Genre: Horror
Logline: Trapped by a blizzard in a remote truck stop as it burns to the ground, a recovering addict and her young daughter must fight for survival against an alien horror
Why You Should Read: I hope everyone has room for holiday leftovers as this is my version of a Christmas story. There are some holiday family film tropes, but with minor deviations. When some travelers get stranded at a mountain truck stop during a brutal blizzard, they don’t discover the real meaning of Christmas or the importance of family. There’s no time for any of that treacle when you’re cowering in pants-filling terror. Unfortunately, the nocturnal visitor isn’t Santa Claus. It’s a grotesque alien creature that interrupts the festivities in a grisly way. The young child isn’t slumbering with visions of dancing sugarplums in her head, the reality is that she’s doing something very disturbing in the storage room. There’s no Yuletide log burning, instead the whole damn place catches fire. A goodhearted mall Santa is present, but he dies a horrible death, poor bastard. Where eggnog is the disgusting holiday beverage that is typically consumed, in this story the monster liquifies the internal organs of its paralyzed prey and slurps the bloody puree like some ghastly smoothie. (which is nearly the same drink, in my opinion) I appreciate anyone who takes a peek at the script and am grateful for any comments/notes. Thanks.
Writer: Jeff Debing
Details: 109 pages
Monster in a box.
It’s the oldest movie setup in the world.
I’d go so far as to say if you write a monster in a box screenplay, you increase your chances of selling that screenplay by a thousand percent. The genre will always be one of the easiest to market.
But there are a couple of catches to writing one of these scripts. First, your angle must be somewhat original. There has to be SOME element of “I haven’t seen this before.” And second, your execution needs to be on point. This setup is so ubiquitous that if you’re executing it by the numbers, it’s going to feel like every other monster-in-a-box movie.
Does It Drinks You pass this test? I’ll let you know in a minute.
Allison Evans is just now recovering from a pain medication addiction that was the result of a nasty car crash where her husband was killed. She’s heading up to the snowy mountains where her father-in-law, Dick, runs a truck stop diner/motel. Dick has been taking care of Allison’s daughter, Cordelia, while Allison went through rehab. Allison’s finally going to get her daughter back.
While this is going on, Zachary Yates, a young soldier, is escorting his superior, Will Venton, with a truck full of top secret canisters. The further both parties get into the mountains, the snowier it gets. Soon after Allison’s car gets caught in a snowdrift, Venton’s truck comes up behind her, sees the obstacle at the last second, swerves, and the truck goes plummeting down a hill.
Allison runs down, gets the injured Yates out, and the two carry a comatose Venton back up to her car, which they’re able to get started again and drive up to Dick’s Truck Stop. Once there they call 911 to come get Venton, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s going to be able to drive here until morning. Meanwhile, a reluctant Dick makes it clear he sees Allison as an addict and doesn’t want her taking care of his granddaughter.
While this is going on, some sort of creepy spider (called a “Spiderlike”) crawls out of Venton’s mouth. The Spiderlike creature operates by spitting venom into your body, turning your innards into liquid, and then drinking them. Yummy. Unbeknownst to anyone, the Spiderlike begins creeping around and killing the truck stop folks one by one, growing bigger with every kill.
Unfortunately for Yates, everyone thinks he’s the one killing people, forcing him to play a game of hide and seek around the truck stop. It isn’t until well into the story that Dick and the truckers realize that it’s a really creepy spider killing everyone. But by then, it’s too late. The Spiderlike is lining up his kills like a good bowler lines up pins. Since it’s too cold and dangerous to flee, it will be up to Allison and her terrified daughter to kill this nasty creature.
It Drinks You passed!
Okay, I wouldn’t say I needed to keep reading (that’s my ultimate hope for the First 10 Pages Challenge – for someone to write something so captivating that the reader NEEDS to keep reading). But I definitely wanted to.
