Genre: True Crime/Thriller
Premise (from writer): After the arrest of David Parker Ray, one of the most sadistic men in US history, the consequences of his heinous crimes unfold through the eyes of different characters in search of countless missing victims.
Why You Should Read: I’ve been obsessed with this little-known true story ever since I read about it a year ago. Although it’s filled with shocking turns and twisted details, I wanted to focus on a theme more relevant to today: the search for truth in a world where there are as many versions of it as there are individuals. For those faint of heart, I can assure you, I didn’t want to write a cheap and gruesome horror movie, instead, this is something more human. I could’ve written this like a real-life version of Saw, but why bother turning it into a torture-porn movie when the investigation after his arrest became greater than anyone could have imagined. For anyone willing to give it a try, I would be eternally grateful and will obviously try my best to be part of any discussion.
Writer: Kit Anderson
Details: 114 pages
Mucho movie news has been hitting the internnoying this week, starting with reviews for Venom, a film that has a wild amount of support despite its sub-30% Rotten Tomato Score. And Jon Favreau, who’s building the new Star Wars TV show, announces a director line-up so diverse, Twitter usage has decreased 26% due to the SJW Mob’s inability to criticize his choices.
While it’s tempting to dedicate an entire post to that, I’m happy to announce that today’s script is so captivating, you won’t be thinking about symbiotes or mandalorians by the end of the review. Truth or Consequences is definitely going to end up on my Top 10 Amateur Scripts of the Year List. But how high will it rise? Follow me and we can find out together.
It’s 1999. We’re looking at a window on the outside of a mobile home in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico, when CRASH, a hand shoots out. Soon-after, a woman, Cynthia, completely naked, beat up and bloody, metal collar strapped around her neck, breaks out and starts running for freedom. She makes it to a nearby home where an older couple take her in and quickly call the police.
Cynthia is taken to the hospital, and we slide over to a fresh-out-of-school cop, Costa, who joins a gaggle of policemen inspecting the trailer Cynthia was held captive in. They find that virtually the entire home was built to capture women and make them sex slaves. The home’s owner, David, would mostly lure prostitutes in, then he and his girlfriend would torture them.
But here’s where things get weird. The evidence points to David not killing these women, but rather brainwashing them and sending them back into society, with no memory of what happened. The cops aren’t sure if they buy this, but it’s a key detail, since it’s the difference between this guy being a serial killer or a serial torturer.
The script makes the ballsy decision to follow a new protagonist every 15 pages. First it’s Cynthia. Then it’s Costa. Then it’s an FBI agent. Then it’s a female cop. Then it’s David himself. Then it’s Costa’s girlfriend, Sally. That’s who we’re left with 13 years after the original crime. Now a reporter, Sally is attempting to learn the whereabouts of a woman whose ID was found in David’s home. Sally hopes to not only provide closure for the girl’s mother, but to prove once and for all that David didn’t simply release these girls back into society, but killed each and every one of them.
Let me start by saying I’ve never read anything like this. It’s quite the mesmerizing script. In fact, the first thing I want every writer here to do is download and read the first 15 pages of this script. I tell you so many times you have to GRAB THE READER RIGHT AWAY. Yet there’s all this debate about what that means and what kind of scenes qualify as “grabbing the reader.” This. THIS is how you grab the reader. Go ahead, open this script. I DARE YOU to stop reading through the first 15 pages.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s talk about why this script kicks butt. For starters, I never knew what was coming next. The protagonist-swapping mechanism ensured that even if I did know where the plot was going, I was never sure whose eyes I’d be experiencing it through. Not only that, but the character journeys themselves were unpredictable. (Spoiler) One of the most shocking moments in the script is when we follow a cop for 10 pages only to see her blow her brains out afterwards. Once you do something that shocking to the reader, you’ve got them, because now it’s impossible for them to know what’s coming next.
