Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Hit List) A young teacher reunites with her reclusive, scientific genius grandfather for the first time at his isolated country estate, uncovering disturbing truths about her childhood.
About: Jay Russell focuses mostly on directing. He directed the firefighter movie, Ladder 49, with Joaquin Phoenix. He’s making a movie about Lou Gehrig called “The Luckiest Man on the Face of the Earth.” But here he’s turning to writing-directing and doing so in the horror genre. He sold this project to Paramount. Akiva Goldsman’s Weed Road will produce. The script finished with 18 votes on the 2017 Hit List.
Writer: Jay Russell
Details: 118 pages

Just as I was putting this review together, I saw the news over at Deadline about “10-31,” a horror script that has been “much pursued” by everyone in Hollywood. It’s about a Halloween night that goes awry due to a message in a piece of candy. Horror director Eli Roth will helm the movie. This is what he said after reading the script: “Very rarely do you get a script that grabs you by the throat, holds you until the last page, and gives you nightmares after. I don’t want to reveal too much, but this is one of the best, scariest premises for a horror film that I have read in years.” You know when someone starts talking about a great spec, I have to read it. And since it’s Halloween Month, we absolutely have to get this reviewed. So if you have 10-31, send it my way!

Today’s script explores the good old fashioned horror premise of a main character who’s convinced she’s seeing a bunch of scary things, but is told by everyone else that she’s going crazy. Let’s find out if it’s any good.

30 year old Lizzie Fleischer is a first grade teacher whose life is on the up-and-up. She’s about to marry her boyfriend of four months, Stephen, who she’s madly in love with. Before she does, however, she has to put her past to rest. When Lizzie was a child, she used to go to her rich grandfather’s mansion, until one day when the family got into a horrible car accident and both her parents died. Lizzie wants to finally move past this trauma and seeing her grandfather again is the final step.

So up she drives into an endless forest until she finally comes upon the mansion. It’s a little more dilapidated than what she rememberers, but her grandfather still has a groundskeeper, the creepy Ben, who’s doing his best to keep things presentable. After she takes a look around and spots a few expensive pieces of hospital equipment (what are those for?) she finally meets her grandfather again, Dr. Rupert Fleischer.

We soon learn that the trauma was so intense after that crash, Lizzie barely rememberers anything about this place. So Rupert does his best to catch her up. It’s here she learns about the wing of the house that’s been “closed down” and not to be entered. Hmmm… I wonder what that’s about? Later, Liz wanders into the forest where she’s convinced she hears children playing. But this is both in the middle of nowhere and private property. There can’t be any kids around here.

That night, Liz wakes up to hear kids’ voices IN THE HOUSE. When she asks Ben and Rupert about this in the morning, they look at her like she’s nuts. But Liz’s childhood memories start coming back, and some of them include a hospital. A children’s hospital here on the premises. The deeper Liz digs, the more skittish her grandfather gets, until he informs her that, in his professional medical opinion, she may be psychotic. Not to worry, however. He’s a doctor and will treat her. Aww, what a nice guy. What ever could go wrong in this scenario? Read “You’re Not Real” to find out!

The challenge with “main character may be crazy” movies is that the writer has too much power to fudge the world we’re in in order to fit his puzzle pieces together. Literally any strange thing that happens that makes zero sense or doesn’t work for the plot, the writer can lean on the fact that the main character was imagining it. Or not imagining it. It’s such a convenient position to write from. Technically, nothing in your script needs to make sense.

The other big issue I see in these scripts is that the authors have no clue what real psychosis is. The extent of their medical knowledge rests on a few quick wikipedia searches and a friend of theirs who used to be a pharmacist named Todd. True psychosis, or anything that has do with mental health, is a complicated subject matter. And most writers just don’t want to do the research to figure out how their character’s condition actually works.

