Genre: Horror
Premise: One night every year, strange creatures attack the major cities, killing thousands. Nobody knows who or what these creatures are, and no one can stop them.
About: Grim Night made last year’s Black List AND was purchased last year.  The sale was best known for the writers’ inventive idea of making a trailer for their script.  Now I’ve been promoting making one-sheets for scripts (e-mail me for details), but I never thought it would go so far as people making trailers for scripts.  Cool idea.  Check out the trailer below.
Writers: Brandon Bestenheider & Allen Bey
Details: 117 pages

I’m trying to be better.  I know I don’t review enough horror scripts on the site and I want to change that.  I just got back from a meeting where everyone agreed that the most risk-free way to make a movie was to a make a horror film.  So it’s a really lucrative market to explore as a screenwriter.

Why, then, don’t I review them?  Cause they’re often juvenile and horribly written, moreso than most genres.  Horror writers care about scares and gore and disgusting imagery.  They don’t have any interest in story or characters.

Well, Grim Night was a popular sale so I decided to give it a shot.  Imagine my reaction, then, when a longtime Scriptshadow reader told me, “You shouldn’t have picked that.  It’s the worst screenplay I’ve read in ten years.”

OUCH.  Here I was, taking a chance on a horror script, and I happened to pick the worst one in ten years??  Talk about bad luck.  However, myself and this reader have disagreed on many scripts in the past (he liked Hugo!!??), which I pointed out to him.  He assured me, however, “This one we’ll agree on.  Trust me.”  Hmmmm…So, did I agree?

Grim Night starts “downtown.”  Downtown where?  Big city?  Medium-sized town?  No idea.  The slug just says, “Downtown.”  Okay, I’ll just make up a location for myself then.  Ummm, big city.

Everywhere around this city are warnings.  “Never forget,” these warnings warn warningly.  “37,112 dead.”  News footage fills us in on the rest.  Every year, these things called the “Grims” come around and kill thousands of people in all the major cities.

They’re kind of like really nasty trick-or-treaters.  They come to your door, ask you for something you don’t want to give them (a watch, a lock of hair), and if you don’t give it to them, they kill you.  So for that one night, everybody stays indoors, huddled up, and prays that the Grims don’t bother them.  Most people make it through the night just fine.  37,000 deaths is a lot.  But over ten years?  In all the major cities?  As someone points out, you have a better chance of being struck by lightning twice.  However, there are others who aren’t so lucky.

Our hosts for Grim Night are the Green family.  There’s the father, Paul, who’s just a normal dad who’s occasionally late getting home.  There’s the overtly brave 15 year old Sasha.  There’s younger brother Josh, whose character development consists of owning a samurai sword.  And there’s wife Liz, who takes Grim Night the most seriously (believe it or not, there are some people who don’t worry about Grim Night at all).

The night begins, and after a few false alarms (Josh’s buddy Cooper plays a joke on them), the real Grims show up.  The Grims hide under giant “Grim Reaper” like cloaks so you can’t see their faces and instead of walking, they prefer to glide across surfaces.

The Grims are also cheap-asses, because instead of going off and buying their own wives a wedding ring, they demand that Liz give them hers.  She reluctantly does and that’s it.  The family feels like they’ve passed the test and they can go on with their lives.

Not so fast.  Next, the Grims want a lock of Sasha’s hair.  And after that, they want Sasha!  Paul tries to fight them off but the Grims take Sasha into the night and Paul realizes that as soon as the sun rises, Sasha will be gone forever.  So they need to chase the Grim who stole her!  Grim-chasing is an inexact science and there are a few stumbling blocks along the way, but in the end they catch up to her and somehow get her back.  But, is this Sasha still the Sasha they know?  Or is she…like…ummm…evil Sasha now??

The big question: Was this the worst screenplay of the last 10 years?  Umm, no.  Not even close.  Was it a good screenplay?  Ehhh…sometimes?  I mean, there’s definitely something spooky about what’s going on here.  Creepy dudes in cloaks coming to your door and asking for shit.  Then killing you if you don’t give it to them.  I mean that’s the stuff horror’s made of, right?  Being in a completely helpless terrifying situation.