On top of this, the script introduces a non-traditional take on the serial killer genre. What does an investigation look like when you’ve captured the killer within the first 20 pages? That added a whole new twist to everything because as David is being interrogated, denying everything, I’m wondering, “Are they going to let this guy go? Are they going to screw this up?”
Then there was just all this weird stuff. David made these audio tapes which were instruction-based rules for every woman he captured. The tapes explained, in detail, what would happen to the women and what they should prepare for. In addition to this, he had a separate mobile home known as “The Toy Box” where he brought the torture up another level.
When you combined these things with the constantly changing protagonists, you can understand why this was unlike anything I’ve read before.
But did it all come together in the end?
Unfortunately, that’s where I had some issues with the script. I’ve always told you guys to watch out for big time jumps. Every time you jump forward in time, you pop the tension balloon you’ve been building. Once you jump to 2000, then 2011, you’ve taken so much air out of your story, it’s nearly impossible to blow it back up. And that’s what happened here. You hooked me with intensity. But as the script went on, the story became more drawn out. It felt like I’d been sold a bill of goods.
On top of this, the latter part of the story focuses on a random news reporter we barely met in the first act, looking for the body of a random girl who we never met so that we can bring peace to a random mom who we knew for 2 scenes. You were introducing crazy cool characters one after another throughout the first 50 pages. Why, then, are we spending the climax with, arguably, three of the least interesting people in the script?
This script reminds me a lot of Zodiac. To some of you, that will be good news. But my issue with Zodiac was that the longer it went on, the more pointless it got. We began to realize that we were never getting the truth. So what was the point of sticking around? The point that Fincher would argue is that it mirrored the real case and how that would’ve felt to the detective. I suspect Kit would make the same argument here. And it’s a valid argument. Lots of people loved Zodiac. So who am I to say it’s the wrong choice?
Despite that issue, this script has too many positives not to be celebrated. The writer takes some huge chances. He makes unconventional choices. He weaves a story that’s impossible to predict. This script and the writer have so much potential that this will definitely end up in my Top 5 Amateur Scripts of 2018. Worth a weekend read for sure!
Script link: Truth or Consequences, New Mexico (updated draft)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Time = connection in a script. The more time we spend with a character, the more connected we’ll be to them, the more invested we’ll be in them succeeding. We don’t spend enough time with Sally early on, which is why it’s hard to stay invested in her pursuit later. If I were Kit, I would add a large “Sally” section to the first half of the script. Make her one of the more memorable protagonists. That way, when she comes back later, we’ll care a lot more about her pursuit of this girl.
I was so frustrated by yesterday’s script – specifically how lame the main character was – that I needed to write an article reminding everyone how to write a main character. As I said yesterday, your story *is* your main character. So if you get that part right, everything else in the script is likely to work. You’d be amazed at how easy it is for readers to overlook plot holes when they fall in love with your hero. Now it used to be thought that as long as your hero “saved a cat” within the first few scenes, you were good. While saving the cat is never a bad idea, the kind of stuff I’m suggesting has more to do with who your character is overall. We want the hero’s characteristics playing out in every scene, not just one scene. With that in mind, here are five character types that audiences love.
THE RELENTLESSLY ACTIVE CHARACTER
It’s really hard to dislike a character who’s relentlessly active. We like people who take action in life and therefore we like people who take action on the big screen. There are two versions of this character type. There’s the character who’s relentlessly active because they HAVE TO BE. And there’s the character who’s relentlessly active because they WANT TO BE. Both characters work. But the latter works better. An example of a relentlessly active character who has to be that way is Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity. Bourne must charge forward because if he doesn’t, bad guys will catch up to him and kill him. An example of the relentlessly active character who wants to be is Madonna in the #1 ranked Black List script, Blonde Ambition. Madonna is active because she wants to be successful more than anything. A testament to how well this character works is that Madonna ends up being a real sketch-show by the end of the script, betraying her boyfriend in order to secure a record deal. But we’re so taken by her relentless drive that we don’t care. We’ve been all-in with this character from the moment that quality was introduced.
