Genre: Thriller
Premise: (from IMDB) A homeschooled teenager begins to suspect her mother is keeping a dark secret from her.
About: This comes from the same guys who made the really cool “all-computer-screen” thriller, “Searching.” Quick fact that shows how frustrating the transition from page to screen is: Originally, this script had a big outdoor ending sequence. However, after shooting in Winnepeg for a few weeks, one of the coldest cities in the world, they were getting some complaints from their actors about the weather and therefore had to rewrite the entire ending so it was indoors! During production! So the next time you’re struggling to come up with an ending, remember that it could be a lot worse. You could be told that the ending you spent six months perfecting needs to be rewritten one week before shooting.
Writer: Aneesh Chaganty, Sev Ohanian
Details: 90 minutes
I feel bad for these guys because, after the huge success of Searching, this was supposed to get a major theatrical push, something that’s getting harder and harder to do for a movie of this size. However, the pandemic screwed all that up like it’s screwing everything up and “Run” went to streaming instead. But hey, that’s good for us, right? We don’t have to leave our couches to catch the latest buzz-worthy flick. Let’s take a look.
Diane and her 17 year old daughter, Chloe, have a peaceful life, all things considering. Chloe is a paraplegic who must get around in a wheelchair, which has forced Diane to be a full-time carer, but the two have a strong relationship as it’s clear Diane loves her daughter more than anything.
But lately, Chloe has been restless. She’s trying to get into college but every day she races to the mail, her mom beats her to it. It’s almost as if her mom is keeping mail from her. Maybe even an acceptance letter?
In addition to this, Chloe takes a LOT of medication. All supervised by her mom of course. And she’s beginning to wonder what this stuff is. Unfortunately, she’s not allowed to use the internet or even own a smart phone. Which limits her access to information.
Therefore, Chloe must get creative and look for opportunities when mom is gone. She finally uses a trip to the movies as an opportunity to say she has to go to the bathroom. She sneaks across the street to the pharmacy to ask what this pill is she’s been taking. She learns it’s a pill that causes people to lose feeling in their legs!
Now Chloe knows the truth. Her mom is a psycho. Which means she needs to escape. But that’s easier said than done. Especially because her mom is now on high alert (she discovered Chloe at the pharmacy at the last second).
Chloe will have to figure out a way to both escape their home and make her way into town, a several-mile drive with only one road to and from. Is that possible for a girl restricted by a wheelchair? And why do we get the sense that if Chloe doesn’t escape soon, her mother is going to do something a lot worse than paralyze her?
Let me start off by saying it’s scripts like this that got me into screenwriting in the first place.
You find a fun idea then build a narrative and series of scenes that best exploit that idea. That’s what “Run” is. You have this cool thriller concept where a teenage girl begins to suspect that her mother is holding her hostage. This necessitates our goal – escape. That goal is achieved by a series of scenes – our hero trying to escape. Those are the scenes that are going to make or break your script because those are the scenes that are fulfilling (or not fulfilling) the promise of your premise.
This was always my favorite part of writing. Coming up with those scenes. Debating, after you came up with one of those scenes, whether they were good enough. Whether they were working. Whether you could come up with something better.
“Run” does a pretty good job in this department. There’s a scene around the midpoint where Chloe has been locked inside her room. After her mother leaves the house, Chloe tries to escape by going out of her second-floor window, crawling along the roof, and getting back in through a window on the opposite side. In any other movie, this would be easy. But for someone without the use of her legs, it becomes a harrowing ordeal.
When she finally gets outside the house, she tries to wheel her way into town, and runs into the mailman on the country road. After he stops, she tells him everything. Only for her mom to pull up behind the mailman and attempt to convince him that her daughter is unwell and please just hand her over. I was on the edge of my seat hoping the mailman didn’t give in. Please, for the love of God, Mailman. Don’t give in!
But something I found that’s unique about this type of hostage situation – one where our captive has a lot of freedom (as opposed to when a serial killer has their captive chained up in a basement) is that it’s hard to imagine, with 24 hours in a day, 7 days in a week, that our captive couldn’t find a way out.
We set up some rules early on that Chloe doesn’t have an iPhone. She doesn’t have internet access. Which limits her ability to find out if these pills mom is giving her are poison. So there’s this scene where Chloe literally calls a random number and asks a busy man to look up something on the internet for her. And I’m thinking to myself, “I’m not sure this scene is a) believable, or b) the most logical way to answer this question.”
