Genre: Horror/Action
Premise: After her family is murdered by the mob, a religious woman lets herself become possessed by a demon in order to get revenge.
About: The Blood & Ink Horror Screenplay Contest is a unique screenwriting contest whereby, six months ago, you had to pitch your way into the contest. Scripts either got in with a “yes” by me or they got at least 15 upvotes when pitched in the comments section. The 90+ writers that were chosen then had six months to write their script. I will occasionally review one of the scripts here. If you want to see the previous Blood & Ink reviews, you can do so here, here, here, and here. For those who missed Blood & Ink, I am doing a brand new pitch contest starting Friday July 10th. Get those high concept script pitches ready!
Writer: Nicholas Cocco
Details: 96 pages
I LOVE this idea.
Love it love it love it. I think I picked this as one of the top 5 loglines, right?
Yeah. So I was really looking forward to this one.
Let’s check it out!
It follows Grace Rache, a deeply religious woman in her 30s. She’s married to Max, a war veteran who has no interest in religion, and together they have a teenage son, Wolfgang, who doesn’t believe in God either. So when it comes to faith, Grace is pretty much on an island by herself.
Max and Wolfgang run a breakfast shop in the city. Right next door is a Wiccan shop run by an elderly woman. One day, two mobsters, Cesare (20s) and Nico (40s), show up and inform the old woman that she’ll be paying them for protection. She tells them to fuck off. Wolfgang happens to be nearby, steps in, and knocks Cesare to the ground. That quickly escalates into a standoff between Cesare and Nico on one side and Max and Wolfgang on the other. The gathering crowd eventually convinces the mobsters to back down and leave.
Unfortunately, they come back later to send a message. But things get out of hand, and Max and Wolfgang end up dead. A few days later, we see Grace mourning. She struggles to move forward until the old witch pays her a visit. She presents Grace with an ancient jar containing a demon and explains that if she allows it inside her, it will help her get revenge. Grace doesn’t need much convincing. She’s in.
Next we meet a terrifying wraith, which we eventually learn is Grace in demon form. The wraith begins hunting down members of the mob one by one. One is taken down in a butcher shop freezer. Others are attacked inside a moving car. The creature is fast, powerful, and seemingly able to appear and disappear at will. After Grace kills Nico, his brother Frank, the head of the family, gathers everyone together to figure out how to stop this thing.
Meanwhile, Grace, or more accurately the demon living inside Grace, catches the attention of Father Vincent, who becomes determined to destroy it. So while Grace continues her bloody war against the Family, Father Vincent launches one of his own against her. Eventually, only Frank and his son Cesare remain. Grace tracks them to an abandoned live munitions island, where the story builds to a long, brutal fight to the death.
Okay, so I’m learning a valuable lesson from this experiment.
It would’ve helped if I’d given guidance on the outlines for these scripts before they were written. Because this doesn’t represent the idea that I imagined. And, if I would’ve seen this in outline form, I could’ve helped Nick nip some of these choices in the bud, and set him on a path to a more powerful screenplay.
So, I think what I’m going to do for the upcoming high-concept pitch contest is offer the top 10 finishers just that – An outline evaluation. Cause I would’ve strongly encouraged Theresa to go with one main character instead of two in Worst Time of the Year. I would’ve encouraged Jake to build a more all-encompassing mythology in Black House. And I could’ve helped avoid the structural issues with Eric Levin’s The Mold.
That’s why I always encourage writers to get consultations BEFORE they write the script. An outline consultation can eliminate problems that might otherwise take three or four drafts to discover. It’s one of the most efficient investments you can make. If you’d like an outline consultation or a screenplay consultation, e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Okay, so what are the issues in Devil?
I’d start with the wraith. The whole point of this movie was to see this woman take down these bad guys. But, instead, we start her off as this shadow-like wraith who’s basically Venom.
To me, that defeats the purpose of the screenplay. I don’t want to see a 1000 year old monster get revenge on people who never did anything to him. I want to see the woman whose situation I’m devastated by, someone I empathize with, I want to see HER get that revenge.
So, as soon as that wraith showed up, a big part of me gave up on the script.
To Nick’s credit, he seems to catch a second wind in the second half of the screenplay and give me something closer to the movie he originally pitched. The showdown at the church, the family going for outside help from other crime families, the climax on the island, Grace in human form — that was more what I was originally envisioning. But a lot of it came after I’d mentally given up on the movie.
