Genre: Creature Horror
Premise: Trapped in a mountain resort by a parasitic fungus that transforms its victims into deadly hosts, a timid CDC epidemiologist must learn to lead the group of mismatched survivors to escape this primordial terror.
Why You Should Read: After my last entry on the site, “The Crooked Tree,” was selected for a previous Amateur Showdown, I received invaluable feedback from the readers that I applied to my latest effort, “Genesis,” which explores the consequences of genetically-altering Mother Nature. Drawing inspiration from a slew of 80s classics, my career as a Registered Nurse, and a few real-life scientific oddities, I crafted a unique creature-feature that serves as my love letter to this subgenre. I hope my entry impresses you enough to select it for a coveted spot in this year’s Halloween Showdown!
Writer: Samuel Kerr
Details: 84 pages

Welcome mummies, tarantulas, and ghoulettes.

Carson isn’t in today.

Sorry, not sorry.

Your review will be written by me, Vampire Carson.

Ooh ooh ah ah ahhhhhh!!!!!!!

I know you’ve been waiting all year to suck the blood of the Halloween Amateur Showdown winner. Your moment has arrived. After doing some repairs on my coffin (note to fellow vampires: stay away from the Bedson 1000 – the sunlight blocking is dreadful and customer support is horrid) and retouching my windows with fresh black paint, I made a call to my best friend, Count In-and-Outcula, who promptly door-dashed me their Halloween special: Four double-doubles vampire style – extra rare beef on a plate of nothing.

After wolfing down this most monstrous meal, I poured myself a tall glass of Kevin Who Lived Downstairs, November 2018 (it’s wine-o-clock somewhere, amiright?) and opened my laptopula to read today’s winning entry. I’ve never read a screenplay before so let’s just say I’m dying to see what it’s all about.

Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains, a giant greenhouse is being burned to the ground with scientists inside! That’s because some sort of deadly virus broke out here. Cut to 30 years later where a couple of stoners, Beav and Moss, are poking around the remnants of this place and encounter a mushroom that blows up in a puff of smoke, right in Moss’s face.

Cut to a thousand miles away where Jules, a mycologist (a person who studies fungi) is trying to tame her special needs son. Then David, a field investigator for cases that involve epidemiology, shows up at Jules’s place and says he needs her for a job. Jules is reluctant because these two have a history, but when David’s boss says he’ll pay for Jules’s son’s private school if she goes, she’s all in.

They fly to a mountain resort so remote that helicopter is the only way in or out. The two arrive to meet Martha, the owner of the resort, who’s accompanied by her special needs adult son, Ace. Ace doesn’t like messes. Jules goes up to check on the incapacitated Moss’s infection and it’s not looking good, folks. The guy has a distended stomach that makes him look pregnant.

Meanwhile, David recruits Beav to join him at the scene of the crime. There they find one of the original dead scientists and decide to throw him in a bag and drag him back to the resort. After all that work, it’s time for dinner! While everyone digs into some chicken, Moss comes downstairs, hungry as a horse. After devouring everything he can find, something in his stomach starts moving. Moments later his abdomen bursts and a 2 foot slug slithers out, disappearing into the next room.

Jules is starting to notice something we noticed, oh, about 30 pages ago, which is that all of this feels very unprofessional. When she confronts David, he confesses that this is a private job. Nobody else knows about it but them. Jules is angry but they’ve got bigger slugs to fry. Literally. Cause the next time they see the slug, it’s four feet tall and has a circular face that opens up to reveal a thousand teeth.

Lucky for Jules, Ace is a bit of an engineer, and has managed to cobble together a makeshift flame-thrower. They’re going to need it. Cause Sluggy the Dental Anomaly is downstairs laying more mushrooms than were consumed at last year’s Burning Man. After creeping around the resort all night trying to kill or capture this thing, David’s boss shows up. And he isn’t happy with David. We know that because he shoots him 50 times. Jules and Ace are going to be next unless they can defeat both David… and the Mushroom Slug From Hell.

Guys!

Oh my god, I am SOOOOO sorry. I just got home from lukewarm yoga to find Vampire Carson reading this script. I did not give him permission to do this so I apologize for the inconvenience. You have to understand that October is Vampire Carson’s favorite month so he’s always in party mode. I remember we were hanging out last Halloween and my best friend, Kevin, was over. We had a night to remember. Then the next day Kevin just disappeared. Never wanted to hang out again. He didn’t even text, jerk.

