Scene Showdown coming up next week!
Genre: Thriller
Premise: After meeting on vacation, a family accepts the invitation of another family out to their rural home. But once they get there, they begin to suspect that their hosts are not as cute and cuddly as they first presented themselves.
About: Today’s Blumhouse film won over the festival crowds. It’s gotten great reviews. It’s one of those movies that both critics and audiences love equally. It’s based on a Danish film from a couple of years ago that I plan on watching. The flick didn’t do great at the box office, tallying about 13 million bucks. But for this KIND of film – a thriller that doesn’t have any marketable elements – it did amazing.
Writer: James Watkins (original film written by Christian and Mads Tafdrup)
Details: 110 minutes
I want to start off right away by saying something because whenever I love a movie or a script, people say, “Well, but it did that thing that you hate, Carson.” Or, “But hold on, it had bad GSU.” Or, “Are you kidding!? That one scene sucked. I thought you liked good writing!”
So let me be clear: Every screenplay is the sum of its parts. Every single script will have weaknesses. Outside of Back to the Future, that’s the law of the land. So yes, this script isn’t perfect. But I still loved it.
One of the things I liked best was that it’s a great SCENE movie. And how perfect is that timing, with Scene Showdown coming up? If you want to see how good scenes are written, watch this movie. It’s designed to place its characters into interesting scenarios and then we watch those scenarios play out.
Americans Louise and Ben, along with their daughter, Agnes, have recently moved to London and are taking advantage of their new hub by traveling around in Europe. They spend a holiday out in Italy, where they meet another family on a holiday trip, Paddy and Ciara (along with their disabled son, Ant).
The four hit it off and after Louise and Ben head back, they get a postcard from Paddy and Ciara inviting them to their rural home in Scotland. Louise is reluctant but they’re experiencing some marital issues so she concedes it might do them well to go. So they head out.
Paddy is ecstatic when they arrive and, even though he’s more rough and tumble than Louise and Ben, they’re all having a good time together. But then Ant (who can’t speak) keeps trying to shutter Agnes away and tell her something. (Spoilers) In the most horrifying revelation of the movie, he shows her that their family is about to be massacred. Ant will then be killed and Agnes will take his place.
Once Louise and Ben learn this, they have to get out. But they must do so without alerting suspicion. Because if Paddy gets even a little bit suspicious, they’ll end up like every other family that’s come through here.
So many good things about this script.
I like the different take on serial killing. We tend to think in mono when we come up with ideas. We stay with the established trend. Serial killers are usually one creepy dude stalking women and killing them. Well, what if an entire family was the serial killer? That’s a fresh take. When you have a fresh take on an established trend, it opens up the door to write brand-new scenes in the genre.
The more I do this, the more I realize that you don’t come up with concepts just to come up with concepts. You should be looking for concepts that give you an opportunity to write the most great scenes. If you’re not getting ideas for six great scenes when you come up with your concept, you have to start asking whether that script is worth writing.
Cause I used to think it was all about characters and plot. Those were the top dogs in a script and you needed to place all your focus on making them great. But now I think scenes are right up there with them. Cause if you can write just three truly memorable scenes in a script, THAT STAYS WITH PEOPLE.
And Speak No Evil has a lot of them.
Probably the most talked about scene is the one where the couples are having dinner together. Paddy and Ciara reveal that they like to spice up their love life. They start talking about role play in the bedroom. They start acting out one of their role-plays. Ciara pretends to drop something. Her head disappears beneath the table. Paddy starts to make groaning noises. Are they still acting things out? Or is this really happening? We suffer through an excruciating long drawn-out moment as we wonder before, finally, Ciara pops up and they start laughing. They were just kidding. ….. Or were they?
Here’s why I liked this scene. There’s a statistic in baseball called W.A.R. “WAR” stands for “Wins Above Replacement” and what it means is, how many wins does this player get you above what the average player in that position would give you. So if a player has a WAR of “5,” that means that player is going to help you win 5 more games than you would’ve won had you had an average player in that spot instead.
I apply that same logic to writing. I say, how much better is this scene versus what an average screenwriter would’ve given you? I have no doubt that the average writer wouldn’t have come up with that moment. Instead, they would’ve given you some generic dinner debate about the politics of the day.