The combination of these two pitfalls is what often dooms these scripts. Which is why I’m happy to say that Russell manages them well. He doesn’t knock it out of the park. But there’s a sophistication to both the characters and the plot that, over time, gives you confidence that he has a plan here. And that’s all I want when I read one of these “crazy person” mysteries. I want to feel like the writer has a plan on where he’s taking me and it’s going to pay off in a satisfying way.

The area where Russell’s script shines the brightest is in its detail. He does a very good job of describing the area and the house and the things Liz is seeing. Normally, it takes the screenplay’s beefier cousin, the novel, to pull this off. But Russell manages it do it in script form, despite the craft’s minimalistic requirements.

In the end, the only thing that needs to work when writing a mystery is, does the reader want to find out what happened? Your mystery has to be compelling enough to pass that test. And the thought of this man taking advantage of children, doing experiments on them, possibly even doing experiments on Liz, made me want to find out what was really going on. While I wouldn’t say the final explanation was great. It was interesting enough that I felt satisfied. This spooky little script was definitely worth the read.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Not every car driving deep into the woods needs to include almost hitting a deer (an early scene that happens to Liz). If you have an instinct to write something – a beat, a scene, a moment, a surprise – the most common reason for that is that you’ve seen it before. So if you’ve seen it before, do you really want to use it? If you like the idea, find a twist on it. At least that way, you’re bringing something new to the table. A very basic example of this is, how do you make two superheroes fighting interesting if we’ve seen a million superheroes fight each other already? Well, what if a superhero had to fight himself? Which is what Captain America has to do in Endgame. It’s hard to come up with these ideas because your brain always wants to do the least amount of work. You have to push yourself.

What I learned special DVD extras: Consider the fact that this is the second horror script I’ve read IN A ROW that had a major plot point where parents died in a car crash. That should tell you, when you come up with that idea, it’s probably because you’ve seen it before. Honestly, sometimes I think the only thing that separates the good writers from the bad ones is effort. Screenwriting really is a medium where the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.

Genre: Drama
Premise: A young woman gets a job at an investment firm where she’s the only African-American at the company.
About: This script made last year’s Black List, finishing with 7 votes. The writer, Meredith Dawson, wrote on Mindy Kaling’s Hulu adaptation of Four Weddings and a Funeral. She also wrote one episode of The Mindy Project 2 years earlier.
Writer: Meredith Dawson
Details: 107 pages

What I was hoping for when I opened this script was something akin to a workplace “Get Out.” Not only would that be a great pitch, but it’d probably make a good movie. If a friend told me, “You have to see this movie. It’s like Get Out, the New Girl at Work version,” I’d throw that in the Netflix queue right away.

Unfortunately, that’s not what we get. And I’m trying not to hold that against the script. One of the first lessons they teach you in review school is to review the movie you saw, not the movie you wish they’d made. I’m not sure that applies as much on a screenwriting site because sometimes the best way to explain something is to show how you could’ve done it better. And there’s a lot here I think they could’ve done better. Let’s take a look.

Naomi is a 27 year old African-American recent graduate of Stanford Business School who watches way too much Frasier on Netflix. On the night of her graduation, she hooks up with a gorgeous bearded white guy named Ben (page 9). The two are going their separate ways in life, however, so after they sleep together, they don’t talk again.

Naomi then starts her job at Harvey, Larter, and Saw, a venture capitalist firm where she quickly finds out that she’s the only African-American there. No worries. Naomi is used to this dynamic. But what she isn’t used to is when GUESS WHO shows up to team with her on her first job? That’s right, Ben (page 26). It turns out he works here as well!

Despite her attempts to keep her private life separated from her career, Naomi can’t help but fall into a steamy relationship with the sexy Ben. But Naomi’s beta-male co-worker, Nick, who secretly loves her, warns Naomi that Ben is bad. “How?” She asks. Nick says he knows these things and just has a feeling.