Anyway.

The good news is that Vampire Carson took meticulous notes which will allow me to give you a proper review. I mean check these out (page 1: needs more blood, page 8: needs more blood, page 15: needs more blood, page 37: blood, needs more of it, page 52: lots of blood but not enough description of it). Why would I need to read a script when I’ve got notes like that? Let’s jump into it.

Scripts based on 80s creature features are surprisingly challenging to review. These movies tend to embrace a lack of realism that, when done well, actually enhance the viewing experience. But as scripts, they often seem cliche and unrealistic. Is that the intention or does the script really have problems? Depends on who you talk to.

Well, you’re talking to me. So here’s how I saw it.

There was something too “save the caty” about this story. The way the characters were introduced and the structure used were too common and predictable. We get the scary teaser scene of the greenhouse structure being burned down. We get the save the cat moment with our hero. She’s got a special needs kid to ensure we’ll like her. The opposite sex co-star shows up. They have a romantic history with each other but now don’t like one another.

Don’t get me wrong. I like a solidly structured screenplay, even if it hits all the pre-arranged beats. But when EVERYTHING about the script is familiar, it ceases to function as an original story. Instead, it becomes an homage on steroids.

And this is definitely that. I mean we have an alien creature that gestates inside the human body, spits out, then, over a very fast period of time, grows bigger, more complex, and more dangerous. We also have a female heroine running around with a flamethrower. Does that sound like any movie you’ve seen before?


I don’t want to rain on Sam’s parade because I did like the fungi angle. I’ve never seen that before. But Sam didn’t do anything with it. The mushrooms seemed to be a placeholder to get the alien inside a body, where it then became nothing like a mushroom. It could’ve come from anything. I would’ve spent more time designing a creature that felt like it evolved from mushrooms/fungi. Make this creature your own. When I saw the circular teeth, I thought, “I see that in every movie now. It was just in Men in Black.”

I also had a problem with the blasé approach to the investigation. I know that later we find out why (because this investigation is not official). But even if it isn’t official, you don’t let the guy who was just upstairs, bleeding profusely everywhere on his body and displaying vitals that say he should be dead, to casually come down and join you for dinner. This is a virus, is it not? Yet you’re asking him to pass the chicken?

The thing is, there might still be a movie here. I like the location. I like the unique qualities that a mushroom could have on a creature design. But I would come in here with a real team of scientists. I would cover the investigation much more realistically. And I would spend more time figuring out how an alien that grows out of fungi would look and operate. Cause if you put some real effort into this, it could be cool.

What did you guys think?

Script link: Genesis (new draft)

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

What I learned: When you have one of your characters read an e-mail or letter, the audience rarely needs to know the whole thing. In a SCREENPLAY you’re always looking to convey the most amount of information in the least amount of words. So what Sam does here is the smart way to go…

Sorry, Vampire Carson insisted he get his own ‘What I learned.’ So here it is.

What I learned (Vampire Carson): When introducing characters, it is imperative you describe their neck. You can learn so much about a person from their neck. A long neck represents a confident individual. Short and stubby necks denote weak blood flow and therefore people not worth late night party invitations. Pale necks allow one to see veins easier, which is important for…certain people to know. Never overlook the neck.

First of all, I want to thank everyone who sent a submission in for Halloween Amateur Showdown. I got a lot more submssions than I thought I would.

BUT!!!

I have to take a moment to plug my logline service (e-mail me at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line “logline” for a consult). So many of these submissions shot themselves in the foot due to terrible loglines with fixable issues. If you’ve never received instruction on how to properly write a logline, you should seriously consider a consult. The basic option is just $25 and the deluxe is $40. And, trust me, you’ll have a much better feel for how to properly write a logline after you get one.

Moving on. I tried to vary the TYPES of horror scripts as much as possible. That way we didn’t get 5 contained horror movies. So that may have been why your script didn’t get chosen. Other reasons your script didn’t get picked: There were a lot of loglines that weren’t clear. Some that were too outlandish. Some that sounded so simplistic I thought they were a joke (“A man believes he’s living in a haunted house and recruits his family to help him”). Some that were embarrassingly general (“A group of friends head out to a remote setting and, fearing an unspeakable evil, prepare to face it while also battling demons within.”). Some that sounded too similar to recent entries. And some that may have appealed to others but simply weren’t my jam.