It was a reminder of how shaky the foundation of this setup was. Is it really that impossible to get information? The suspension of disbelief in this script was as fragile as cheap china. You got the sense that it could be shattered with even the smallest disturbance. And that definitely affected how much I believed what was going on.
For example, there’s this scene late in the movie where Chloe poisons herself to force her mom to take her to the hospital. And, presumably, as soon as she wakes up, she’s going to tell the doctors the truth about her mom. So Chaganty and Ohanian place this medical throat restriction device on Chloe so that even when she wakes up, she can’t speak yet. So Chloe mimes to the nurse she has something to say and the nurse finally gives her a crayon and a piece of paper. Chloe is finally going to be able to tell someone what her mom is doing to her!
Yet all I could think was: You’re saying that there isn’t going to be a single other second in this hospital where she could tell them the truth? Even under the most restrictive realistic scenario, you have to think that our heroine would be able to convey that her mom is dangerous.
For a movie like this to work, you want all of these illogical pockets to be eliminated. That’s why the mailman scene was the best in the movie. There weren’t any holes in it. We felt like this is really how it would’ve gone. Yes, if a mailman saw a frantic girl in a wheelchair trying to run away, he would stop to see if she was okay. Yes, if she told him her mother was imprisoning her, he would try to get her to the police. Yes, if the mom drove up at that moment, she would lie to him to get him to hand her over. Yes, if we were that mailman, we would listen to that mother, albeit skeptically. And, most important, we knew that if the mom won this argument, our heroine was screwed. That’s a strong scene right there no matter which way you slice it.
While the believability of the set pieces was hit and miss, I loved how the writers structured their script. The challenge with structuring these “captive” movies is that even the most elaborate escape is going to take, what? 25 minutes? 30 tops? So that’s your ending. Those last 25-30 pages. What do you do in the meantime? Especially because your hero will typically want to escape by the end of the first act.
What Chaganty and Ohanian do is they use the first quarter of the script as an investigation story. Chloe suspects her mom is giving her pills that are keeping her sick. So she needs to find out if that’s true. When she finds out they are, indeed, bad, we’re a little past the end of the first act.
Again, if you start the escape now (or even the planning), you’re going to need to make it last 75 pages. That’s impossible. So Chaganty and Ohanian do something clever. They have her plan and launch an escape, only for it to fail at the midpoint (the mailman scene). This places Chloe right back in the home, except under much more dire circumstances. The ruse is up. So there’s no reason for her mom to pretend anymore. Which means Chloe is in a lot more danger. Now she REALLY has to escape.
After Chloe assesses her situation, her mom returns from getting some suspicious materials and it looks like she’s going to double down on this “making Chloe sick” stuff. The two tussle and Chloe comes up with the plan to poison herself so her mom has to take her to the hospital. And now we have our final “escape” laid out for us. This is her last chance to run away from her mother forever. Structurally sound stuff!
“Run” is one of those movies that hums more than it sings. But it still comes up with a few melodies you can’t stop humming to yourself. Like but didn’t love!
[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the stream
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A great development for any script where your hero is held captive is the “FALSE ESCAPE” at the midpoint. Your hero does it! They successfully escape their captor! Only for, at the last possible second, the captor pulls some impossible move and captures them again, bringing them back to their prison. This not only helps you structurally. But it heightens the intensity of the second half because now the captor is enraged. They’re way more dangerous now than they were before, and escape truly feels impossible.
It’s an all-new all-different but-still-kinda-the-same Amateur Showdown! If you haven’t been to the site in a while, this showdown might be confusing, so let me give you the Cliff’s Notes version of what’s going on.
I hosted a screenplay contest called, The Last Great Screenplay Contest. I read the first ten pages of every entry and divided the scripts into four categories. Yes, High Maybe, Low Maybe, and No. Originally, I was only going to guarantee 10 more pages of reading to the Low Maybes. Then I came up with the idea that we would take the top 20 (actually 22) Low Maybes and pit them against each other in four Amateur Showdowns.
The winning script in each of the next four Showdowns will compete with each other in a final fifth-weekend Super Showdown, and that winner will advance to the Finals of the contest.
Confused?
Don’t worry. All you need to know is that this is like any other Amateur Showdown, except the stakes are much higher. So I need everyone here to read as much of each script as you can and vote for your favorite in the Comments Section by Sunday evening at 11:59pm Pacific Time. The script with the most votes moves on to the fifth and final Super Showdown.