Noami and Nick put together a proposal for a new company to finance but Naomi’s boss, Iyana, flippantly rejects it. Weeks later, during a big company party, Naomi is shocked to see that Ben has brought a date. But not just any date. His girlfriend of six years (page 62)! Needless to say, Ben and Naomi’s relationship sours quickly.

But it gets worse. Ben tells Iyana she should invest in the same company Nick and Naomi liked, and this time Iyana likes the idea. So much so that she puts Ben in charge. Naomi asks Iyana what’s up and she says Ben was just more convincing.

Later, Naomi goes to a business dinner meeting with a client they’re trying to sign, an older man, and he puts his hand on her leg (page 88). Noami tells Iyana about it but Iyana does nothing. Disgusted with the way she’s been treated, Naomi decides to let the press know just how little her company cares about keeping women safe.

You’re probably wondering why I included page numbers in today’s summary. I did so for a specific reason. These are the only plot points in the script. By plot points I mean major plot developments that send the story in a new direction. Page 9, page 26, page 62, and page 88.

Four plot points for the entire movie doesn’t provide enough dramatic entertainment for an audience to stay invested. These are movies. They’re not real life, where it takes time for big things to happen. In movies big things need to happen consistently. We go nearly 40 pages between Ben’s arrival at the company and the reveal of Ben being in a relationship. And I would even argue that that’s B-story stuff. It shouldn’t even be the main plot.

Another issue is that there isn’t enough conflict. Conflict is the screenwriter’s best friend. You should always be looking for it. Your hero should be encountering obstacles and problems and issues from every direction. That’s what makes watching characters interesting, is seeing how they deal with the things that are thrown at them.

The first 60 pages of “Spark” is basically Naomi loving life, a party on the page, a 1 hour drive down Easy Street. That’s unacceptable in a feature screenplay. It also makes the ending weird. Because for 60-80 pages, this is a light soap opera. Girl meets guy. She falls for him. Turns out he’s in a relationship. So to then make the ending incredibly serious with major sexual misconduct allegations felt like it came out of nowhere. Had there been more conflict at work and had the tone been darker throughout, it might’ve worked. But in its current iteration, the final act felt like a different movie.

How would you fix a script like this? For starters, you have to understand the 3-Act structure. Something big needs to happen at the end of the first act. Something that sets the story in motion. Today’s writer made Naomi starting work the end of the first act. That’s not enough. It’s just continuing the good vibes. A seasoned writer would’ve gotten Naomi into work within the first five pages. And they would’ve had the sexual misconduct happen at the end of the first act. The movie, then, would be about dealing with the ramifications of what happened, trying to get someone to do something about it while, at the same time, trying to maintain your professionalism, your relationships, and your job. I haven’t read the Roger Aisles script that’s coming out but I can guarantee you the first instance of sexual misconduct isn’t going to happen on page 88. What this essentially means is that Spark has an 88 page first act. And that’s just not understanding screenplay structure.

There were other problems as well. 10-line paragraphs (this is one of the easiest ways to spot a new writer), a lack of clarity in the genre (is this a drama, rom-com, a dramedy?). All the business-speak consisted of buzz words and buzz acronyms minus the necessary specificity to connect it to the story (“But HEAL is puttering out high dividends for a company as young as it is AND we’re on track for FDA approval within the next year.”).

With that said, the writing itself was strong. Unlike that awful script I reviewed in the newsletter where I could barely get through a sentence, the prose was never overbearing and the writing was insanely easy to read, to the point where my eyes were shooting across the page and I never got lost.

But this script is not ready for primetime. There are too many Screenwriting 101 mistakes here. I was hoping for more.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: As a screenwriter, one of the things you have to be good at is getting a lot of story across quickly. Take the storyline of Naomi sleeping with Ben and then finding out he works with her. That took 26 pages here. In the Gray’s Anatomy pilot episode, they use the same storyline. And yet it took them less than 8 pages. And that was a TV show! Where they don’t even have to move fast. Whatever you think is the proper pacing for moving your plot along, it could probably move along faster.