What follows are the pitches that rose to the top.

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 amateurs? Send a PDF to carsonreeves3@gmail.com with the title, genre, logline, and why you think your script should get a shot.

Title: Genesis
Genre: Creature Horror
Logline: Trapped in a mountain resort by a parasitic fungus that transforms its victims into deadly hosts, a timid CDC epidemiologist must learn to lead the group of mismatched survivors to escape this primordial terror.
Why You Should Read: After my last entry on the site, “The Crooked Tree,” was selected for a previous Amateur Showdown, I received invaluable feedback from the readers that I applied to my latest effort, “Genesis,” which explores the consequences of genetically-altering Mother Nature. Drawing inspiration from a slew of 80s classics, my career as a Registered Nurse, and a few real-life scientific oddities, I crafted a unique creature-feature that serves as my love letter to this subgenre. I hope my entry impresses you enough to select it for a coveted spot in this year’s Halloween Showdown!

Title: Street View
Genre: Horror/Found Footage
Logline: When a Google Street View driver unknowingly captures footage of a murder on a desolate highway, she must figure out what she has and who wants it before she becomes the next victim.
Why You Should Read: Why you should read it: Causeway Films in my native Australia (The Babadook, The Nightingale) recently broke their rule about not accepting unsolicited scripts after my pitch to them but provided only brief feedback about why they ultimately opted against adding it to their upcoming slate, so I believe I’m close enough that the Carson words of wisdom can hone it into something that I can get made. I feel it has the commercial appeal of the found footage/horror genre but also delves into deeper themes regarding the increasing privacy intrusions of big tech in our lives and the increasing divisions between people (particularly city and rural) that stem largely from Big Tech-facilitated ideological echo chambers. The Street View car driving through forgotten towns strikes me as the perfect embodiment of these themes. I’ve also had the awkward conversation of requesting the use of a rural property belonging to a friend of mine to film a home invasion scene where my friend had previously been a victim of a home invasion at that property! I think that chutzpah alone deserves a read. Also, this is the real camera used to take street view photos. The horror practically writes itself!

Title: POSSESSIONS
Genre: Supernatural Horror
Logline: An estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding only to discover her mother cursed by one of her many, many possessions.
Why You Should Read: Way back in December (Re: The Interventionist) you asked if anyone had done a hoarder horror movie. And then your review of 10/31 had a hoarder house in it and I was like, damn, I better finish my horror feature already! So after months of it sitting there waiting for it to be rewritten (again), I dug down and got to it. Gone is the Dead Kid Backstory in favor of a story more focused on a woman learning to take care of her aging mother… who happens to be possessed. Yay! I welcome any Marie Kondo / KonMari method jokes. Enjoy!

Title: Catharsis (note to writer: you need to retitle this, “Rage Room”)
Genre: Social Horror
Logline: Following a traumatic incident in a rage room, a spineless office worker develops strength and self-confidence — and an insatiable, murderous aggression that threatens to take over.
Why You Should Read: Rage rooms are simple: pay a small fee to occupy a room for 10-20 minutes and SMASH THE FUCKING SHIT out of mundane, breakable objects. With methods of choice ranging from baseball bats with home run dreams to sledgehammers that have never met something they couldn’t pulverize, you can customize your destruction of plates, printers, and other office or domestic fodder to your heart’s blood-pumping delight. All in the name of “self-care.”

In our current socio-economic and political climate, our globe is warming up to rage rooms in nearly 30 countries, with the US of A boasting 250+ locations that have increased exponentially in the last five years. The real kicker? The pursuit of catharsis often recycles its initial stimulants of stress and aggression. Meaning… this trend ain’t going anywhere soon. And just like escape rooms, you are trying to solve a puzzle: “What do I have to destroy to create a little peace and quiet?”

With this “Catharsis,” great power comes with great responsibility to gain more power, even if the objects in the way are made of flesh and bone. A good horror story should tackle relevant subject matter or universal fears or the dark symptoms of the human condition. Or, hey — crack open this PDF and try to find all three!

Title: INFANT
Genre: Horror
Logline: A sadistic rapist/murderer is captured by a quartet of women and infantized (shaved, crippled so he’s forced to crawl, diaper, etc) in order to re-educate him on how to treat women and act in society but the women instead use him for their own dark psychological needs until one decides they’ve gone too far and plots to free him.
Why You Should Read: INFANT is a proton torpedo into the Death Star of current society that was influenced by Frederick Friedel, Canucksploitation movies like CANNIBAL GIRLS and DEATH WEEKEND and LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT.

