Genre: Horror
Premise: Something terrifying awakens within a middle-aged mom when she finally decides to watch the now-classic horror film that she starred in as a child.
Why You Should Read: To this day, rumors persist of a supposed “curse” attached to the modern classic horror film, “The Beholder”. The movie enjoyed both critical acclaim and box office success upon its premiere in October of 1983, and it is still commonly hailed as being among the most terrifying films in the history of American cinema.
But the film’s production was plagued by an endless string of on-set accidents, misfortune and tragedy. And the “curse” only seemed to intensify in the months and years following the movie’s release with the mysterious and untimely deaths of many of the cast and crew, including director John Friedman and lead actors, Betsy Cartwright and Peter Monahan.
Only nine years old at the time, the film’s youngest star, Joanne Harvey, seemed poised to take the movie industry by storm. But in the wake of an auto accident that claimed the lives of her parents after the premiere of “The Beholder”, Joanne Harvey disappeared from Hollywood, never to be heard from again.
Writer: Nick Morris
Details: 88 pages
It’s funny that I read this script when I did. Just yesterday, I was watching Halloween for the 10 Tips article I wrote, and noticed that the little girl Laurie’s friend was babysitting in the movie looked familiar. I went on IMDB to find out that her name was Kylie Richards. I then googled that name to find out that Kylie Richards was now on the cast of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Ah-ha, I thought, that’s where I recognized her from. If you need proof that child actresses are doomed to a bizarre trauma-filled life, look no further than where that young girl ended up.
Meanwhile, back at the farm, Nick Morris has won yet another Amateur Offerings, and in a competitive situation. I can’t remember the last time every script got at least three votes. Usually, a couple of scripts are left with 0 or a single vote, which tells me this may be Nick’s biggest win yet. I also heard Nick say he hopes this is finally the script that gets him that “worth the read.” Let’s find out if it does!
45 year old Joanne Bennet’s best years are behind her. One look at her family life and you get a sense why. She’s stuck on her second husband, a trucker who cares more about Call of Duty than couples time, and his weirdo 12 year old son, who’s basically a clone of his father. Even Kaley, Joanne’s 22 year old daughter, is saddled with a newborn that prevents any quiet moments at home.
One morning, while on her way to work, Joanne gets rear-ended by a hipster in an Audi, Brent, who immediately recognizes Joanne. It turns out Joanne was a famous child actor in the horror classic, The Beholder. Brent freaks out because The Beholder is known for being cursed. Many of the people who worked on it mysteriously died. Nobody even knew what happened to Joanne. After geeking out, he invites Joanne to the Dallas Horror Fest, where she’ll be able to make a ton of money signing autographs.
Joanne’s reluctant as she’s never seen the movie. She knows of its “cursed” past and simply figured it was better not to watch it. But she needs the money so she goes. The experience turns out to be a blast, with Robert Englund and Linda Blair admitting they’re big fans. Joanne heads home on a high, and when Kaley suggests finally watching the film, Joanne figures, why not?
The two sit down to watch the movie, which centers around a couple of cursed parents who want to kill their daughter. After the movie, Joanne starts seeing glowing eyes in the house, only to later rip out her own eyes, becoming a “beholder” herself. She then kills her poor daughter, then waits for her husband and stepson to show up so she can kill them too. She succeeds, killing them all, then later goes on to star in the sequel to the film, Beholder: Redemption.
While I tried to stay out of the comments, I did catch a few tidbits about the script – the first being that Nick was rushing to finish the script in time. The second being a lot of people had problems with the third act. Both of these issues affected my read as well. I could tell this script was rushed, and I couldn’t get on board with the ending.
The script started out strong. I loved the way the family was set up. Compared to Wednesday’s script review, and even yesterday, with the original Halloween, this family felt more complex and more interesting than any of the characters set up in those two scripts. The scene where Joanne comes home and her husband and step-son are playing Call of Duty while her daughter is nursing her grandchild – it painted such a clear picture of what this woman’s life was like.
Unfortunately, after that, each subsequent scene felt more rushed than the previous one. And a lot of that had to do with the fact that our hero wasn’t carving her own path. She was waiting for the writer to carve it. It was the writer who crashed a car into our hero. It was the writer who, coincidentally, made the driver of that car the Horror Fest Coordinator. It was the writer who brought our hero to the Horror Fest. Our hero wasn’t doing anything but following the lead.
It wasn’t until the third act that Joanne started acting on her own. But by that point, things had gotten so ridiculous (she’d ripped her eyes out and was running around killing people) that I was now focused on new problems. Usually, in these movies, the main character is either running or trying to defeat the monster. But in Evil Eye, she’d become the monster. And she was killing characters we liked, like the daughter. So I had all these confused feelings as I was reading the climax.
The thing is, there’s SOMETHING TO THIS IDEA. When I read this logline, I liked it. But I didn’t imagine something this cheaply thrown together. I wanted the same kind of depth that was given to the family to be applied everywhere, the plot in particular. Why can’t Joanne watch the film in the first act, and then, as she goes through her daily life, she starts seeing these glowing eyes in the eyes of the people she knows. So she’s trying to figure out if she’s going crazy or not. By the end, of course, she does go crazy. And that’s when she kills her family.
But if you’re going to do that, you need to spend a lot more time with the family. We need to get to know the dad, the stepson, and daughter, beyond that first scene. Because once you switch Joanne into a demon, we need someone else to root for. And you’re probably going to want that to be the daughter. Or, if you want to take this to a dark place, you can make the daughter a bitch as well, and that way when we kill the entire family, we feel like they got their just due. But right now, half the family is good and half is bad, so it’s confusing when they’re all killed.
Here’s the reality of screenwriting. Any reader worth his salt can tell when they’re reading an early draft. You can’t hoodwink them. I know when a writer is rushing things along because everything in the script happens too easily and many of the choices are uninspired. Good choices come from putting your script through the ringer, going through the rewrites and asking yourself, repeatedly, “Is this the best scene I can write?,” “Is this the best plot twist I can come up with?” And if the answer’s no, you one-up it. And if you keep one-upping things every draft, you’re eventually going to have a good script.
What’s so frustrating about The Evil Eye is that there’s a movie here but the script is maybe 25% of where it needs to be. Every aspect of this story needs to be expanded. We need more detail, more specificity, more stuff to happen. I don’t even think there’s a character goal in any of this. Which is a big reason why the plot feels so empty. I don’t know if I’m repeating what others have pointed out or if this is new information, but regardless, I love Nick’s passion for horror and hope he turns this into something great.
Script link: The Evil Eye
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m not sure you can turn your hero into the villain for the final act. There may be a few movies that have done it. But it’s confusing for an audience member who’s been rooting for a hero the whole movie, to then be asked to root for everyone besides the hero. I don’t know how that works.