I think you’re going to like this. A lot of the scripts that went into the Low Maybe pile had strong concepts, in a lot of instances stronger than the High Maybes. But for whatever reason, their first ten pages didn’t blow me away. By getting a second look from you, the readers of the site, I’m sure a script or two will emerge as a true contender.
Quick note. We’re doing a Plus-Sized Showdown next week starting on Wednesday that will have 7 scripts, since it’ll take place over the long Thanksgiving Weekend. So that Showdown should be extra fun.
Let’s get started with today’s entries. Good luck, everyone!
Title: Our Hero
Genre: Family Comedy
Logline: When 3 nerdy middle school kids discover the secret lair of a burned-out superhero; the world’s most powerful man agrees to be their friend in exchange for keeping his secret.
Title: Night of the Living
Genre: Horror
Logline: Years after humanity’s extinction, the idyllic life of suburban zombies is shattered when an outbreak of humans threatens their existence.
Title: Inverted
Genre: Horror
Logline: It’s 1997 and Jada just wants to have fun. But when the shadowy State of Burma opens its doors to outsiders for the first time, her new boyfriend’s idea of an adventure holiday turns into a horrifying fight for survival as they are stranded on a remote forbidden island harbouring a secret so diabolical, it’s been hidden from the world for centuries.
Title: Kelsey’s Crossing
Genre: Drama
Logline: When the helicopter she’s riding in over the Sonoran desert crashes in Mexico, the racist host of an anti-immigrant youtube channel has to rely on a group of migrants to survive the dangers and brutality of the desert and help her travel 40 miles to get back to American soil.
Title: Ambrosia
Genre: Time Travel/Heist
Logline: Three anxiety-ridden young adults discover an experimental drug that allows them to time travel back 36 hours after each overdose. As the side effects intensify and their tolerance builds, each time travel back becomes reduced (16 hours, 8 hours, etc), but they keep going back anyways to perfect a bank robbery. Meanwhile, the town’s leading detective chases them down.
A funny thing happens when you read a ton of scripts in a row. Especially the way I did it over the weekend. I needed to finish all the entries and I was running out of time since I had to post the semifinalists Monday, so I had zero breaks. As soon as I finished ten pages of one script, I put it in a pile and immediately opened up the next one.
When you’re reading that much, an almost “Matrix-like” clarity comes over you about what really matters in the first ten pages (and, by extension, the script). I realized that all I cared about were two things. One, give me an entertaining scene that grabs me. And two, introduce me to somebody I care about. If you do one of those two things, I’ll read on. If you do both of those things, I’m *excited* to read on.
Let’s unpack this because we talk about these things all the time, but I’m not sure everyone knows why they’re important other than they hear people like me say they are. Too many screenwriters approach the craft from a subjective point of view. They think that because they are writing something, the script will automatically be interesting. It is their belief in themselves that guides their decisions.
So, for example, if they like ‘driving and talking’ scenes, they might start the script with a married couple driving and talking and simply assume that because they like that scenario, other people will as well. But two people talking while driving without anything else going on is a poor scene prompt. In all likelihood, it isn’t going to yield an interaction that a third-party (the reader) would enjoy.
The mental shift writers need to make is to stop seeing their script from their own selfish point-of-view and start looking at it from an OBJECTIVE point-of-view. Transport yourself into the reader’s head then ask if what’s on the page is entertaining *to that person.* It is from this perspective that you will more likely generate a strong scene.
From there, you either come up with a new, more entertaining scene prompt, or you can reimagine the current scene in a more entertaining way. The best way I’ve found to do this is to inject a problem into the scenario. A problem achieves three things. It forces your characters to act. It forces your characters to make choices. And it creates conflict between characters. Because, often, when two (or more) people are faced with a problem, they have different ideas about how to deal with it. And those ideas conflict with one another, resulting in an interesting dialogue.
So if we’re going with this car scene. What if, instead of them driving in the car, we start with them on the side of the highway, their car having broken down. This is our “problem.” Already, it’s a more interesting situation because we’re curious how they’re going to resolve the problem. And what good writers will do is they’ll add factors that pressure the characters, which make the situation even worse.