My issue is that I just didn’t buy it.  The beginning of the script establishes that this has been going on for years, even though it’s present day.  So…going on for years where?  In an alternate universe?  So you’re asking me to now buy into a world that doesn’t exist?  Sure, that’s part of movies.  Star Wars doesn’t exist.  But the difference here is that everything else is the same.  It’s depicted as “reality” when it isn’t reality.  The writers have changed our planet’s history in order to set up this scenario, and I just couldn’t get past that.

The other issue I have is how nonsensical everything is.  The Grims come by to…take your ring?  What are they going to do with a ring?  Pawn it at the local pawn shop?  I don’t get the sense that after Grim Night they all sit around and play cards, gambling away the things they’ve stolen for kicks.  So there has to be some motivation here – some reasoning for this odd behavior.  But we never get it.

If you’re going to build a mythology THIS BIG (evil creatures killing thousands across the world), I suggest you know why your antagonists are doing what they’re doing.  And I’m not sure the writers know this.  Whenever writers don’t know why their characters are doing things, the writing takes on a murky generic feel.  The less you know about the why, the more you have to fake it.  And readers can always tell when you’re faking it.

Then of course there’s absolutely zero character development.  I mean ZERO.  Like we don’t even know what was going on in a single character’s life before this screenplay started.  The dad could’ve been a lion-tamer a month ago for all I know.

Then there were weird choices that made no sense, like right in the middle of all this terror, Sasha goes upstairs and takes a bath?  Uhhh, what???  There were just a lot of weird things like that that popped up.

In the end the script just felt thin.  The real coup here is the trailer.  The writers understood – as I’ve been telling you guys – that the landscape is changing.  You have more avenues to get yourself noticed than you’ve ever had before.  Take advantage of them.  Try new things.  They may not always work out.  But remember that you could have Citizen Kane on your hard drive.  But if you don’t figure out how to get people to read it, it doesn’t matter.

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

What I learned: Use anticipation to reel a reader in.  If you use Anticipation correctly, it’s almost impossible to lose the reader.  I dare anyone to read this first act of Grim Night and not want to keep reading.  That’s because the writers do a great job of building up our anticipation for the Grims’ arrival.  We absolutely HAVE to see what they look like and if they’ll go after our family.  Anticipation is one of the easiest ways to rope a reader in so if you can write a story that takes advantage of it, consider it.  Just remember, once you’ve burned that anticipation (and we meet the Grims) you have to use other tools to keep us invested, like suspense and original choices and twists and turns and character development.  I don’t think Grim did that effectively.

Genre: Thriller

Over the next month and a half, Scriptshadow will relaunch its site.  I have some great things in store for readers, but one of the things I’m most excited about is the time it will free up for me to start working on my next project – Developing a new system to find great screenplays from unknown screenwriters.

For 100 years, Hollywood has basically used the same system for finding screenplays.  Each company, whether it be a studio or agency or whatever, has readers cover all incoming scripts, and anything the readers like gets passed up to their superiors, who if *they* like it, pass it on to their superiors, and so on and so forth.

Here’s the thing though.  Over the past 5 years, the script-sending game has changed dramatically.  The obvious difference is that scripts are now sent digitally as opposed to via a hard copy.  This has led to a more instantaneous flow of scripts, and I feel like it should be ushering in a new filtering process.  But it hasn’t.  The model for weeding through screenplays has pretty much stayed the same.

Well, I want to change that.  I feel we need some new ideas and some new voices.  We need the younger generation – the generation not tethered to these outdated models – to look around and say, “How can we do this better?”  I’ve already started looking for new ways to find great scripts, starting with my Twit-Pitch contest.

But I’d like to develop a large all-encompassing model for finding great screenplays that’s smarter, faster, and more efficient.  I want to do what the studios and the agencies are too lazy to do.  I want to change the system.  And I thought, “Who better to ask for advice than the very people submitting these screenplays?”

So, I’m interested to hear what you guys would do if you were me.  I’d like you to come up with a system for weeding out the bad screenplays and finding the good ones that takes into consideration today’s technologies and new avenues.  There was no Scriptshadow 5 years ago.  There wasn’t a huge community of people reading screenplays for enjoyment and education every day.  There was no Twitter.  PDF scripts were a luxury at the time.