THE NEWSLETTER SHOULD BE HITTING YOUR E-MAIL BOXES RIGHT ABOUT NOW!

Sorry guys. No post today. I was going to review Shadow of the Moon but the first few minutes were so bad, I put Netflix on a time out in the corner. I don’t even know how Netlflix production works. Nobody hears about these films until one day they just appear out of thin air. What Netflix doesn’t understand is that, if a movie falls in a forest and nobody’s around, it doesn’t get taken seriously. Their whole method for producing movies is bizarre and I struggle to understand it and NO Netflix, you may not get out of your time out early. Back in the corner!

Anyway, I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but this is probably the greatest Scriptshadow Newsletter EVER. I share with you the single worst idea for a show or movie I’ve ever seen. I tell you the number 1 thing that gets my knickers in a bunch when reading a script. And it isn’t a Scriptshadow newsletter if I don’t share my thoughts on the latest Star Wars news. I mathematically break down what number Rise of Skywalker has to hit at the box office to ensure Disney doesn’t blow Lucasfilm up and start over. I check out an overlooked movie and explore its connections with the golden age of the spec script. I dance. Although I didn’t include that part so you’ll have to imagine it. And I explain to you the industry reason why the script I review in the newsletter got purchased, even though it probably shouldn’t have.

It’s a smorgasbord of screenwriting awesomeness. But you can’t read it unless you’re signed up. If you’re not on the Scriptshadow Mailing List, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you.

p.s. For those of you e-mailing me saying that you keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several reasons why your e-mail address/server is rejecting the newsletter. One of which is your server is bad and needs to be spanked.

This has to be one of the more eclectic group of scripts that have been featured on Amateur Showdown. We got something from every corner. We’ve got jihadi fighters, a slave horror flick, a dad-daughter comedy team-up, and a heist flick with a – stop the presses – original premise. Should be a fun weekend. In the meantime, I’ll be working on the end of the month Scriptshadow Newsletter. I’ll give you a quick teaser. I just saw THE WORST MOVIE OR TV IDEA EVER. I’m talking in the history of ideas. And it got made. And it’s coming out. I can’t contain how frustrated I am that someone actually made this. But to find out what it is, you’ll have to wait for the newsletter. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, e-mail carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “NEWSLETTER” and I’ll make sure you get it.

Amateur Showdown is a single weekend tournament where the scripts have been vetted from a pile of hundreds to be featured here, for your entertainment. It’s up to you to read as much of each script as you can, then vote for your favorite in the comments section. Whoever receives the most votes by Sunday 11:59pm Pacific Time gets a review next Friday.

Got a great script that you believe can pummel four fellow amateur scripts? Send a PDF to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Good luck, everyone!

Title: THE BLACK PETREL
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: A frustrated novelist goes to an old Southern hotel looking for inspiration and finds herself trapped in a nightmare with five strangers and a vengeful ex-slave.
Who am I: A writer trying to feed a hungry audience something delicious.
Why You Should Read: If GET OUT and A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET got pregnant listening to a Nina Simone song, this is the baby that would pop out.

Title: SINJAR
Genre: Action / War / Thriller
Logline: A foreign aid doctor enlists the help of a unique unit to rescue her fellow captives and escape through the Islamic State, pursued by a ruthless zealot and a horde of jihadi fighters.
Why Should You Read: “Sinjar” is an adrenaline-soaked feature depicting the realities of conflict in the Middle-East, in particular, the attempted genocide of the Yazidi during the summer of 2014. Imbued in this story are my own experiences of war, terrorists, and the land of Kurdistan…
Blacklist: “nonstop, action-driven thriller that can rival any other shoot-em-up war movie, but what makes it special is the depth of the story that it reveals beyond the set pieces. More than your average action flick, this script digs offers themes and commentary that dig at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East: the history, socioeconomic challenges, and cultural divides that have created that quagmire. It asks poignant questions about the consequences of military conflict, and follows those questions up with real answers from a real, specific point of view.”