THE SYMPATHETIC CHARACTER
Another way to make an audience love a character is to build a sympathetic scenario into their life. They just got fired. They’ve just been dumped (Crazy Stupid Love). They’ve been taken advantage of. They’ve lost a child (A Quiet Place). Their physicality’s been taken away (Deadpool, Upgrade). It’s a natural tendency when we see someone who’s down to root for their success. We can’t help it. But there’s a caveat to this. The person who’s down can’t be negative about it. Sure, if the hero’s son dies, they should be upset for a few scenes. But, eventually, they need to get back on the horse and continue the journey. It should be noted that The Sympathetic Character isn’t as powerful as The Relentlessly Active character, because there’s more manipulation involved in The Sympathetic Character. The writer is literally killing a child (or getting the hero fired, or having his wife leave him) to make the audience foot for the hero. A certain percentage of the audience will see through this and check out. Whereas the relentlessly active character always works.
THE UNDERDOG
I shouldn’t have to explain to you why this character works. Rey is an underdog. All the characters in It were underdogs. Spider-Man is an underdog. The boy in Wonder is an underdog (or a “wunderdog”). The underdog trope is so potent, writers have devised ways to make badasses underdogs. John Wick is the best assassin in the world. Yet he’s an underdog going up against an overbearing Russian mafia. Ditto The Equalizer! I don’t know anyone who doesn’t root for the overmatched little guy. Seeing him win is one of the most satisfying experiences in storytelling.
THE STRUGGLER
Every single person on this earth is struggling with something. It may be alcohol. It may be drugs. It may be depression. It may be anxiety. It may be porn, anger, money, health, or a good old fashioned unfixable problem. A well-executed inner struggle can define a character. The other day I was watching Jersey Shore (hold on, stay with me). In it, Ronnie, who, even by conservative estimates, is a total douchebag, is losing his mind because his ex-girlfriend refuses to let him see his infant daughter. The reason I picked this example is because we have this terrible show. We have a bunch of terrible people in it. Then we have Ronnie, who’s the worst of the lot. Yet seeing him struggle with this problem made him an extremely sympathetic character. I wanted him to see his kid again. And that’s all you’re doing with STRUGGLER characters. You’re creating an inner struggle that doesn’t have an easy solution. We will root for the character because we want to see him overcome his struggle. It’s basic yet very effective.
THE IDGAF (“I DON’T GIVE A F*%$”) CHARACTER
The IDGAF character is harder to pull off than these other characters. He’s usually an anti-hero as opposed to a traditional hero. The reason he works is because he represents the ultimate wish-fulfillment in all of us. WE ALL WISH WE DIDN’T GIVE A F%$*! We wish we could say whatever we wanted. We wish we could walk into any situation and not care how we acted. We wish we had the courage to walk up to that guy or girl and say to them “How you doin’,” and if they blew us off, walk away unaffected. Han Solo, Cool Hand Luke, Connor McGregor, Lou Bloom, Ferris Bueller, Tyler Durden. These are true IDGAF characters. Why do we love Tony Stark so much more than Steve Rogers? Cause Tony Stark doesn’t give a f%&$, that’s why. These characters are the ultimate representation of wish-fullfilment which is why if you have a good idea for one, don’t hesitate to write them into your next script.
There you have it. Five characters audiences love. But before I leave, let’s address a question I know at least a few of you have. Why don’t these characters always work? Well, you have to remember that everything I’ve suggested today is a starting point. You still have to execute the character. You can’t just kill off a father’s child and we’ll automatically love your movie because “sympathy.” If your movie looks like Hold the Dark, we won’t care if you wrote in one of the above characters.
