Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script will be posted if reviewed. If you’re nervous about the effects of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.
Genre: Thriller/Drama/Horror
Premise: (from writer) A mother grieving the loss of her son becomes obsessed with a runaway boy who turns out to be vampire.
About: That’s right. It’s back from the dead. The Gauntlet. Except I’m changing the name to The Smackdown. Because amateur smackdowns are badass. The rules are the same: Two scripts enter, one script leaves. Why is this happening? A couple of weeks ago, you guys voted on the best of the 5 Amateur Offerings. But the votes were too close to count. So instead of picking one, I decided to review both – The Turning Season today. And Monster Mash tomorrow. Who’s going to win? That’s up to you!
Writer: Monique Matta
Details: 91 pages
I looked over at my assistant after reading this and said, “I don’t know what I’m going to write about this.” The Turning Season is a sharply written horror script that actually emphasizes the emotional component, something I rarely see on the amateur front. It has a few intriguing mysteries driving the story and contains little, if any, fat in it. The characters are well-rounded. There’s lots of depth. The dialogue’s solid. For all intents and purposes, it displays a very professional polish.
But I’m not quite connecting to the story and I’m not sure why. I’d point out that vampires aren’t my thing, but a lot like “Let The Right One In,” this isn’t really a vampire movie. It’s more of a small town drama procedural, with a little vampire thrown in for good measure. Could that be what’s bothering me? I can’t identify what the movie is? Or maybe it’s missing that elusive X-Factor. I haven’t figured it out. Maybe by going through the synopsis, I’ll find the answer.
40-something married couple Joe and Emily Hollis have lived in the aftermath of their son’s disappearance for seven years now. Each of them handles it differently. Joe (police chief of this small town) focuses on work, on the present, on the things he can control. Emily, on the other hand, can’t go a minute without thinking about her son. She lives in the past. This provides plenty of conflict in the Hollis household, conflict amplified by Emily’s obsession with this being her fault. She’s the one who lost her son in the crowd that day. She’s responsible for this mess.
This situation becomes even more discombobulated when a lost boy shows up at their door who looks like their son. But their son seven years ago. Not their son now, who would be 16 years old. Because of the resemblance, Emily takes a liking to the boy, insisting to her husband that they let him stay the night. But in the middle of the night he runs away. Emily tells Joe to get the station after him, but the little boy becomes the least of Joe’s worries when one of his cops, Caleb, is killed.
But not just killed – sucked dry of his blood. And he’s not the only one. There are a few local cows in the area that have been sucked dry as well. I guess they didn’t moooo-ve fast enough. But shit gets REALLY real when Joe’s mistress is killed. Now the local cops have the state crawling up their asses, trying to figure out what’s going on.
Amongst all of this, our little lost boy hides out in Joe and Emily’s barn where he feeds off of the rats. Or I should say, feeds off of their BLOOD. (not-so-surprising spoiler if you’ve read the logline) Yes, it turns out the reason all these human and animal carcasses are “sans blood” is because our little runaway is a vampire. But the real question is, what’s his connection to Emily? Why is he so obsessed with her? And how does he know things that only her son could know?
Okay, after laying out the synopsis, I think I understand what bothered me. This script isn’t enough about Emily and the boy. I mean it’s right there in the premise. A mother becomes obsessed with a runaway boy who looks like her son. I like that premise. I want to see that premise explored. But that premise really isn’t what this is about. We get to know the boy in that early scene where he comes to the house, but then he disappears and doesn’t come back until the end of the story.
Typically, the way these kinds of movies work is the boy will move in. They’ll clean him up. He’ll adapt. Everything’s perfect. But then creepy weird things start happening. He starts acting weird. Evilness tends to happen whenever he’s around. And eventually, the parents learn the kid is a dangerous mother*cker.
This formula allows you to build plenty of scares into the story AND explore that emotional component between the child and the parent (see “Mama”). We can see Emily become obsessed with the boy, start believing (against all reason) that he’s her son. We can see the love build between them. We can see her getting too attached. We can question whether she’s going mad or if the boy might actually be her son. And then it all goes to hell in the end.
Not only does this direction give us more bang for our buck, but it also stays true to the logline. I mean at a certain point near the middle of the script, I think 30 pages had gone by since I’d last seen the boy. I just don’t know if you’re getting the most out of your idea by dumping him in the background. Then again, that’s just my interpretation. Monique may have been going after something different here. Though I’d be interested to see if she ever considered this route, and why she chose not to pursue it.
There were a few small things that threw me as well. Initially, it was unclear if the woman in the beginning was Emily Hollis or not. Her name’s not given, but a couple of scenes later, we meet Emily, presumably a few years after the scene. It’s mentioned that she lost her boy years ago. Naturally, I made the connection, then, that she must have been that woman from that scene. It’s eventually cleared up, but you never want your reader thinking anything you don’t want them to think, even if it’s just for a few scenes. Always clarify things that could be confusing.
Speaking of, I didn’t know this was a snowy town in the middle of winter until way too late. This seems to be a key atmospheric detail Monique wanted to convey. A cold dreary snowy town has a different vibe from, say, a hot sunny one. But If you don’t make clear the season in your script, the reader usually assumes summer. Snow isn’t mentioned until page 40 here. It should’ve been mentioned right off the bat. These are little things. But the details matter when writing a script. The details are often what turn a good script into a great one.
In the end, I think more emphasis could’ve been put on the boy and Emily. That’s where you’re going to get your most scares and that’s the relationship that’s going to pay off the most. Still, this was very professionally written, so much so that I almost recommend it for that alone. But I just needed more from the story side to take this to “worth the read” level. Here’s hoping Monique will get there with the next draft. ☺
Script link – The Turning Season
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: WHERE you place something along your timeline can significantly alter the way the drama plays out. Near the end of The Turning Season, Emily finds out that her husband, police chief Joe, has a mistress, Nancy. Soon after, Nancy is killed. There’s nothing wrong with the placement of these events. But let’s take a look at what could’ve happened if we’d placed Nancy’s murder earlier. Now the cops have to do an investigation into Nancy’s death (where she hangs out, the men in her life, etc.) and Joe doesn’t want that information to get out, since his affair with her would be discovered and his marriage potentially ruined. This forces him to lie, which hampers the investigation, potentially leading them away from the real danger here, the mysterious homeless boy. I’m not saying this is the “better” way to go. I’m just pointing out how severely it changes the dramatic impact of the event. So always ask yourself that question: How does it change things if I place this key event earlier (or later)?