That’s the thing with screenplays. You can be one of the screenwriters whose script doesn’t hit its stride until the middle of Act 2. But if the reader mentally decommitted on page 17, it’s pretty much impossible to get them back.
And there are other problems here as well – things that, had they not happened, maybe I would’ve stayed with the script longer. For example, we never see Grace react to her husband and kid being killed!!!!!!
The first time we see her reaction is at the funeral standing in front of the caskets. And she doesn’t even seem that upset. She’s just numb. This whole movie is about revenge. It’s about making this extremely difficult choice to bring a demon into your body so you can achieve something that you are diametrically opposed to — revenge and killing. If a character like Grace is going to make that choice, we have to see her devastation. That’s the only way that the choice makes sense to the audience. And for some strange reason, we never see that.
There were other basic mistakes early on. A key scene occurs when Nico and Cesare are trying to choose which shops on the block are good for hitting up. We’re not told what they want from these shops. That information is kept secret for some reason. Then, out of nowhere, we cut to inside the Wiccan shop, and Cesare is standing in front of a “crone” (note: I don’t know what a crone is), and we hear this line from the crone – “Don’t need protection, boychik.”
That’s the first line we hear after being thrown into this context-less situation. My best guess, at the moment, was that “boychick” implied some sort of sexual connotation. Like a ladyboy maybe? And so the word “protection” following indicated ‘sexual protection’ to me. Condoms maybe. I have no idea why that’s being talked about here but that’s the best I can do with what little information has been handed to me.
This then leads to Wolfgang coming out of nowhere, knocking Cesare down. Then running away, which leads to Cesare and Nico confronting Wolfgang and Max. Which leads to Cesare and Nico later killing them.
Only in retrospect do I realize that the Italians were going down this block, forcing shops to accept “protection” for money. And that’s what the scene was about. With this scene being so incredibly important to set up the story, why are we coming into it so late? Why open the scene mid-conversation with a line that can be so easily misinterpreted??
This scene sets up your whole movie!!!
Make it clear as hell!
And make it an actual scene!!! With a beginning, middle, and an end.
That shop scene is half-a-page long. It should’ve been 4 pages long. You build it up. You give us all the information we need so we understand what’s going on. Then, and only then, do you introduce a disruption.
I knew after that scene that the script was in trouble. Because those scenes should be easy to write. It’s the later scenes where you try and get deeper into the characters and create interesting plot developments — that’s the hard stuff. This setup stuff should be a piece of cake.
Maybe Nick thought, “I know I’m not supposed to be on the nose. So I’m not going to have the mobsters explain exactly what they’re doing.” And “Screenwriting books tell me I need to move the story along quickly, so I’ll jump into this scene really late.”
I mean, we come into the scene so late and with so little information that I didn’t even know why Wolfgang was there. I know Max told him to go in there for some reason. But I was not told why.
Sometimes I think screenwriters tie themselves in knots trying to do things the “right” way. This scene needed to convey important information. So convey the information. Don’t convince yourself that making the scene cryptic somehow makes it better.
Just to reiterate why I fell in love with this concept. I imagine this woman who couldn’t physically beat up a teenager, much less mobsters with guns. Her husband and son have been killed by the most powerful crime family in the city. The police won’t help her because they’re in with the family. No one else can help her because the family is so powerful.
Then she gets this opportunity to be possessed by a demon that will give her the strength to be able to take the family down all by herself. But it’s a demon. So, there will be problems containing it.
But she’s instructed on how to bring it forth when she needs to and put it away when she doesn’t. Of course, it doesn’t go that smoothly. When she doesn’t need it, it still wants to come out. And so even in her normal life, she’s struggling to keep it contained until the revenge is over. Then, at the end, she has to get it exorcised. Which is no given. And that’s your movie.
And just to be clear, I know writing scripts is a lot harder than criticizing the final effort. I sense that Nick struggled with how much horror he could stuff into this premise and made some creative choices that I didn’t agree with because of that. But I would tell Nick to always follow the path that gives you the best movie, not the path that fits you the most squarely into the correct genre.
Script Link: Let the Devil Loose
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Your bad guys have to be formidable. At least the ones at the top of the food chain. Because if there’s no doubt at all that Grace can eliminate these guys, then there’s no suspense. There’s no uncertainty about what’s coming on the next page. Make Frank and one more guy super formidable. Maybe they even get their hands on some anti-demon weapons. I want to feel like Grace is overmatched in this final battle.
