Genre: Horror/Possession
Premise: When the president’s increasingly erratic behavior brings the United States to the brink of nuclear war, a young White House reporter becomes convinced the most powerful man in the world must be forced into an exorcism.
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 am currently reading all the scripts and will put together an official two weeks of reviews for the Top 10. But, in the meantime, I will occasionally review one of the scripts here. Which is what I’m doing today. Black House was one of only five scripts that got a definitive “yes” to be in the contest. If you want to see the previous Blood & Ink reviews, you can do so here, here, and here.
Writer: Jake Barnes
Details: 98 pages
This is not a high concept. This is a huge concept.
When I came up with the idea for this contest, it was for pitches like this one. Where you immediately say, “That’s a movie.” Cause it really is the whole ballgame – the concept. When you have one that’s awesome, you don’t have to fire on all cylinders. The script can withstand a lot of weaknesses. But that doesn’t mean you can go on autopilot. You still have to write something that’s above average. Let’s see if Jake did that.
Black House follows 26 year old D.C. journalist, Emily Morgan. She works as part of the press corps at the White House, where she pals around with fellow journalists Edmund Douglas-Hamilton and Madison Wells. They make up the young hip journalist crowd who speak to Gen-Z.
There’s a lot going on in the White House these days. The president, 43 year old James Sloan, is dealing with a growing war in the fictional Eastern European countries of Molgova and Krasnia. Everyone wants the USA to stay out of the mess but because rogue nuclear missiles are on the line, the conflict can’t be ignored.
Then, one night, a goat is mysteriously sacrificed on the White House lawn. Afterwards, the president’s wife meets with Emily at a restaurant and confides in her that she doesn’t think the president is her husband anymore. She believes a new man has taken over his body. Emily’s a little weirded out by this but then a car speeds directly into the restaurant, killing the wife instantly.
When Emily next sees the president, she too feels that something is off about him. He acts like an asshole. And he’s starting to seriously consider going to war with the Krasnians. So he mobilizes his military machine, setting up the possibility of initiating World War 3.
By this point, Emily is beyond convinced that the president is possessed by the devil. So she locks in a meeting with the White House priest, and says they have to get it out of him. If they don’t, he for sure is starting World War 3. At first, the priest thinks she’s nuts. But the longer this guy is in office, the more bad stuff seems to happen.
As Emily’s journalist friends find themselves in danger by this evil monster, she realizes that if she doesn’t exorcise the demon from the president before a key date coming up regarding the war, that the president is going to start World Wars 3. So she teams up with the local priest and sets up a plan for the first ever presidential exorcism.
This is going to be a unique breakdown because I’m going to try and figure out my thoughts in real time. So, instead of going back and making all this make sense, I’m going to give you the unique experience of what goes on in my head as I read a screenplay.
Expect the unexpected.
I realized, while reading this, that Jake had a tricky decision to make because it was going to affect the entire reading experience. Should it be obvious that the president is possessed? Or should we not be sure?
Let’s look at both scenarios.
Scenario number 1 is what Jake goes with. We know for sure the president is possessed. The advantage of this scenario is that it invokes dramatic irony. We know something the rest of the world does not — which is that the president is definitely possessed and, because of that, he’s going to destroy the world. This creates a desperate feeling inside of us because we want everyone else to realize what we know before it’s too late.
Scenario number 2 creates a different engine. In this scenario, we would only see the president through Emily’s eyes and he would do nothing to definitively prove that he was possessed. As a result, our focus is more on whether Emily is mentally okay. Is she imagining this? Is she putting together pieces that aren’t there? The story becomes more about her.
There’s definitely a version of the second scenario that works. But I don’t think Emily can be a reporter in that version. She’d have to be a staff member, someone who was around the president a lot. Because it would need to be little things here and there that she picks up on that lead to her theory. And you would need to give your main character constant access to the president to notice those things. As a reporter, you only get to see the president in certain situations.
Which one is better? I honestly don’t know. I was thinking about this throughout the read. I know this: there’s something missing from the current draft. So my solution-oriented brain kept wondering whether the dramatic irony version of the story was the problem. Because I do know this. Something felt too obvious in the script’s execution. It felt like I knew what was going to happen way before it happened. So I thought, maybe that would be cured IF I WASN’T SURE that the president was possessed. But since I *do* know he’s possessed, it’s easy to predict what happens next.
By far, one of the most important decisions you make when you sit down to write a script is what POV you tell the story through. This story can be told through dozens of different points of view. It could be told through the wife’s POV. It could be told through the Department of Defense’s POV. An intern’s POV. The White House janitor’s POV. It could be told through multiple POVs as the demon transfers its way up the hierarchy once it gets inside the White House.