Good writers know that that’s standard stuff. It’s meat and potatoes. But it doesn’t give the scene any memorable qualities. Here, Watkins knew he had to play with the scene more. So he came up with something more unexpected, more cringey, something that would get a reaction.
Another scene I liked occurred late in the film. Ben and Louise have discovered the truth and are trying to leave the house without Paddy or Ciara catching onto them. They get all the way into their car when Paddy stops them and points up to Agnes’s stuffed animal, Hoppy, which has “gotten caught” (Paddy clearly placed it up there) in the gutter.
It’s actually quite a clever moment because, even though Agnes, who loves Hoppy, is willing to leave it there, the families have already established in previous scenes how valuable that stuffed animal is to her. So for her to all of a sudden not care about it would be suspicious. So Paddy says to Ben, “I’ll get the ladder and you can go get it cause you’re a little taller than me.”
He holds the ladder while Ben climbs it to retrieve Hoppy. Watkins did something really fun here where the ladder wasn’t tall enough. So Ben has to climb onto the tippy top of this shaky ladder (that Paddy is holding remember) and reach up with as much length as he’s got to get Hoppy. And the whole time, we’re just thinking, “Oh man, he’s going to fall,” or “Paddy’s going to drop him.”
It’s such a simple scene and yet it’s so effective.
Another scene I liked was the serial killer reveal scene with Agnes and Ant. Ant sneaks Agnes down into Paddy and Ciara’s ‘memoir’ room, where they keep the items from all the couples they’ve killed. Ant then pulls up a picture book which shows group pictures of Paddy and Ciara with a bunch of different families.
Remember, Ant can’t talk. So he proceeds to go through each picture, point to the kid in each of the families, then turn the page, show the next family, and point to how that kid is now Paddy and Ciara’s kid. He finally gets to his own picture with his own real family, points to himself, then to himself with Paddy and Ciara. And then he turns the page to the final picture, which is of Ben, Louise, and Agnes. And he points to how Agnes is going to replace him!
Not only is it a compelling scene in its own right. But it’s a great example of how to convey exposition in an entertaining way. And it’s a great example of showing as opposed to telling.
The scene also has two great reveals. This whole time, we’ve figured out that Ant isn’t Paddy and Ciara’s real son. We know that. So we understand why he’s so depressed all the time. But this scene reveals that it’s actually much worse. The reason Ant is so down is because he’s about to be replaced. He’s about to be killed. Also, in that same breath, Agnes realizes she’s going to be their child, and her tongue is going to be cut out just like Ant’s.
Funny enough, my favorite scene of all was one you can’t write. It’s one of those scenes that only works onscreen. And it’s the scene where Paddy takes Ben out to hunt and, on the drive there, Paddy blasts the slow song “Eternal Flame” by The Bangles and proceeds to sing it with an intensity and excitement that’s downright weird. Watching Ben’s reaction to this is absolutely hilarious.
But the scene works for a couple of reasons. It plays against type. This is a mistake SO MANY WRITERS make. Let’s go back to our “WAR” stat. What song is the average writer putting in this scene? Something like Metallica, right? Or Slipknot? On-the-nose. Expected. Cause Paddy is this ultra-masculine intense dude. But it’s always CONTRAST that creates the most interesting moments. To go with the softest song imaginable is so much more interesting for this scene. And way funnier! It turns a forgettable scene into, arguably, the most memorable of the movie.
There’s very little I didn’t like about this movie. If I had one complaint, it’s the same complaint I have for every movie in this genre. Which is that the ending gets sloppy with everyone running around and shooting at each other. But, even then, the writing built up so much goodwill that it didn’t bother me as much as it normally does. And there were still some good little sequences within that final act – like when they’re trying to sneak out the upstairs window.
This is the kind of script that inspires me. It reminds me that all you need is a good idea, some fun characters and you can write a really good script.
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Add ACTION to dialogue scenes. We’ll often be too strict in the way we think of dialogue. We assume that if four people sit down at a table for a meal that it has to be all dialogue in that scene. But do what Watkins did. Look for opportunities to add action. SHOW things. Don’t just TELL things. The whole oral sex fake-out scenario moved away from pure dialogue and, in the process, made that scene much better.