The script starts with the aftermath of the spider attack. We show up and see this truck stop burned to the ground with only one survivor. I’m intrigued. I want to keep reading. Allison’s introduction also intrigues me: “Despite her wrung-out appearance, her haunted eyes often show a glimpse of determined hope.” What happened to this woman? Then we cut to these military folks preparing to leave their facility with secret canisters. Hmm, what does the military have to do with this situation? Want to keep reading. Very quickly after this we get the car crash. Something is happening immediately. I want to keep reading. By the time we get to the truck stop, we’re 10 pages into the story and firmly invested. Nice job!
In addition to passing the First 10 Pages Challenge, Debing does a great job setting up his main characters – Allison, Dick, and Cordelia. I like that Allison is coming to pick her daughter up from a man who doesn’t trust her. I like that she’s responisble for Dick’s son’s death (in her car crash that brought on her addiction). There’s a lot of meat there, so I know we have more to play with in this story than monsters running down hallways with characters screaming.
Unfortunately, that’s where my praise ends. The second I saw two legs creep out of Venton’s mouth, I thought, “Alien.” And I never stopped thinking that throughout the rest of the screenplay. You’ve got a creature that looks like a spider (which is how the Alien creature starts out) and gets inside of people to kill them. Yeah, the rules are a little different. But I’d argue they’re different in a worse way. The Alien creature has the dramatic climax of bursting out of people when it’s finished with them. The Spiderlike simply craws out.
In addition to that, the central relationship revolves around a mother and a daughter, which, of course, is the central relationship in Aliens, the sequel to Alien. So now I’m just thinking about Alien more.
I also had some problems with the execution. First of all, there’s a manhunt to kill Yates when everyone believes he’s a murderer. But while Dick and the truckers go looking for him, the rest of the characters are sitting around chilling out most of the time. If you think there’s a murderer out there, why is half the group so relaxed?
Even worse is when Allison voluntarily leaves her daughter with someone else. You’ve set this very elaborate backstory up so that this woman is finally reuniting with her daughter. And then she just lets her hang out with someone else, with a crazed murdering soldier out there, no less? It didn’t make sense.
When you have these monster in a box group situations, you have to be careful about splitting people up. I understand that there will be groups within the group. But if you’re going to separate everyone, it’s best to have a scene where someone lays out a plan. One of those, “We’re going to be looking for him here. You guys all need to stay here” talks. You can’t have it so people aren’t communicating when something this dangerous is going on. You need that person who lays down the law: THIS IS WHAT WE’RE GOING TO DO. Ripley is a perfect example of that in Aliens.
Debing is a good writer. You can tell this is written by someone who has been at this for awhile. It’s very professional. He understands how to set up a story and how to keep it moving. He also understands the little things, like how a brief action (Allison trying not to take her prescription pill bottle but ultimately surrendering to it) can tell us a lot about a character. But ultimately this story is too familiar. It’s too similar to Alien.
With that said, I see familiar stuff get made all the time. So I’m not saying this doesn’t have a chance of getting picked up. But I think Jeff needs to rethink his monster so that it doesn’t feel like an Alien clone, and a lesser Alien clone at that. This was the same issue that the dreadful “Life” ran into. They tried to do Alien but with a monster 1/100th as cool as Alien.
Anyway, you’ve got the chops Jeff. Send in something more original for another Amateur Offerings and I’m sure it will do well.
Script link: It Drinks You
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Remember that step father and father-in-law situations aren’t the easiest for readers to pick up on. So you have to be clear with them. I thought for a good 40 pages that Dick was Allison’s father. I didn’t know he was her dead husband’s father, which made their relationship so much more interesting (with her being responsible for his son’s death). It would’ve been nice to be clear on that right away.
What I learned 2: Genius move to give Allison burn marks all over her body (from the previous crash with her husband). Actors and actresses freaking LOVE THAT. It’s actor crack. Stuff like that honestly improves your chances of getting an actress attached.