Last week’s Amateur Showdown was basically a 3-way tie (14 and 1/2 votes for Money to Burn, 13 votes to Odyssey, and 13 votes to The Black Petrel) with some hints of suspect voting, which means I get to decide which of the three I want to review. I went back and forth between Money to Burn and Odyssey. I know that Jay (Money to Burn author) can write. And I get a sense through some e-mails with Alex (Odyssey) that he knows what he’s doing as well. When it comes down to calls this close, there’s only one solution –

FIRST. PAGE. SHOWDOWN.

[echo] showdown…showdown…showdown

That’s right. Here at Scriptshadow when scripts need to be picked and the picking ain’t easy, the written word is the only solution. So here we go. This is the first page of Money to Burn…

And here’s the first page of Odyssey…

Let’s start with Odyssey. Its opening is fine for a movie or cinematic TV show. I can envision the gentle dolly back of the camera from the painting and into the room. But as a script opening, it’s not very good. Scripts aren’t about camera moves. They’re about grabbing the reader. With that said, the writing is strong and detailed and I feel like the writer has a good grasp of the craft.

Moving over to Money to Burn, we’re in a helicopter, a sniper’s looking for his target. Something’s happening! This is a much better opening – dropping us into the thick of things. But like any good Amateur Showdown, there’s a twist. I look to the top of Money to Burn and see… 123 pages??? For a heist flick? That’s a loonnnng script. And Jay’s been at this for awhile. He should know how much high page counts affect readers.

I’m torn about which one to go with but when reading one script gives me an entire extra hour to my evening (Odyssey is 63 pages), that’s the script I’m going to choose. So I’m going with Odyssey.

Genre: TV Pilot/Western
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.
Writer: Alex D. Reid
Details: 62 pages

it’s 1891 and 20-something Cassandra Lane is pregnant. Being pregnant back in the 19th century was no picnic but you know what’s less of a picnic? Joseph Dalton, the mean-mugging creditor who Cassandra’s husband owes 5000 dollars to. Joseph’s shown up to the couple’s home in New York to get his money. There’s only one problem. They don’t have it.

After yelling at Cassandra for awhile, Joseph goes upstair to confront the man in question, Hosea, who, when confronted with the reality that he’s never going to find a way out of this, blows his own brains out. That cowardly move suddenly transfers the 5000 dollar debt on Hosea’s head, and puts it squarely on Cassandra’s. Isn’t that special.

Cassandra manages to flea New York and go back to her home state of Kansas. It’s here where she reunites with her widowed father, Nathaniel, who’s having money problems of his own. He can barely pay rent. Yeah, living back in the 19th century pretty much blew. Between your house burning down every month and contacting polio several times a year, you were constantly getting swept away in the Johnstown Flood.

That big fat meanie, Joseph, along with his gang, follows Cassandra all the way to Kansas and kills her dang dad! It looks like Cassandra’s going to be next. But when the gang members carry Cassandra out to shoot and kill her, she’s saved by a grave-robber named Dante, who, ironically, was planning on grave-robbing her father. But this is far from friendship at first sight. The very next day, Dante steals Cassandra’s father’s cattle, which he plans to take to California and sell.

Back at home, Cassandra is visited by yet another nasty presence, a bounty hunter looking for Dante. When he realizes Dante is long gone, he tortures Cassandra, who uses every last bit of grit and spittle to escape and kill the dude. Afterwards she steps outside to see, guess who? Dante. Who’s had a crisis of conscious. Seems he’d rather herd these cattle to California with their rightful owner. So off they go. But little do they know, the evil Joseph is on their trail.

I had mixed feelings about Odyssey.

I was not a fan of the first scene. It was written like Cassandra and Joseph were alone. Joseph’s creeping up on her. We’re thinking she might be in danger. But then, the guy they’ve been talking about this whole time, her husband, was upstairs. Just kicking it by himself. If he’s here to see that guy, why is he talking to Cassandra? So then we go upstairs and have a secondary scene in the house where Hosea is flinging a gun around, threatening to kill himself, and finally does it. The dialogue here felt very soap-opera-ish. On the nose. Overly dramatic (“I can’t even look after my own goddamn wife and child from–from fucking PARASITES like him! What the hell am I if I can’t do that, huh?” “The man I love.”). It didn’t set the pilot off on the right foot, that’s for sure.