For example, if this were a married couple, maybe Doug, the husband, dragged his feet all morning even though, Lucy, his wife, stressed to him how important it was that they be on time today because she has a huge meeting. So they’re already late as it is, and now their car has broken down, and she’s got a huge meeting. Look at how much more interesting the dialogue is getting. He might want to call AAA to get the car towed first but, since she’s in such a hurry, she wants to get an Uber, now! That’s what they’re arguing about.
And we can go even further. Maybe they have a 4 year old daughter they’re taking to pre-school. And it’s burning up outside. And she’s in the back of the broken car and now she’s burning up. And so Lucy is already furious that Doug has put them in this position but now their daughter’s safety is in danger. You can see how introducing a problem and then building little agitators into that problem can take a boring car driving scene and turn it into this intense compelling opening.
I’m not sure writers who see writing through a subjective lens can come up with that scene. It’s only writers with an objective mindset that come up with scenes that entertain others. Now there is a writing philosophy out there that goes something like, “Write whatever you want and, if you like it, others will too.” While I’m not going to completely dismiss that philosophy, it relies more on luck. When you completely dismiss the audience and write for yourself, you tend to come up with blander, less dramatic, more pretentious stories.
And, by the way, you shouldn’t be thinking this way ONLY for the opening. The opening may be the most important scene since it’s the scene that either hooks the reader or doesn’t. But you want to take that attitude into every scene in your script. Ask yourself, is the reader being entertained right now or am I assuming they’re enjoying themselves because I’m writing words for them and I’m a good writer?
The other way to hook a reader is to introduce a character who’s instantly intriguing in some way. They are a ‘hook’ in and of themselves. This is the harder route to go, for sure, because character is the hardest thing to get right in screenwriting. Most characters in scripts read like characters when they need to read like people.
There are lots of theories on how to construct a character that feels real and lively and compelling. But I’ve found the starting point is always a commitment to creating a compelling character in the first place. I know that sounds obvious but it actually isn’t. Most writers come up with an idea, start writing the script, and figure out the characters along the way.
If you want to write a strong character, you must think of them apart from your story. This is how Wes Anderson created one of his most famous characters ever, Max Fischer, from “Rushmore.” He and Luke Wilson started with Max, tried to make him as weird and unique as possible, and only then did they come up with a story for him. I dare anybody to go watch that movie and not come away mesmerized by that character.
So you first have to make that mental commitment. Then use your first scene as a resume that lets the reader know what they’re going to be getting. I have a couple of examples for you. The obvious one is “Joker.” Joker, the movie, doesn’t even really have a plot. It’s just this really weird damaged person trying to fit into society who keeps getting kicked down. And that’s how we meet him. He literally gets kicked and beaten down. You want to keep reading after that opening scene SPECIFICALLY to see what happens with that character.
Another example is Cassandra from the upcoming movie, “Promising Young Woman.” That script starts out with a really drunk woman at a bar who gets picked up by a seemingly cool guy who then tries to take advantage of her back at his place, only for her to reveal she’s stone-cold sober and exposes his motives. This woman goes around doing this all the time. But what really makes her interesting is that she doesn’t know where the line is. Is she a hero? Or is she a villain? That’s when you really get into “interesting character territory,” when the answer to that question isn’t easy.
By the way, you’ll note that both Promising Young Woman and Joker started with entertaining scenes. Joker has his sign stolen that he’ll have to pay for if he doesn’t get it back. And we’re pulled into Cassandra’s situation because we’re worried for her. We see this wounded animal at a bar and think she might be in danger. That’s the ideal way to do it. Start with an entertaining scene AND a compelling character. Those always turn out to be the best scripts.
This topic is obviously more nuanced than 1500 words allow. There are scenarios where two people in a car talking can be entertaining, such as if you have strong dialogue skills able to carry a scene all by themselves. And there’s a discussion to be had about how writing for yourself can lead to some off-the-wall weird stuff you’d never be able to tap into if you’d focused solely on pleasing others. So I’m not saying you have to do it the way I’ve laid out.
All I can tell you after reading that many pages in a row is that the scripts that suffered the most were the ones that started with a weak or common scenario and had bland or simplistic characters. Your two most important components are your story and your characters. If you can’t make either of those pop in the first scene, why would anyone keep reading? This article is a game plan to tackle that. I’ll leave it up to you whether you want to use it or not.