You must also build your character beyond the scaffolding. You still have to come up with a compelling backstory for the character. You still have to come up with a convincing flaw. You still have to create compelling unresolved relationships between your hero and other characters. You still have to create a personality we’re drawn to. You still have to write non-crappy dialogue when your character speaks. And you still have to give us a story that’s interesting. It should go without saying that this only works if your execution is invisible. The second we sense you’re trying to make us fall in love with your hero, we do the opposite.
And finally, a brief reminder of characters to avoid. Avoid passive heroes at all costs. There is no way to make these characters work over the course of an entire movie. Avoid characters who don’t talk much. Yes, there are ways to make these characters work but it’s hard – especially on the page. Avoid victim heroes – characters who have tough circumstances and don’t do anything about them other than complain. You can create secondary characters who are victims. But never the hero. And try to avoid downer/hopeless/nihilistic heroes in general. Movies are supposed to be an escape and therefore we want our heroes to represent hope. You may say, “But Carson, what if my movie requires that my hero be a downer and hopeless?” I would say, “You may want to consider writing another movie.”
Genre: Crime/Drama
Premise: A rapper who built his gangster image off an old friend learns that the friend has been released from prison early and is looking for revenge.
About: Making a movie is hard. You can be *this* close and, all of a sudden, BAM, everything falls apart. That’s what happened with Harmony Korine’s “Trap.” The film was slated to go in 2016 with Idris Elba, Benicio Del Toro, Robert Pattinson, Al Pacino, and James Franco. But just two weeks before production, it all fell apart when Korine got into a major disagreement with one of the cast members (who he won’t name). Today we learn if it was a good thing or a bad thing that this film got squashed.
Writer: Harmony Korine
Details: 123 pages
Dis track.
I listened to the Machine Gun Kelly dis track of Eminem yesterday.
You might be saying, “Carson, you know what a dis track is?” The answer is no. I do not. But I’m a quick learner and from what I now understand, it is when one rapper, or internet celebrity, takes down another rapper, or internet celebrity, in a song. I feel very “hip with it” talking about this. And it got me in a gangster mood. Naturally I then had to read Harmony Korine’s take on gangster rap superstardom, Trap, which refers to how we all get “trapped” in the lives that we create for ourselves.
Damn, that’s deep!
Rico is a worldwide gangster rap superstar. How successful is this man? He’s got five houses in Miami alone, yo. He’s got LeBron on speed dial (no, I’m serious, he leaves a voicemail for LeBron). He’s also got a wife and a kid. And, oh yeah, sometimes he bangs Miley Cyrus on the side. You know, when he’s bored.
Rico’s preparing to perform at the Grammy’s in a few days when he gets bad news. The childhood friend he used to run with, Slim, is getting out of prison. Normally, your friend being released from prison would be cause for celebration. But, you see, that wife of Rico’s? That used to be Slim’s girlfriend. That child of Rico’s? That’s actually Slim’s son. That personality of Rico’s? Yeah, he kinda based it entirely on Slim.
Once Slim’s out, he hooks up with some local surfers-slash-thieves (who I guess stole their own personas from Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze) and starts texting videos to Rico taunting him that he’s coming. As we learn from a local Rastafarian drug lord who’s trying to play peacekeeper between the two sides, it isn’t enough for Slim to kill Rico. He has to terrorize him first.
Rico beefs up his security but it’s clear that won’t deter Slim-Jim. Then, on the night of the Grammy’s, Slim and the Surfers barge into his house, kill all his security, and hold Rico’s son hostage (well, actually, it’s Slim’s son, which doesn’t make sense but whatever). Slim texts Rico to come home alone so they can square away their beef once and for all, son!
I’m betting from that description, you’re thinking this script is pretty good, amirite? You’ve got gangster rappers. Stolen personas. Killer surfers. Miley Cyrus. A Miami backdrop. This sounds like it could be an insane movie, a modern day Scarface.
It isn’t.
It isn’t because it’s one of the most inefficiently written screenplays I’ve ever read.