Pretend that you’ve just been given the job at Scriptshadow Studios to build a better mousetrap.  I have thousands of scripts coming into me from Amateur writers.  How do we weed those down efficiently and find the good ones?  The sooner we figure out how to do this, the quicker we revolutionize the business.  So, I’m leaving it up to you guys.  I’d love to hear your ideas in the comments section.  Show me what you got!

NEW Amateur Friday Submission Process: To submit your script for an Amateur Review, send in a PDF of your script, a PDF of the first ten pages of your script, your title, genre, logline, and finally, why I should read your script. Use my submission address please: Carsonreeves3@gmail.com. Your script and “first ten” will be posted. If you’re nervous about the effect of a bad review, feel free to use an alias name and/or title. It’s a good idea to resubmit every couple of weeks so your submission stays near the top.

Genre: Thriller?
Premise: An illusionist’s next trick is to make the world disappear.
Writer: James Taylor
Details: 96 pages

Man, yesterday was quite the controversial post.  I think I was denounced by half the screenwriting community as the devil for liking Prometheus.  It was….awesome!  I love debate.  And even better, screenwriting debate.  As long as we’re talking about these things, we’re learning.  It’s when a screenplay has nothing to talk about that it’s in trouble.

Which is why today’s review should be just as fun.  Let me give you some background.  While procrastinating away on Twitter, someone sent me this tweet.  It was just, “If you want to read it,” and then a link to this page (sorry it’s blurry).

It was the perfect pitch!  It was short.  It was a great little marketing approach.  And on top of that, the idea sounded cool.  I was in!

After I sent the script out to the community, word began to come back on Twitter.  “That script was amazing!”  “That script was horrible!”  “Just finished ‘The Grand Illusion.’ Wow!”  “Just finished ‘The Grand Illusion.’ I want to punch myself in the face!”

Hmmm… How could a script get such divided opinions?  And which side was right?  Well, I’m here to put the definitive word on that.  Read on…

Our hero is a man named “Sand.”  Sand is an illusionist.  David Copperfield without the creepy-factor.  Sand is also realllllly moody.  I mean, this guy is DEEP.  You get the feeling he’s never smiled in his life.  The reason for this is that Sand has been reading some philosophy books lately and come to the conclusion that the world is a figment of his imagination.  In other words, if he wasn’t around, then the world would cease to exist.

That’s….about as much as I could understand in this script.  Seriously.  Everything was so weird, so out there, that I couldn’t find a story buried underneath all the psycho-babble.  I mean we get scenes where Sand is talking to a woman who then…turns into Sand!  So Sand is talking to Sand!  Sand will all of a sudden find himself out in a desert (no idea how he got there) getting philosophical advice from an Apache Chief.  And every five pages or so, we’d get dialogue like this: “Maybe. Because maybe I am your ego personified. Maybe your father is intuition incarnated. Maybe being an illusionist is a microcosm for interpreting the world. Maybe everything is a projection of your psyche — your wife, your daughter, the grass, the sky, the earth — everything is just a thought or a feeling.”

Ummm…huh?

I was able to glean a few more things about the plot.  Sand has a brother named Vic who’s also an illusionist. The two don’t get along at all, and when Sand inadvertently ruins one of Vic’s big live illusions, Vic’s credibility goes down the tubes.  It doesn’t really change anything, though, since Vic already hated Sand.  But now he just hates him more.

But the real row between the two happened when they were children when their mother was driving them somewhere.  The car broke down, they got stuck on the side of the road, and the mom went off to look for help, never to be heard from again.  Sand has always blamed himself for this, and now wants to find out exactly what happened during that night.

To me, that’s the only thing in this script approaching somewhat of a narrative.  And it’s a sporadic one at that.  We don’t really get to it until later in the script.  Also, Sand only seems to look for her when it’s convenient.

That was easily my biggest problem with the screenplay and I don’t mean to sound harsh because Jamie is a really cool guy.  He’s been awesome on Twitter, excited about the review, and very thankful that I would take the time to read his script.

But the thing is, this is the kind of script that’s going to get people mad.  When it feels like a bunch of psycho-babble, when it feels like armchair philosophy, when for most of the story the reader’s trying to dig through the mess to try and figure out what’s going on, you get frustrated.  And I was frustrated.  I just wanted SOME story to emerge, and one never did.