Carson does feature screenplay consultations, TV Pilot Consultations, and logline consultations. Logline consultations go for $25 a piece or $40 for unlimited tweaking. You get a 1-10 rating, a 200-word evaluation, and a rewrite of the logline. They’re extremely popular so if you haven’t tried one out yet, I encourage you to give it a shot. If you’re interested in any consultation package, e-mail Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: CONSULTATION. Don’t start writing a script or sending a script out blind. Let Scriptshadow help you get it in shape first!
Genre: Romantic Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) MEET CUTE, the hottest dating app on the market, brings couples together by giving them their Rom Com moment. When the app’s biggest skeptic, Haley, matches with one of its developers, Russ, their instant connection starts to change her mind.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. Which begs the question. Is there going to be a Black List this year?? There wasn’t a Blood List. It appears that Covid has infiltrated Hollywood’s ability to send out scripts. Does that mean The Last Great Screenplay Contest becomes 2020’s Black List? Lots to figure out in these last few weeks of the year! (edit! My bad. I just learned there was a Blood List. Not sure why nobody told me!)
Writers: Chris and Dan Powers
Details: 109 pages
You may be noticing a trend this week. Easy-to-read genre yesterday. Easy-to-read genre today. Why am I picking easy reads? Maybe because I READ 1000 PAGES OF SCREENPLAYS over the weekend to find my contest semifinalists. These crying eyes needed a break. And they found a couple in the sweet simplicity of slasher horror and romantic comedy. Tons of dialogue. The action paragraphs never extend beyond two lines. It’s sweet screenplay-reading nirvana, I tell you.
Haley is a relationship-phobic producer at a daytime talk show where today’s topic is the new hit dating app, MEET CUTE. Meet Cute’s founder, Keaton, explains that Meet Cute takes all your information, matches you up with the perfect person, and then looks for opportunities when you’re in the same area to send you a push notification to “go to the grocery store” or “take a walk in the park.” You then, hopefully, bump into your significant other in that perfect movie-like way.
We then meet Russ, a coder at Meet Cute, and also a user! On Thanksgiving, Russ gets a notification to “go to the grocery store” and, wouldn’t you know it, he meets none other than Haley there. The two have a canned cranberry-sauce inspired “meet cute” and meet again a few days later at the movies, where they officially enter into the first stage of a relationship.
OR DO THEY!?
Out of nowhere, Haley gets the relationship jitters and pulls out.
OR DOES SHE!?!?
No, because Russ tells her, you can’t do that. We’re a great match.
BUT ARE THEY!?!?!?
No! Because guess what? Russ goes into the Haley’s profile to learn that she was not told to go to the grocery store that night. She was supposed to go to the park! Which means they aren’t really each other’s “meet cute.” Russ decides not to tell Haley this so that their relationship can grow. But then, via circumstances that felt suspiciously like ESP sent from the writers themselves, Haley starts suspecting something is off. She charges to Keaton’s place and demands to know their “meet cute” details. Her suspicions turn out to be correct as Keaton confirms they weren’t supposed to meet each other.
Convinced that there’s no reason to continue this sham of a relationship (because she was told by an app that she didn’t like a guy???), Haley bails. Russ bombards Haley with texts but Haley is having none of it. Will Russ figure out a way to convince our app-influenced rom-com princess to change her mind? Or was their “meet cute” destined to become a “separate ugly?”
Wow.
Where do I begin with this one? Well, the dialogue was pretty good. It wasn’t great. But it was better than the dialogue I read in most amateur romantic comedy scripts. One thing I want to point out with rom-com dialogue is that too many newbie writers write the “falling in love” part of the main couple’s dialogue with a lot of agreeing. “I love this.” “I love it too.” “We were at Pepe’s Pizza last night.” “Oh my god! Did you order the Sicilian crust?” “Yes!” “I love the Sicilian Crust!” “Tell me about it!” Don’t do that. Good dialogue comes from the disagreements. It comes from the no’s. The resistance. The conflict.
Here’s simple exchange between Russ and Haley. RUSS: “My dream is to make a pie that’s half pumpkin and half apple. Like a pizza with split toppings.” HALEY: “That’s disgusting.”
This might seem insignificant. But it’s important to note that a lot of newbie writers would’ve had Haley respond, “Oh my God. That’s genius!”
The bigger point is, the dialogue is solid in this script. And I have a feeling that that’s the reason it made the Black List.