Okay, so, here’s a task. I want you to convey to me, in as many scenes as you think are necessary, that Rico and Slim stole money from a yacht when they were teenagers, the act got Slim thrown in prison, Rico has an upcoming Grammy show, and Slim is now out of prison. Off the top of your head, how many pages do you think that should take? 10 maybe? I suppose, if you really want to draw the scenes out and sell this world, 20? Hell, let’s be generous. Add another 5 pages.
How many pages did it take Korine to get this info across?
FIFTY!
It takes the script 50 freaking pages to set those four things up.
And the worst part is that none of those 50 pages were interesting. It’s just a bunch of flashbacks to the two characters when they were younger doing stupid shit.
And here’s the bizarre part. It’s all silent. Or, at least, most of it is. Nobody talks in this movie. Nobody has a conversation. It’s all images. And when I say images, I don’t mean a string of images pieced together in a dramatically compelling way. I mean seeing Rico sit in his bedroom thinking about life kind of images.
I kept waiting for someone to TALK to someone. IT BARELY HAPPENS. Oddly enough, the people who do talk are never the people we want to talk! Rastafarian Drug Dealer probably gets more lines in this movie than Rico – the protagonist!
And look, I understand that there are instances where you can pull this sort of thing off. Hitchcock could perform miracles without having his characters say anything. But this kind of storytelling requires skill. And this is not one of Korine’s skills. The guy can shoot. His trailers look amazing. But 124 pages steeped in redundant flashbacks and characters never speaking to each other is not entertaining storytelling. And that’s what was so frustrating. This has the potential to be a kick ass story. On paper the characters sound crazy and fun. But in practice, they’re quiet and boring.
The biggest problem is that I never knew who Rico was. He never spoke. He never acted in a way that gave me insight into him. That’s one of the easiest things to do, guys. If you want to tell us who your protagonist is, have them perform an action that represents them. If you’re writing an asshole character, have him cut everybody at Starbucks. If you’re writing a cowardly character, make him back down from the guy who cuts everyone in Starbucks. If you’re writing an irresponsible character, have him run out of gas on the drive to Starbucks because he always waits til the last minute to do anything.
Your protagonist is your movie. If he’s not working, your movie isn’t going to work. So you need to get him right above all else. Rico is so passive in this movie, he disappears off the page whenever his name isn’t mentioned. You don’t even remember the guy. This is why I tell writers to avoid passive heroes. There have been a few of them who have worked throughout history, but 99% of the time, they don’t. Make your hero active. Because if he’s sitting around reacting to things, as is the case here, audiences aren’t going to care about him. I know I didn’t. Korine may be bummed out this movie didn’t get made. But I see it as a blessing in disguise.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] Larry the Lyft Driver would’ve liked it
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Flashbacks are the devil. They really are. They rarely, if ever, push the plot forward. They kill story momentum. They’re the laziest form of backstory. They should include this script in screenwriting classes for why flashbacks should never be used.
Genre: Science-Fiction
Premise: (from Hit List) An Air Force cargo plane on a routine delivery breaks up over the desert. The survivors can’t radio for help, but they pick up a mysterious signal. They aren’t alone.
About: This script finished with 25 votes on last year’s Hit List. It is the feature adaptation of a short the writers made. Take note ye young writers. If you can put anything on film, anything at all, it’s better than nothing. Once you have a script or an idea, you become a promoter. And you must figure out ways to promote your script. Starting with a short movie is a great way to do this. — Writing partners Daniel Stewart and Noah Griffith wrote some episodes on the Spike adaptation of The Mist. They have a couple of other sci-fi projects in development as well.
Writers: Daniel Stewart & Noah Griffith
Details: 90 pages
I’m still pretty pissed about yesterday. I’m not sure who I’m more mad at, the director or the company that greenlit a terrible script (Netflix).
But a funny thing happened today. I was taking a Lyft home (I don’t do Uber) and I got into a conversation with Larry the Lyft Driver about Netflix. I’m always interested in what non-industry people think about movies. And Larry loved Netflix so I asked him, “What do you think when you see a movie that’s branded as a Netflix Original? Are you more or less likely to watch it?”