And I feel like this is a basic fix. I mean, revolve the whole thing around a show.  This is an illusionist.  He’s a showman.  Why, then, are there next to zero shows in the script, replaced instead by a bunch of armchair philosophy scenes in small rooms?  That’s what this script amounts to.  People going into small rooms and opining about whether the world is real or not.

Sand needs to announce a huge show in Vegas in 3 weeks where he’s going to make the world disappear.  It should catch the media attention.  Everyone should want a ticket.  He disappears in the interim.  People have no idea if he’s going to show up to his show or not.  I mean at least now your story has some FORM and PURPOSE.

Trying to connect a narrative via a couple of VERY LOOSE threads about where his mom disappeared and “is the world real or not,” is not enough for a movie.  Your movie needs FORM.  It needs a destination, a goal, a ticking time bomb.  A show would provide that.  And you know what?  Maybe there even was a show set up.  I don’t know.  But if there was, I missed it because there were so many weird pointless scenes with people debating each other in rooms about reality.

And that’s another thing.  We talked about this the other day.  You don’t want repetition in your second act.  Scenes shouldn’t repeat the same beats or the same information.  Yet we have about a dozen scenes in the second act where people are debating the same things.  Is the world real? Yes it is.  No it isn’t.

On top of that, you can’t rest your climax on a bunch of unclear philosophical ramblings.  You can’t say “quantum physics” four times during the script and expect that to explain (HUGE SPOILER) why the world disappears at the end.  There needs to be a clearer connection there – a setup that logically leads to that payoff – preferably something VISUAL (show, don’t tell!).  It would be like, in The Sixth Sense, if instead of Cole seeing and helping a bunch of ghosts throughout the movie, people just debated if ghosts were real for two hours and then Bruce Willis learned he was dead.

Again, I love Jamie the person.  The guy rocks and has been so cool to me.  And, at to his credit, he took some chances and wrote something different.  I respect that.  But this script is so vague and the narrative is so all over the place, that I just couldn’t engage.  The good news is, this script does have some fans.  So let’s see those Team Jamie posts in the comments section.

Script Link: The Grand Illusion

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

What I learned: You are in a new age.  You have to get creative when pitching in order to stand out.  Taylor found a way to stand out amongst thousands of people to get me to read his script.  I see posters and images becoming a bigger and bigger part of pitching and selling screenplays every day, which is why I’m lining up poster artists to offer the service on Scriptshadow (p.s. e-mail me if you want me to set you up with them in the meantime).  It just seems so logical.  Movies are a visual medium.  If you have the resources, why not use visuals to sell your script to others?  It’s the perfect way to stand out.

Genre: Sci-Fi
Premise: (from IMDB) A team of explorers discover a clue to the origins of mankind on Earth, leading them on a journey to the darkest corners of the universe. There, they must fight a terrifying battle to save the future of the human race.
About: This is a loosely connected “prequel” to Alien, directed by Ridley Scott. Hollywood’s new go-to sci-fi scribe, Jon Spaihts (Passengers) wrote the original draft. Lost alum Damon Lindelof came in to clean it up.
Writers: Jon Spaihts, Damon Lindelof

I’ve tried to avoid all online Prometheus discussion but it’s been difficult. It seems like everyone’s got an opinion on the movie. From what I’ve been exposed to, the criticism seems to be pointing towards the script. And that surprises me. Because I thought the script for Prometheus was pretty damn good!

I mean, let’s go back in time here for a second. Do you remember Alien 3? I don’t have any idea what that movie was about. I think it was about Ripley having an alien baby in a Brooklyn jail or something. And Alien 4? Wynona Rider played a robot in that movie. Nuff said.

Prometheus, even though it’s only loosely connected to the Alien mythology, is the best Alien film since Aliens BY A COUNTRY MILE. Now I know that’s not saying a whole lot. But even had those films never been made, I’d still look at this as a really good film, and EASILY one of the best films of the summer (it might even be the best – I’ll wait til fall to make that judgment).

So what’s it about? Well, I’ll try to stay as spoiler-free as possible but there’s a lot going on here so you probably want to avoid the rest of the review until you see the movie.