Unfortunately, the rest of the script isn’t up to par. The thing that frustrated me most was loading a huge plotline on top of a very weak plot point. A little past the midpoint, we learn that these two aren’t each other’s “meet cute.” And it’s framed as this devastating development. Haley immediately breaks up with Russ over it.
There are two types of ways you can go in your story. There’s MOVIE LOGIC. And there’s THE TRUTH. You want to use the truth as much as possible. You want to stay away from movie logic as much as possible. Haley breaking up with Russ because they aren’t truly each other’s “meet cute” is one of the most movie logic things I’ve ever read. It is the opposite of what would truthfully happen. Haley doesn’t even believe in dating apps. Why does she all of a sudden think their word is bond?
But the bigger issue is that the writers then build the rest of the script on top of this weak plot development. It’s one thing to introduce a weak plot point. You can spot these in any movie. But you don’t want to make a bad thing worse. Try to isolate the weak plot point because if you use it as a foundation for more story, every additional development is going to feel weaker than the last one. And this was a big enough issue that it affected my enjoyment of the second half of the script.
But I actually have a bigger issue with this script. It doesn’t take advantage of its concept at all. When you have a fun concept inside of a fun genre, the only thing you should be thinking about is exploiting that genre. And, to me, the best way to exploit this concept is obvious. Once we learned that Russ was a coder for the app, he should’ve been using it to meet and have sex with as many girls as possible. He should’ve been the complex main character – the one doing something bad, who finally meets a girl he likes.
Consider what this new plot point would do for the aforementioned problem I brought up. Now, instead of Haley finding out that Russ isn’t her “meet cute,” Haley finds out that he’d been specifically writing code to hook up with as many girls as possible through the app. You see, when an obstacle enters your character’s path, you want that obstacle to be as difficult to overcome as possible. That’s why the reader keeps reading. Because they don’t know if the character can actually succeed. If this happened with Russ, we’d genuinely wonder if these two were ending up together. That’s how difficult that realization would’ve been to overcome.
I don’t know why they didn’t do this because it’s so much better than the script we got but I have a theory. Writers are so paranoid about writing “unlikable” characters that everybody has to be perfect! Even the characters with flaws, like Haley and her commitment phobia, are perky and fun and funny. Nobody has any darkness. Nobody has any complexity. We’re all shiny happy people here.
I’m sorry. But shiny and happy is boring. You gotta inject a little darkness into these happier genres to make them pop.
I don’t know. Maybe that’s just me. But this was way too generic for my taste. A great comp to show how to do it right is Voicemails For Isabelle. That script wasn’t afraid to get a little dirty.
Anyway, this is a no for me guys. Hopefully we’ll find a winner next week!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: People, “let’s” means “let us.” Otherwise, it’s “lets.” I can’t tell you how often I run into this mistake.
Genre: Horror
Premise: Three teens rent a cursed VHS video tape and are pulled into an ’80s slasher movie that threatens to trap them there forever.
About: Lionsgate just picked this one up last week. Seth Rogen is producing with Greg Silverman’s Stampede Ventures. The script was written by Chris Thomas Devlin, whose sparse (some might say, too sparse) horror script, Cobweb, finished high on the Black List a few years ago. He also penned the upcoming Texas Chainsaw Massacre reboot.
Writer: Chris Thomas Devlin
Details: 100 pages
I’m going to start today with a public reminder that these “fun” slasher-horror scripts do well on the market. First, they’re easy to read. More so than traditional horror scripts. That’s because there’s more dialogue (so eyes fly down the page faster) and the subject matter has a breezy easy-to-digest quality to it (as opposed to, say, Dune). I don’t think it’s a coincidence that fellow “fun” slasher-horror script “Scream” is one of the most famous spec sales in Hollywood history. So if you’re good with dialogue and you like fun bloody horror scenarios, this is a lucrative genre to write in. Let us now find out if this is one of the good ones.
15 year old Lena and 14 year old Shawn are sister and brother. The two are total horror nerds, spending a big portion of their lives making little slasher horror movies based on all their favorite horror films. But the two are dealing with a huge shift in their lives as their father just died and they’re forced to move out of the city to a small town where living is cheaper.
A few months after moving, Shawn’s biggest nightmare comes true. Lena has found a significant other – Izzy, a cool girl at school that Lena is absolutely smitten with. So much for Team Horror! One weekend, however, when their mom goes out of town, Lena agrees to watch a horror movie with Shawn, like the good old days. So Shawn goes into town and finds a mysterious old VHS video store. The owner, a freaky woman with white hair, takes him to the back and gives him a special movie called, “How They Bleed.”