He answered without hesitation, “More likely.” I asked him why. He said he felt like the Netflix brand was a seal of quality he couldn’t get from other movies. He liked How it Ends. He liked Extinction, as well. It was a reminder that people like myself who live inside this industry bubble don’t see things the same way regular movie watchers do. I’ve been convinced that Netflix is dumping shitty movies on their viewers for two years now. But if their customers are anything like Larry the Lyft Driver, they don’t feel the same way.
I bring this up because today’s script is the ultimate Netflix film. I wouldn’t be surprised if Netflix stole this from Sony at some point. The main difference between this Netflix film and other Netflix films, though? This one has a chance of being good.
We’re on a C-130 Cargo plane with four Air Force soldiers – the good-looking carefree Carter, the blue collar lover of lit, Swodzinski, the skinny nervous kid of the group, Freeman, and the beautiful and intelligent, Taylor. Out of nowhere, the plane is hit with turbulence and seconds later, they plummet towards the earth.
The group is able to parachute out in time, and end up in a desert. Swod is injured, so the first order of business is finding him a medkit. Carter and Taylor head to the wreckage, and after locating the kit, notice a giant antennae farm in the distance, which is pumping out a grating signal to their walkie-talkies. Oh, and they also find an old sign buried in the sand. “Quarantine.”
After Taylor decides to look for more stuff, Carter heads back to see a group of soldiers on horses ride up and kill Swod and Freeman! Those same soldiers are then attacked by an 8 foot tall creature! Freaked out, Carter makes a run for it, eventually running into an old Cold War facility with a bunch of dead bodies inside. The creature corners him there, but he’s saved at the last second by Taylor.
Or, at least, who he thinks is Taylor. Once safe, Taylor reveals herself to be a 7-years-older version of Taylor, and she regales Carter in a shocking tale. You see, they’re just clones. And they’ve been grown here, over and over again, to tangle with this alien in the hopes of jamming its signals so that it can’t phone home and order an invasion.
Utterly gobsmacked, Carter realizes that unless he wants to keep getting regenerated forever, he has to take down the alien beast once and for all.
A long long time ago, I wrote a time travel script. In this script, I came up with a scenario by which the time travel was being generated by aliens. When I sent the script out, every reader reacted the same way. “As soon as you mentioned aliens, I was done.” I didn’t understand this at the time. I thought the idea was awesome. What could be better than one trippy sci-fi element? How bout two! What I eventually learned is that readers tend to give you one outrageous conceit and that’s it.
This isn’t always the case. For example, if you set up two conceits right away, readers may go with it. But if you introduce a second outrageous conceit late in the screenplay, most people won’t. And that was a big issue with Fragment. As soon as they said, “We’re clones,” I threw up my arms. I was upset because until that point, the script was good. But that instantly killed my suspension of disbelief.
Remember, all suspension of disbelief is, is your story devolving into something so unbelievable that the reader becomes aware the script is written. A script is successful only when the reader forgets that they’re reading a story. That should be the goal of every writer.
I suspect this script is a casualty of not outlining. I say that because it displays all the signs of writing into a corner and then hoping you can come up with a brilliant idea at the last second to explain it all. Which is always when you end up with endings like, “They’re all clones.”
That’s not to say nothing here works. This is a great setup for a movie. You can cut a great trailer to this. You can market it easily. A director’s going to want to direct this. Most importantly, producers are going to want to produce this. Even though the script’s execution isn’t there yet, producers are willing to get it there because they know audiences like these kinds of movie.
