Genre: Contained Thriller
Premise: After being kidnapped by a psychotic music producer, a guitarist and her drummer boyfriend are forced to record an album in chains while they try to escape his studio prison.
Why You Should Read: We were shooting for Misery meets Green Room. Would love to see what the people here at SS think. It’s a quick read too at 85 pages.
Writers: Edward Shine & Frankie Shine
Details: 85 pages
There are going to be a lot of Contained Thrillers submitted to The Last Great Screenwriting Contest. That means today’s script will act as a litmus test for the challenges this genre poses. Breaking this script down and seeing what worked and didn’t work should help those submitting. Let’s take a look.
26 year olds James and Prudence aren’t just in a relationship. They’re in a band. When someone paid them to tour in college, the two dropped out – that’s their band name, “The Dropouts,” – and have spent the last five years driving from crappy gig to crappy gig. James is over it. He wants to get a real job and start a real life. Prudence, however, holds onto hope that their big break is around the corner.
The two are finishing up a gig when a man, Phil, approaches them, tazes them, then drives them to his remote home in the woods where he’s created his own little music studio for them to record in. His goal? To have The Dropouts record their first ever album.
At first James and Prudence try to escape. But Phil lets them know that if they try that again, he’ll kill them. Let’s be creative, Phil says. Figure out what this album is going to be. After brainstorming, they begin the recording sessions, with James and Prudence chained down while playing and Phil in the mixing room.
Whenever Phil is gone, the two begin digging out an escape Andy Dufresne style. Then Phil will come back and it’s back to recording. At first, Prudence hates this place. But then she starts to think, hey, maybe this could be good. Make an album. Use the publicity of how it was recorded to become big stars. Finally, they’re going to make it! James thinks she’s crazy though and escapes, leaving Prudence to finish on her own. Will she? Or will she finally wise up and get the heck out of here?
Here’s the worst thing that can happen with a script. Someone tells you the concept, you get an idea in your head of how that movie is going to play out, you then read the script, and it plays out EXACTLY how you thought it would. You never want that to happen as a writer. And that’s how The Album played out for me.
The reason I chose this logline was because it was different from all the other contained thriller submissions. However, when I read it, I did wonder, “Is this going to be two people in a room with a weird man occasionally bothering them and they try to escape every once in a while?” I was scared that those were the only things that were going to happen. And those turned out to be the only things that happened. There wasn’t a single moment in this script that surprised me. You can’t have that happen.
This is why I’m always telling writers you need to occasionally jump into the reader’s mind and ask if what you’re writing in this moment is what they’re expecting. And if it is, come up with something different.
But The Album commits another faux pas. It doesn’t elevate the tension in any of its scenes. Every scene feels the same. The bad guy comes in. We feel some resentment from the protagonists. They talk about something. Then they leave. Meanwhile, whenever Phil leaves, one of them will keep working on their escape route.
When I read the big spec sale script, Shut In, I was genuinely surprised when the main character nailed the druggie’s hand to the floor, trapping him there for the rest of the movie. You could’ve given me 50 tries and I wouldn’t have guessed that the writer would come up with that plot development.
And you get extra points if these interesting developments happen at key moments in the script because they’ll have a lasting impact in the story. By nailing the druggie to the floor, the druggie is now outside the door with our hero the rest of the movie, which gives you potentially fun conversations to write.
The closest this script gets to taking a chance is when Prudence wants to record the album. She thinks the publicity of how they made it will lead to their big break. And while I liked this development in theory, in practice it felt empty, like something that was said but not really explored. For example, a few scenes later, I wasn’t even clear on if Prudence still felt that way.
The script also skimps over its emotional backbone. What this really should’ve been about was James and Prudence’s broken relationship. They’ve been ignoring it for years now, going through the motions, their band the only thing that’s kept them together. Now they’re stuck in this room and it turns out the biggest nightmare isn’t the man keeping them here. It’s that they’re finally forced to face the end of their relationship.
If the writers could’ve nailed that aspect of the story, the contained thriller part wouldn’t have needed to be that good.
As it stands, none of the characters are strong. I took a break at page 60 and when I came back, I thought to myself, “I don’t know any of these characters.” I know Phil is weird and a bad guy. I know Prudence likes the band. I know James is through with the band. But that’s all I know. And we’re talking about a movie with only three characters. How can the reader not know who any of them are?
One of advantages of writing contained thrillers is that there’s lots of dialogue and therefore lots of opportunity to delve into the characters. In Shut In, I know our heroine used to a be a huge drug addict. I know she’s got two kids she can barely take care of. I know she’s been staying at her aunt’s place to get back on her feet. I know she has a weird history with her husband. I genuinely had a feel for who this person was. But in The Album, the characters only exist to serve the plot – to serve this constructed scenario of being forced to make an album.
The biggest sin this script committed, however, was that it never pumped up the volume. It never made a truly daring choice. Maybe James’ fate was a surprise – but it was too little too late. Up until that moment, I never once feared Phil. There’s a reason they had Annie Wilkes take a hammer to Paul Sheldon’s feet. It was to show that she was capable of doing awful things so that we feared her.
But yes, one of the frustrating things about this script was that the writers never pushed the envelope.
And I’m going to guess that part of that was because the script was written specifically for Contained Thriller Showdown. If that’s the case, these criticisms aren’t as damning. It means this is a first draft. So I’d say, you’ve now got your framework for the story. Figure out who your characters are and come up with three or four truly surprising plot developments that keep the story a) fresh and b) intense.
Cause that’s one of the things that was truly frustrating about this read. It never got intense. Which is unfathomable when you look at the concept. Hopefully these notes help the Shine Siblings. Good luck!
Script link: The Album
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Contained Thrillers are highly dependent on scene variety! – One of the biggest challenges in contained thrillers is the scenes feeling too much alike. The Album suffered from this big time. The scenes cycled between three types. Recording music. Phil kind of mad and threatening the protagonists. And private discussions between Prudence and James about escaping. Predictability is death in a screenplay. Once we’ve figured out your bag of tricks, we no longer want to be at the show. So you’ve got to mix in a bunch of different scene types. Take Shut In. I’ve got to escape this room. I’ve got to explain to my 4 year old child how to get me a tool that will help me in my escape. I’ve got to psychologically trick this pedophile drug addict so he stays away from my kids. I have to figure out how to keep my kids from freezing now that the drug addict has left the front door open. I have to reason with my addict husband to come to his senses. I have to figure out how to feed my infant without any food. There were enough situations to cycle through that they never got repetitive. The Album needed that.