Wescreenplay: Consider 8/10

Various: “The writer of this work has crafted a visceral, unrelenting narrative” “a kinetic blast of entertainment.” “the action in these pages is stellar.” “a fast-paced blistering thrill ride.”

Title: Good Blood
Genre: Action-Comedy
Premise: An inexperienced female agent must team up with her overprotective father to stop a bunch of armed yokels from overthrowing the government.
Why You Should Read: It’s a girl-with-a-gun action-comedy featuring a male-female buddy dynamic. In other words, three trends that Carson recommended for comedy scripts. The script has been through a number of drafts, so it should be tighter than my a&$#&le before my girlfriend pegs me.
Writer: Anonymous… for now (Just like Carson was).

Title: Money to Burn
Genre: Heist
Logline: A terminally-ill architect with a troubled past is recruited by a group of would-be thieves who plan to steal $70 million from a government facility that burns retired currency.
Why You Should Read: Money to Burn looks at the American dream turned sour through the prism of real people in real situations. Money means food on the table, pure and simple. The heroes in Money to Burn are what society would label criminals, but they are not Ocean’s 11 style super-cool, super-gifted criminals, they are everyman types who made wrong decisions along the way. Money to Burn focuses on their humanity rather than their criminality. — Money to Burn has a traditional denouement, a major set-piece heist which ends with a unique robbery, but the story is really about how a group of sick, dying men and women learn to live and love while collectively facing their imminent end. It’s a story about a unique support group where you have to be dying to gain entry.

Title: Odyssey
Genre: Western/TV Pilot/Drama
Premise: A fierce pregnant widow makes a deal with a degenerate grave-robber to help her escort a herd of cattle across the Old West while the psychotic creditor that drove her husband to suicide and murdered her father stalks her across state-to-state, determined to make her pay up, or worse.
Why You Should Read: My bread-and-butter trademark is to take a tried and tested genre and write a new interpretation of old tropes. I think we all love westerns for the grizzled stares, the melodramatic music, and the collective fantasy of a lawless land. I do too. But I’m more interested in what the genre can do in the modern-day, not confined by what your Dad might like to watch on a sleepy Sunday afternoon. Odyssey is a pilot for a mini-series that honors what has already been done in the genre, but also takes it forward into new, exciting directions.

One of the most common e-mails I get is: “Hey Carson. I just saw that Deadline/Variety/Hollywood Reporter article about [Movie X]. Do you have the script? I’m writing a similar script and I want to make sure I’m not f&*%$.” I’ve gotten three of those e-mails just this week! Then I see a trailer for this movie called, “Sweetheart” and lookie what we have here. A woman gets stranded on an island with a monster. Does that sound familiar? Yeah, Bad Robot was developing the same exact film, titled, “Beast,” which I reviewed in my newsletter and was very much looking forward to.

This leads us to today’s question. What if you find out that the script you’ve been working on for the past five months is strikingly similar to another project? Should you give up? Most writers do. But I have news for you. Finding out there’s a project out there that’s similar to yours is a common occurrence in the industry. In fact, seasoned writers expect there to be similar projects announced while they’re writing scripts. The reason being, we’re not all as original as we think. Three years ago, I remember seeing five separate thriller scripts about hotel owner peeping toms who witness a murder.

So you discover there’s a project out there like yours. What do you do? First of all, you need to gather as much information as you can. Ideally, like the writers e-mailing me, you want to read the script. The more you know about their story, the more you can make sure your story is different. But often times, their script is nothing like yours. It’s actually rare that two people are executing a story in a similar way. But even if it has some similar story beats, don’t fret. The script actually isn’t the most important thing.

You need to find out how much juice is behind the project. Are they putting a RELEASE DATE behind this? Are they saying things like, “Production starts in two months?” Are they announcing cast members outside of the one or two leads? If it sounds like the studio is fast-tracking the project in any way, that’s trouble for you. Cause it means the movie is probably getting made.

