is one of the most memorable in film history. But when you’re doing it over and over again, it starts feeling sloppy. And I know Alex built the drug-culture into the story. So these visions were motivated. But I can’t support a choice that deliberately makes a script feel sloppy. I just can’t.
And with the last 40 pages of this script reading like this, I had to concede that a script that started off destined to win Best Amateur Friday script of the year, left me feeling frustrated and confused.
This is a tough one. Hexen is like one of those relationships where the two parties fight all the time but still love each other. Those relationships are worth fighting for. I’m just not sure Alex is interested in bringing this script to the place it needs to be to get industry people interested.
He says in his “Why I Think You Should Read” that he’s finding it difficult to get industry pros to see outside the box. That’s the wrong way to think. It’s not up to anybody to see outside the box. It’s up to you to make the world outside the box so alluring that the industry has no choice but to see outside of it. If people are having trouble getting something from your script, take it upon yourself. Never put it on them.
Part of the problem is that Alex won this contest. That’s validation that what he’s done is right. So it’s natural to think nothing should be changed. But I know exactly why this script won that contest despite being imperfect. Because Alex is a good fucking writer. He knows concept, he knows character, he knows dialogue, he knows description, he knows suspense. The average contest-entrant is lucky to know one of those things.
But just like being a great singer doesn’t always equate to releasing a great song, being a good writer doesn’t mean you’ve written a great script. I think Alex needs to take a long hard look at this decision to make the second half of his script one giant drug-trip. He’s right. It’s different. But as I’ve said a million times before, different doesn’t always mean “good.”
I’d advocate for a cleaner and clearer second-half structure. What about you guys? Did the drug-trip second half work for you? If not, why? What can he do to fix it?
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me (but first half xx worth the read!)
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re resting on the black-out move a lot, you’re probably not trying hard enough. The black-out move is when your character gets hit over the head and wakes up later. This is considered sloppy because it’s an easy way to get your character from one setting to the next without having to do the hard work of figuring out the transition. Alex uses versions of the black-out move nearly a dozen times here. I’d suggest re-watching The Wicker Man. That movie is similar to this one, and they never once use a black-out move. It’s possible. It just takes more effort.
