Genre: Period Drama/Supernatural
Premise: During World War II, a family imprisoned in a Japanese-American internment camp must prevent a violent ghost from worsening relations between their fellow internees and the camp’s administration
Why You Should Read: In The Sun Ghost, I’ve tried to use the tools of fantasy and horror to explore issues of loyalty, intergenerational trauma, and Asian-American identity in an under-depicted World War II setting. While I hope horror aficionados will appreciate the twists put on familiar monster rules and fans of Del Toro’s dark fairy tales will find something to enjoy, I also think that general audiences will find it sadly relevant to current events. Based on its performance in contests and the Black List website, I want to believe the script has potential. I’m looking for sharp eyes and sharp minds to help me take it to the next level.
Writer: Arun Croll
Details: 117 pages
As some of you know, I started reading this script last Thursday, got about 30 pages in, and decided I wasn’t giving it my full attention. Now if I’d sensed that the writer hadn’t given the script their all, I might’ve kept going. But Arun clearly put his blood, sweat, and tears into this. What I read was deeply researched, heavily detailed, and professionally presented. So I saved it for this week, when I’d have more time.
While I enjoyed what I’d read, one thing was nagging me. This is essentially a dual-concept script (one story is about trying to survive in a Japanese-American Relocation Center, the other about a shadow ghost) and I wasn’t convinced that these two worlds could co-exist. But I hadn’t made up my mind yet. I was ready to be persuaded. Would Arun succeed in doing this? Let’s find out.
The year is 1944. We’re in a Japanese-American relocation center. 29 year-old Kosuke Nagata, a dutiful worker who jumps whenever the Americans say “jump,” is married to Sarah, a young beauty who sells self-made sake and sleeps with other men. Sarah thinks her husband is weak and doesn’t respect him.
Kosuke’s 31 year-old sister, Akane, works at the center’s newspaper, and is always trying to get her boss to print riskier articles, things that question the practices of the Americans. Well she’s going to get her story all right. When Sarah’s drunk father tries to escape, an officer threatens and then starts shooting at him. As this is happening, a mysterious force grabs him from behind and chokes him. The officer barely survives, and when he turns around, there’s no one there.
It turns out Kosuke has a secret. A warrior ghost named “Ume” follows him around, and does the bidding of Kosuke’s heart. If someone starts messing with Kosuke or someone Kosuke loves, the ghost will attack that person. This doesn’t bode well for Sarah’s lovers. Indeed, her friends with benefits pal, Ikko, is murdered by Ume. Of course, as both the American and Japanese communities look into the officer attack and Ikko’s murder, no one thinks to include, “Ghost Shadow Man” as a suspect.
Finally, Kosuke comes clean, telling his American boss and his wife that he has a killer ghost who shadows him around. They don’t believe him, so Kosuke takes care of the problem on his own, decapitating Ume out in the fields. Unfortunately, Ume reemerges, this time attaching himself to Kosuke’s 6-year old daughter, Mimi. When the American captain finds evidence that Ume exists, he becomes obsessed with delivering Mimi to doctors and having her studied as a potential weapon. It will be up to Kosuke to make sure that doesn’t happen.
My brother was having trouble deciding on a new car to buy and I mentioned to him, “Why not go with a Mazda 3?” He gave me a stern look, as if I had just made the world’s dumbest suggestion. “You don’t like the Mazda 3?” I asked, a little scared. “I don’t like cars that can’t decide what they are. Is it a sedan or a sports car? Pick a lane.” This is the same way I feel about almost-horror films, movies where horror is present, but isn’t the main storyline. Or maybe it is but the rest of the story is different enough that you’re never sure what you’re supposed to be focused on.
You’ve got two unique elements here. One is the mythology of the relocation center. The other is this cool ghost creature. It’s not that there isn’t some crossover between the two. I’m just not sure there’s enough to garner a cohesive experience. You could’ve easily built a drama around the relocation center and had a good movie. So then you have to ask, why bring in the other element?
That’s a question I was still asking an hour after I finished the script. What was the point of this ghost storyline? When it comes to Kosuke, he seems to be a wimp. He does what the “man” tells him to do. Ume, meanwhile, doesn’t take crap from anyone. When he gets mad at somebody, he goes after them. The problem is that this contrast didn’t play out in any thematically coherent way. I didn’t get the sense that Ume represented Kosuke’s alter ego, in which case you could’ve made this a character study. His targets weren’t methodically thought out. They happened whenever Kosuke was nearby a situation that went bad. What’s the message there?
And I definitely didn’t understand the bigger thematic picture. I have no idea what this movie is trying to say about relocation centers in World War 2 other than, “They’re sort of bad.” And that’s another thing. The “bad guys,” aka, the American soldiers, were never that bad. The majority of them didn’t like that they were imprisoning the Japanese. So you didn’t have any clear targets to take down. This contributed to the randomness of the narrative. I don’t know what this is saying about Kosuke. I don’t know what this is saying about the camps. And then once the daughter gets the ghost, all bets were off. I had no idea how I was supposed to interpret that.
To be honest, I don’t even know if I should be trying to make sense of this. But whenever you build a story around something as serious as World War 2, you usually want a strong theme to shine through. It does’t have to be complex. I remember the Academy Award winning “Life is Beautiful.” That movie was very simple. It was about protecting your child from the horrors of war at all costs. I don’t know if Arun is trying to be too clever here or too subtle, but maybe if he shared the theme in the comments, I could better explain how to get there with the story.
Then again, these scripts are always the most troublesome to me – the ones where you’ve got two big ideas competing for the same story real estate. And by that I mean, each idea could carry its own movie. You could make a movie about Japanese-American camps without ghosts. And you could make a movie about this ghost without the camp. I actually think the ghost is really cool. He’s this ancient warrior who latches onto people and attacks those who hurt them. I could see that taking place in a small town. I don’t know why we need this big complex canvas for it.
But I’m sure Arun would argue that then the idea isn’t big enough. And maybe he’s right. I don’t know. All I know is that when I finished this script, I was confused. I was confused what the story was ultimately about. I was confused what I was supposed to feel afterwards. And I was confused what the message was. I suspect it’s a “two competing stories” problem but maybe I just don’t like this type of movie. I wasn’t a fan of that similar del Toro film, “The Devil’s Backbone,” either. I thought it had the same problems. What did you guys think?
Script link: The Sun Ghost
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Theme becomes more important the more dramatic your story is. Nobody walks out of John Wick raving about the message. But for something like “The Imitation Game,” they want to leave feeling a little wiser about the world. A clear theme will achieve that.