Thrilled that he has something new to watch with his sister, Shawn gets home only to find out… Lena is hanging out with Izzy! Boooo! Shawn goes upstairs to angrily watch the movie by himself and, while doing so, notices that the young actress in the movie looks exactly like a picture of a missing girl he saw back in town. Then he sees her, in the movie, running towards a house. Wait, that isn’t just any house. That’s THEIR HOUSE!
Yup, we got ourselves a Jumanji situation here. The movie has come to them! Once Lena and Izzy realize what’s going on, they have to run for their lives from a killer wielding a giant scythe. Long story short, there’s been a lot of missing children in this town over the years, and that’s because they’ve all gotten caught in this movie! When one of those children steals the movie video tape, Shawn, Lena, and Izzy will have to chase him around town all night to get it back, all with a persistent Scythe Guy chasing them.
Video Nasty does some good things and some not so good things.
For starters, I liked that Devlin focused the story on this broken relationship between a brother and sister. I advocate for this all the time on the site. Instead of only focusing on a character, what’s broken about them, and their battle to fix that brokenness, do the same with a relationship.
In Video Nasty, Shawn’s sister is growing up. She’s not making movies with him anymore. And he’s trying to resolve that in his head. The script even goes so far as to give Shawn a choice at the end. The creepy video store lady says he can stay in this movie forever and she’ll make it so that Lena would never like Lizzy, and therefore Shawn and Lena will have their old relationship back, which they can live every day, over and over again. Or he can continue down this path of destroying the movie to get back to the real world, where the chasm between him and his sister will only grow larger over the years. Which would he rather have?
But here’s the frustrating thing about screenwriting. Just because you’ve got this noble idea of how you’re going to do something, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to execute it effectively. The reality with this relationship is that you have a 14 year old boy acting 8 years old the whole movie. Shawn follows Lena around like a little puppy. We are to believe she is the only thing in his life worth living for. I could MAYBE see that if Shawn was 8 years old and looked up to his big sister. But 14 years old? I’ve never seen a relationship like that before.
And I know why Devlin chose those ages. It’s so that the two could have this horror filmmaking past together. This happens all the time in screenwriting where you have these ideas of how you want something to work that’s not believable, however if you change them to the believable version, they take away something that you like. And most writers don’t like to give up the things that they really like, even when they’re not essential to the story.
The filmmaking backstory is a nice touch and creates a unique relationship between these two siblings, but it is not necessary for the story to work. You can just as easily make them horror aficionados who enjoy watching horror movies. That way you could change Shawn’s age to the one makes more sense here – 8, 9, or 10.
Can it still work the way it is? Yeah, it’s a fun slasher horror movie. This genre is very forgiving. But it’s just weird that the emotional core of this script is built on a 14 year old crying himself to sleep every night cause his 15 year old sister doesn’t hang out with him anymore.
There’s also something chunky salsa about the script’s mythology. The missing kids from the town who become locked in the movie – some of them are aware they’re still themselves, while others have forgotten who they are completely? But they always remember right as they’re about to get killed?? After you kill the Monster, he’s able to reanimate into any other character in the movie, a la Agent Smith from The Matrix? And, at a certain point, everyone in the movie starts to realize you’re trying to change the film so they all start attacking you?
I’m not sure I’d call any of these things script-killers. But you don’t want audience members leaving any movie that you’ve written asking, “So wait a minute… how did that work exactly?” “Why are they able to do that?” “Why could they only do that later in the movie but not earlier?” You gotta get that mythology as airtight as possible. Not just to appease annoying critics like myself. But because it genuinely makes your movie better when everything is tied up nicely.
This is a tough script to pick on a final verdict on. It’s definitely not bad. But it’s a bit too messy for my taste. From the brother-sister relationship to the 65%-of-the-way-there mythology, I’m not feeling it. With that said, Rogen and Co. are supposed to develop it. So hopefully it’ll get better.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I like whenever somebody can come up with stakes WORSE THAN DEATH. Not that death is bad stakes. But it’s kind of… obvious? Here, in Video Nasty, the stakes are that if they get killed by the killer, they’re stuck in this movie forever, having to relive this day over and over and over again, getting killed by this monster every night. Now that is a scenario I do not want to get caught in.