However, if this is just something that a big director has attached themselves to. Or even a big director and a big actor, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. Spielberg attached himself to Roboapocalypse. I’m still waiting for that one to come out. James Cameron and Guillermo Del Toro attached themselves to Mountains of Madness. That wasn’t playing at the Arclight last time I went there.

Back in the day, I’m talking early 2000s, I had this script that took place in the future and involved motorcycles. Then I read a big splashy Variety article about how they were making a live-action Akira, a movie that also took place in the future and revolved around motorcycles. Aww, man, I thought, I can’t write that script anymore and threw the idea in the trash. Well, 20 screenwriters and a dozen directors later, Warner Brothers still hasn’t made Akira.

What you have to remember about Hollywood is that it’s more likely that something doesn’t get made than gets made. So even if you hear about a similar project, you shouldn’t worry. Most projects get stuck in development. Development is a process whereby producers work with a writer to bring the script to a level that can attract talent and financing. Those things are hard to attract. And scripts are hard to write. So what usually happens is that the writer writes something “professional” that checks all the boxes, but is missing that je ne sais quoi.

Think about that for second. The writers and producers spent 6-9 months working meticulously on the script, hammering out all the issues, out only to find out, when it was all over, that it wasn’t any good. This is a momentum-destroyer and what often happens is whoever was attached to the movie moves on to another more exciting project, or puts this one on the back burner. The project gets placed into stasis until they decide to revive it and put some money towards hiring another writer and trying again. This process rinses and repeats and usually ends in failure. Which is kind of depressing when you’re thinking about it from the development side. But it’s good news if the project is similar to yours. Because it means you don’t have to worry about it.

This is why I tell amateur writers who find out another amateur writer has the same idea as them, “Dude, that is the last person you need to worry about.” The chances of an amateur script getting purchased and produced is small. So that’s not the writer you need to concern yourself with. If you learn that David Koepp is writing a similar idea, then yeah, you might need to put your worry boots on. But don’t worry about other amateur writers.

The only time you should worry about something is if they’ve already shot the film or it’s being fast-tracked by a major studio. I wouldn’t even be scared if you find a similar idea from an independent production company that’s already been produced. The industry has so much content right now that anything that doesn’t get a wide release or an Oscar push isn’t well-known. An A24 movie might make 1.5 million dollars at the box office. So if you have a similar idea to that film that’s larger in scope and therefore doesn’t cross over into that audience, you should be fine.

You want to know what matters most? It’s going to sound cliche but it’s true. Write a great script. Write complex scene-chewing characters. Come up with a plot that zigs and zags in ways the reader never expected. Focus on creating an emotional connection between your characters and the audience. Create two AMAZING scenes that nobody will be able to stop talking about.

Because even if you write something that’s too similar to another project, you’ll still have a script that demonstrates your talent. And this industry is more about interviewing for the next job than trying to sell your next screenplay. I know some writers who have used a single writing sample for going on ten years to get work. So focus on writing that great script and not panicking every two weeks when you hear that someone else has the same idea as you. Cause chances are, that’s the last thing that will get in the way of your script’s success.

Want proof? I know a recent script that had FOUR other similar concepts in various stages of development and production to compete against. And that script still sold. What script am I talking about? I can’t tell you yet. But hopefully I’ll be able to soon. :)

Yo, do you have a logline that isn’t working? Are those queries going out unanswered? Try out my logline service. It’s 25 bucks for a 1-10 rating, 150 word analysis, and a logline rewrite. I also have a deluxe service for 40 dollars that allows for unlimited e-mails back and forth where we tweak the logline until you’re satisfied. I consult on everything screenwriting related (first page, first ten pages, first act, outlines, and of course, full scripts). So if you’re interested in getting some quality feedback, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line: “CONSULTATION” and I’ll get back to you right away!