It’s a dirty little secret screenwriters hate to admit. The more marketable your concept, the less critical producers will be of your execution. I can speak to this myself. I’ve read some really bad scripts from amateur screenwriters where I thought, “You know, if I had a production house and a studio slush fund, I might buy this.” That’s how much I believed in the idea. What I’d then do is buy the script, then get a writer I like and have them write the script. And this is what good producers do, guys. It’s easy to buy the slam dunks. It’s harder when you have to shape the coal into a diamond yourself. So I’ll always remind writers that a marketable concept gives you a huge advantage in the script game.
I wish I liked this more. I used to love these movies. I just felt like this execution is sloppy. Too many dots to connect. The explanation went on for too long (a good sign that your climax is convoluted). Then again, does my opinion really matter? I suspect Larry the Lyft Driver would love this.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Mix giant sci-fi tropes at your own peril. Once again, you can sometimes get away with it if you introduce both conceits right away. One of my favorite scripts is Robots vs. Zombies. Two major disparate tropes. But it works because the writer establishes both tropes within the first ten pages. We get it with Edge of Tomorrow as well. We establish the aliens and time-looping within the first act. Much better than writing yourself into a corner then trying to escape with a giant cliche sci-fi explanation.
Genre: Drama
Premise: After a young child is taken and killed by a wolf, an Alaskan woman hires a wolf expert to find and terminate the offending wolf.
About: It’s the newest Netflix Original release. But don’t let that scare you off. This one is supposed to be good. It stars Big Little Lies standout, Alexander Skarsgård, and Westworld mainstay, Jeffrey Wright. It’s directed by Green Room director Jeremy Saunier and written by Macon Blair, an actor friend of Saunier’s who appeared in three of his films.
Writer: Macon Blair (based on the novel by William Giraldi)
Details: 125 minutes long
Some people consider Jeremy Saunier the best kept secret in Hollywood. His second movie, Blue Ruin, became an out-of-nowhere Rotten Tomatoes success with a 95% rating. The movie didn’t have a single known actor in it. The next film in his color-coded dualogy, Green Room, starring Anton Yelchin and Patrick Stewart, became a cult sensation, garnering similar critical praise. This adoration helped Saunier land a two-episode gig on the latest season of True Detective. And I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Saunier gets offered a DC property, if he hasn’t already.
One of the reasons I was so eager to check Hold the Dark out was because the jury was still out for me on Saunier. I found Blue Ruin to be overly bleak. And Green Room, while interesting, was a genre mish-mash. I was never quite sure what I was watching. With that said, we need a strong new voice in the directing game. The ranks are getting stale. Not to mention, I’m excited by the fact that Netflix may have, for once, produced a good movie.
Writer, wolf-expert, and highly depressive Russell Core, flies to an isolated Alaskan town to meet a woman who claims that a wolf killed her child. She wants him to find and kill the wolf for which she’ll pay him handsomely. But Core gets the sense – along with us – that something’s off about the woman. She hasn’t even alerted her husband, who’s off fighting in Iraq, that their son is dead.
After hunting down the offending wolves (which amounts to a 5 minute walk to the nearby forest), Core gets cold feet and heads back to the mother’s house, where he learns she has fled. He heads downstairs into the basement, where he finds her dead son, rolled up in plastic. It turns out he wasn’t killed by wolves after all.
Meanwhile the boy’s father, Vernon, comes back from Iraq and is none too happy to find out his boy is dead, his wife is gone, and some big city wolf expert was staying at his place. So mad, in fact, that he shoots two local cops. The deaths are a precursor to a string of killings that include the coroner who dealt with the boy and the local witch doctor.
When the cops come asking Vernon’s best friend if he knows anything about the killings, the friend goes upstairs, rigs up a gatling gun, and starts gunning down everyone within a 2000 foot radius. Core is nearby, watching all of this go down. But if I’m being honest, I have no idea what his role in the story is at this point. Eventually they kill the friend in a dramatic shootout where he falls from his perch spread eagle in slow motion, a shot so poetic I’m convinced it’s the only reason they included the scene in the first place.