And a funny thing happens when the first scene doesn’t work. It triggers a psychological shift in the reader where they lose a little faith in the writer. They don’t move forward with as much confidence. But hey. I was on the fence with Cop Cam for a while and that script turned around quick. So this was far from a script killer.

What annoyed me, though, was the jumping around in time. I don’t mind storyline jumping that much, but it has to have a clear purpose behind it. And this felt more like we were scrambling up the timelines in an attempt to add some extra flash to fairly plain story. I still don’t understand why we were cutting back to Cassandra, her dad, and some Indian kid. I never cracked the importance of that storyline.

The pilot works best when it’s sitting in its scenes and letting the characters push towards potentially ugly situations. Like when the bounty hunter has Cassandra all alone in her house. It’s one long scene but it properly builds a sense of dread and a fear that Cassandra isn’t going to make it out of here alive.

I also liked Alex’s fearlessness. This isn’t your grandfather’s Western TV show. People die in horrible ways and Alex isn’t afraid to show it. Heck, even Cassandra’s poor dog is offed. And while normally, I’m not a fan of animal deaths, it serves a purpose here, which is to make clear to the audience, nobody is safe in this world. And that’s important in a TV show because we’re more likely to watch if we think people are legitimately in danger. Isn’t that when Walking Dead and Game of Thrones were at their best? When you had no idea who was going to make it out of an episode? Once it was clear every main character was getting out of a season alive, those shows went south.

It’s not easy for me to grade this pilot because there’s plenty of things to celebrate. But between the weird time-jumping and the lack of anything that truly set this Western apart from anything I’ve seen before, I’d have to say this just misses a ‘worth the read.’ But Alex should be proud. There’s plenty of skill on display here.

Script link: Odyssey

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

What I learned: I’m always looking to see if I can simplify a story. And something bothers me about the structure here. We move from New York to Kansas…. so we can move from Kansas to California. Why can’t we redistribute the whole story so that we start in Kansas? That way it’s simpler. We start the movie in Kansas and the pilot is used to set up the rest of the show – which is to move to California. And here’s why plot simplicity is important. The way it is now, Alex is forced to create all of this exposition to explain New York and Joseph and her husband and her father. If we could build this dilemma in Kansas, we wouldn’t have to use precious screenplay energy to rehash a bunch of backstory.

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.

Genre: Psychological Horror / History
Premise: Ten years after the vicious atrocities of the Partition, a Pakistani woman attempts to make peace with the brutal murder of her family when a vengeful spirit returns to haunt her.
Why You Should Read: This is a setting and historical event that has never been depicted in Indian film, let alone Hollywood and is one of the most overlooked humanitarian crises of the 20th century as it came in the immediate aftermath of World War 2. Up to 2 million people died as a result of this mass migration, and the trauma and violence that occurred has formed the rigid backbone of the Pakistan-India conflicts we see today. By taking a supernatural angle, I’ve attempted to manifest the inner turmoil felt by the survivors as well as present a moral conflict for the reader to constantly have in mind throughout. As a Pakistani, this is an extremely important topic to my cultural history, and after hearing some of the absolute horror stories my direct ancestors faced just 70 years ago shook me to my core. This is an event that had a direct impact on every single Pakistani and Indian, and fearlessly showcasing the terror of it all will be something I’ll forever strive to accomplish.
Writers: Raza Rizvi
Details: 88 pages (updated draft from the one that competed in Amateur Showdown last Friday)

Pakistani star Mahira Khan for Fatima?

Not gonna lie.

As I can see the golden shades of the weekend shining just over the Hollywood hills, and all the happiness that comes with them, I was a mite under-prepared for the brutality of this subject matter. With that said, I’ve always been curious about this region of the world. And I was excited to read something from one of the site’s most active contributors. I admire how dedicated Raza is to the craft and how active he’s been in grabbing fate by the horns. He’s really going for it, which is the best way to make it in this business. Let’s take a look at this very personal project of his…

The Well starts off with a preface explaining that in 1947, the British separated India and Pakistan into two separate countries in order to solve the region’s complex religious disparity. For those people who needed to travel to the opposite country, many of them were slaughtered and raped. This story takes place 10 years later in Pakistan and follows Fatima, a 30-something nurse who canes herself every night for unknown reasons. She lives with her husband, Hussein, who works in the mines.