It could be told through the Vice President’s POV. Think about how interesting that one would be. The only person in the world who believes the president is possessed just, coincidentally, happens to be the person who benefits the most from his death.
So, you always want to ask: is this really the best POV to tell the story from? I understand why Jake went with Emily. A reporter is one of the most active jobs there is. Their job is to literally take action at every step. So, we know that she’s going to be on this story like a dog on a bone and, carry the plot with her along the way. Which is good.
But for that to work, another question must be answered: Is your main character compelling? Is Emily compelling? Do we like her? Do we want to follow her? I’ll answer that by saying this: I didn’t *not* want to follow her. But there was nothing about her that made me desperate to hop on her back and root for her either.
The thing I least liked about her was that she was part of this “journalist cool kids club” that were kind of cynical and cutthroat. There wasn’t a whole lot about them to like. So, right away, I wasn’t pulled in by Emily. I’d say when it comes to the most important things about screenwriting, you giving us a reason RIGHT AWAY to root for your hero, is up there near the top. And that didn’t happen with Emily. She kinda came off as a bratty journalist.
“Industry” would be a good comp here. A lot of assholes in that show. But the hero was this tiny new girl who was a super underdog. That’s what made us immediately root for her. She was the ultimate underdog. Maybe creating underdog status for Emily would do wonders for her likability.
Here’s a suggestion I would make to Jake. Every journalist in America in 2026 has become the most cynical person in the world. And they’re all about themselves and their own individual agendas. What about making Emily the last good optimistic journalist in America? She’s the last one who believes in the truth. Make her naive in that sense, sort of like Clarice from Silence of the Lambs. Not only would we like her more but you get a much better ‘good versus evil’ showdown with Emily and the Devil that way.
But I think the biggest problem of all is that not enough happens in the story. Emily comes up with with her theory early on and, from there, it’s a lot running around town, a lot of small victories, until she finally comes up with a plan to confront him and exorcise the demon.
It’s funny because it kind of has that same inherent flaw that moviegoers say Disclosure Day had. They all know the guy is going to disclose the data he took. Here, we all know that Emily is going to help exorcise this demon. And in both cases, we’re just waiting around for that to happen. The movies feel like they’re spinning their wheels in the meantime.
On this next draft, we gotta play around with the plot more. We have to throw some unexpected developments into the story. We have to do something to not make this script feel so… Screenwriting 101’ish.
To me, the moment where I became the most excited in the story, was when the priest said that in order to approve an exorcism of this magnitude, you had to get permission from the Pope himself. I was excited because, for the first time, I felt like there was a system in place. A mythology. And these very specific steps had to be taken before you could do the job.
That’s a good starting point for the next draft. You set up a specific mythology behind high profile possessions (they need to be different than regular possessions) and now Emily has a list of things to do. And these things should be cool, like making your case to the pope.
What we have here is the EXPECTED draft of Black House. For draft number 2, I want Jake to explore his ass off and go in a bunch of different directions. I want the unexpected weird draft. And I guarantee he’s going to find some cool new ideas in that draft. And then we can steer the rig back onto the road for draft 3, where we bring in the best stuff from both worlds. This one still has a lot of potential.
Script link: Black House
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Being correct but still wrong. Screenwriting has a lot of things that you are technically correct to do but could still end up being a net negative for your script. Here, Emily has a former boyfriend who killed himself. And then, later, the demon inside the president uses the dead boyfriend to antagonize her. Both of these creative choices are things that I would support in a vacuum. But, because the dead boyfriend thing feels familiar in a possession movie and because we know the demon is going to use that against her at some point, and because we get the exact scene we’re expecting to get from him, the choice actually ends up hurting the script because it doesn’t add any value other than, “It made sense to do this.” Coming up with these creative choices is no different from coming up with a movie idea. You have to find a fresh way in. You can’t just do the same old song and dance. The second I heard she had a dead boyfriend, I knew the demon was going to bring it up. If I’m that far ahead of you, your script is in trouble. I think one reason why Obsession has taken on a life of its own is that you never know what Nikki is going to do next. One of the standout scenes in the movie is when Nikki starts walking around the bedroom nonsensically with a vase of flowers in front of her face. So I’m not saying to ditch this subplot. But play with it more. Figure out a way to make it more interesting. Maybe her dead boyfriend was keeping secrets and the demon starts revealing them to her. That’s probably not enough but it’s a starting point.