From there, we intercut between Core, the local sheriff, and Vernon, who seems to be on some side-mission to kill every friend of his. I think the rest of the movie is about Core and the sheriff looking for the missing mom, but you’d have to strap Saunier and Blair to a polygraph test to know for sure. The further on this disaster goes, the less sense it makes.
Oh man.
I’ve seen some brutally bad movies this year. But this is a special kind of bad. It’s the kind where the filmmaking and acting are so good that you can’t logically comprehend why the writing, then, is so awful.
What’s so funny to me is that 20 years ago, the big rah-rah talking point in Hollywood was, “Imagine how good movies would be if there was no studio interference. If those guys in the suits would just get their bean-counting hands away from the creative folk and let the writers do their jobs, we’d only have great movies from here til the end of time.”
Well now we’re seeing that exact scenario play out. This is how Netflix and Amazon are luring talent to the less glitzy world of streaming video. “We’ll let you do whatever you want. Not a single note.”
If you don’t have smart development people calling you on your shit, you’re going to create shit. And this script is full of shit. It’s a mish-mash of nonsense that never picks a lane. Is it a movie about revenge? Is it a murder investigation? Is it a character study? Is it a war movie? Is it a serial killer flick? Is it an action film? Is it about PTSD? Is is about a small town pushing away big city outsiders? Is it a horror flick?
Hold the Dark tries to be all of these things and becomes a giant bag of screenwriting compost in the process.
I’ll tell you exactly when I knew this script had no hope. It didn’t take long actually. In an early scene, Core is sleeping at the mother’s house. Why is he sleeping in a strange woman’s house when there’s a motel nearby? Who knows. Anyway, he wakes up in the middle of the night to see the woman, completely naked, standing in the middle of the room, wearing a mask. She then takes off the mask, slides next to him, makes him choke her for a minute, then goes to sleep.
My head fell, my eyes closed, I shook my head. This is the kind of garbage idea beginner writers pull all the time because they don’t know what drama is. They don’t know what suspense is. They don’t understand conflict. They don’t know that characters need logical motivations to dictate their actions. They don’t even know that a scene needs a plan. Why do the hard work when you can scrap together a flashy image that’ll look good for two seconds despite the fact that it has nothing to do with anything?
I was like, “Yup. Guaranteed the rest of this movie is going to be trash.” And it was. The main character keeps shifting (it’s Core, no it’s the local Sheriff, no it’s Vernon), which is fine if your name is Quentin Tarantino. Not so much if you’re Johnny First Screenplay. We’ve got classic beginner mistakes like random flashbacks thrown in at arbitrary intervals. We introduce brand new characters halfway into the script. And the plot – oh the plot. It was as if they let the location scout direct the film. They had all these places to shoot but no script to tie them together. So they said, “Let’s shoot them all and figure it out later!”
Also, the script is so steeped in bleakness that it becomes impossible for us to emotionally invest in what’s happening. Classic beginner mistake. If you only hit one emotional beat the whole time, your audience becomes numb. They need a range of emotions so they have something to compare and contrast said emotions to. There’s an old saying that you want to take your audience on an emotional roller coaster. If the same tone is hit every scene, you’re not on a roller coaster, you’re on a road.
So we’re right back where we started folks. I’m glad that Netflix is giving people jobs. I really am. It’s hard to find screenwriting money outside of television these days. But if these guys want to be taken seriously in the feature world, they need to revamp that entire department. This movie is garbage. There’s not a single thing about it that makes sense and, in large part, that’s due to the lack of oversight. And the reason I know there was no oversight is because even a first year script reader could’ve identified and helped clean up some of these mistakes.
[x] What the hell did I just watch?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the time
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The other day we talked about the importance of understanding the 3-Act Structure. Hold the Dark is an example of what happens when you don’t know what the 3-Act Structure is. This movie follows no outline. It has no plan. It goes wherever it wants whenever it wants. And the results of that writing style are here on display to study. Watch this. Feel the frustration. Let it inspire you to learn the proper way to tell a story.