The only light in Fatima’s life is Aisha, her dog, who she found on the day her train to Pakistan was attacked and derailed. Quickly after we meet Fatima and Hussein, an evil spirit in a 17-year-old girl’s body, Jinn, appears in a lake and stumbles into their house. They clean her and clothe her and decide they’ll figure out what to do with her tomorrow.

The next day, Hussien goes off to work in the mines while Fatima does her nursing rounds in the village. While they’re away, Jinn spirit-attacks the dog, leaving it near death. When Fatima returns, she’s furious, convinced Jinn did something to the dog, and takes Aisha out to her friend, who she hopes can save the canine. Meanwhile, Jinn starts walking around the village, sending bad voodoo in every direction. This causes several explosions in the mine which obliterates many of the children who work in its deepest caverns.

We flashback to Fatima’s past where we learn that she once had a daughter. And one day, while getting water from the well, a group of bad men rode up, wanting to hurt and possibly rape them. Fatima and her daughter run to their house and hide, but when it’s clear it will be only a matter of time before the men find and rape her daughter, Fatima repeatedly stabs her daughter in the heart to kill her. It is here where we realize that Jinn is a recreation of who her daughter would be if she were still alive today. And she’s still angry about being murdered by mommy. To drive her point home, she spends the rest of the day laying carnage to the village and everyone in it.

This movie includes a train ride of beaten down souls who then have their train blown up in an attack and the survivors slaughtered by groups of men with swords. For those who survive the attack, they are riddled with bullets. This movie includes a dog that suffers for an excruciatingly long time before he’s finally put out of his misery. It includes 5 year old children pushed into tiny passages in a mine to do their jobs… who then die in a horrifying mine fire. We literally watch them scream as they burn to death. It includes a woman and her daughter who run from a group of evil men. When the men get close enough, the woman stabs and kills her daughter so that she won’t be raped. And that’s just a fraction of how much violence and suffering goes on in this story.

Before I say what I’m about to say, I have to be clear. I’m not a fan of sadness packed on top of sadness. I need balance in my movies. And I need my movies to provide an overall sense of hope. When it comes to horror, I think the formula that works best is when evil disrupts joy, happiness, contentedness. It is the sour added to the sweet that creates a juxtaposition that makes horror work. When you interrupt a terrible situation with an even worse situation, it creates such a sense of despair that the events become uncomfortable to watch.

I’m not sure I know anyone who wants to see a 5-year-old boy who’s been forced to work 16 hours a day in a tiny mine tunnel die as fire melts his skin off in real time. To me, that’s a huge miscalculation in the understanding of what audiences are comfortable with. And also a weakness in understanding how to balance the positive with the negative to keep the viewer engaged. Balancing those opposite ends of the spectrum is often what defines the best storytellers. They know when you’re too down to see another scene of suffering. They know when you’re too comfortable and happy and therefore the perfect moment to throw a death at you. To hit the audience over the head with misery after misery after misery… I don’t know of any successful movies that do this. Even Schindler’s List had its fair share of happy moments. And that was about the Holocaust.

If I could only convey one lesson to Raza in today’s review, it would be to study tone. Understanding tone is natural to some but unnatural to others. And what’s so frustrating is that when it’s unnatural to you, you can’t see the mistake you’re making. To you, it’s obvious you would take a 5-year-old boy who was living a life of suffering and burn him alive in a long torturous death scene. To everybody else, it’s obvious that you would never do something like that in a movie. So what Raza has to do is watch all his favorite movies and take stock of the lowest moments to understand what audiences can handle. Also, take stock of the ratio of positive to negative scenes and how many positive scenes writers will write before they hit them with a negative scene, and vice versa.

Cause the truth is, this story is flawed at the concept level. Like I said, you don’t want to interrupt misery with even worse misery. I don’t think audiences find that compelling. That would be my advice here. With that said, I’m interested in hearing from you cinephiles with a darker palette. Are there movies out there like this that have done well? I openly confess I’m not as knowledgeable about these types of films cause they’re not my cup of tea.

Script link: The Well (new draft)

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

What I learned: Suffering can be used to create sympathy for a character. But there’s a threshold for what the audience can take. Once suffering goes past a certain level, the audience checks out. It becomes too much. And that’s what happened here. Everything was too much.