“Prometheus” is a “deep space” vessel that takes humans to faraway planets to explore them. But this particular expedition is special. Scientist Elizabeth Shaw and her husband have discovered a series of cave paintings that turn out to be a map to a planet in another solar system.

Trillionaire Peter Weyland is impressed enough with their research that he bankrolls an expedition there. The idea is to find aliens and ask the big questions. Where do we come from? What is the meaning of life? Weyland will actually be dead by the time Prometheus makes it to the planet but he wants to make sure that future generations don’t have to die, like him, not knowing these answers.

Besides Shaw and her husband, Prometheus carries a crew of about 15, headlined by heartless crew supervisor Meredith Vickers (Charlize Theron) and android David (Michael Fassbender). Meredith thinks this entire expedition is bullshit and just wants to get it over with and go home. David is a bit like a pissed off grown-up Pinocchio. He just wants to be real. And he’ll do anything in his power to have that.

Well, when they get to the planet, they immediately come upon a series of artificial domes. Once inside one of these domes, they find the remains of an ancient intelligent species who were trying to get away from something. This becomes the central mystery of the movie. What were these aliens trying to get away from? What is it that got them all riled up? And even more importantly, who killed them?

As the crew of Prometheus tries to figure this out, we learn that the key players on the ship have a few secrets they’ve been hiding. When those secrets come out, and are combined with a suspicious virus found on the planet, these guys aren’t going to be worried about the meaning of life. They’re going to be worried about saving their lives.

Okay, one of the first complaints I’ve heard about Prometheus is that it’s slooooow. From someone who attacks tons of amateur writers for taking forever to start their screenplays, you’d think I’d be all over this. But to me the opening of Prometheus wasn’t slow. As long as you’re building towards something, as long as we’ve set up a goal, then the story is progressing. The speed at which that story will progress is relative to how interesting that goal is to the individual audience member. If it’s a goal we want to see achieved, the story will move rather quickly. If not, it won’t.

In this case, the crew is going to check out a planet where our possible ancestors came from. That’s a pretty damn strong goal. And if you’re still not sold on the pace being quick enough, go watch Alien again. I mean if you want to see a movie where “nothing happens” for the first 30 minutes, watch that film. They spend like 15 minutes of screentime waking up and turning on the ship. I think there’s a 3 minute scene of JUST the ship landing.

But really, both movies have a similar setup. There’s a mystery that needs to be solved (in Alien, the ship has pulled them out of hyper-sleep because of an unknown signal on a planet they’re passing) and a crew has to go solve it. Where Prometheus splits off from both Alien and Aliens is that once that initial mystery is solved (spoiler: our crew finds out this species is, indeed, responsible for human life), a NEW mystery is introduced (what were they doing here?). Whereas in Alien and Aliens, after the initial mystery, they turned into straight horror movies, this movie is more about finding answers. It’s designed to be slow, to build, to make you wonder. And again, your enjoyment of that will depend on how interesting the mysteries were to you individually. I *did* want to find out what these aliens were up to, so I was totally into it!

The next big complaint about Prometheus was that it had tons of plot holes. Well here’s the thing about a good mystery. If you’re into it, you’re not scrutinizing the plot. Sure, there can be a plot hole so big, you can’t ignore it. But in my one run through the movie, I didn’t see any of these big plot holes (though I’m sure you guys will point them out!).

Was everything always clear to me? No. I felt there was some murkiness involved with the aliens. I wasn’t entirely sure what they were running from. But in the end, I got it. They came here to experiment with these weapons and shit went wrong. Was it the greatest explanation known to cinema? No, but it made sense to me. I was satisfied.

And yes, I saw the hilarious Red Letter Media video detailing a lot of these holes. But come on, any script enthusiast can do that with any movie. I mean I can do it with that guy’s favorite movie of all time, Star Wars. How come the most sophisticated battle station in the universe can’t track where our heroes are inside of it? How come Storm Troopers aren’t waiting outside the trash compactor in case our heroes escape? How come when Storm Troopers are looking for rebels on Mos Eisley, they give up because…a door is locked (“It’s locked. Let’s keep moving.”)?

All in all, the plot holes he mentioned were pretty small. Yeah, I too wondered why someone would run in a straight line when the ship above them was falling down in a straight line. But that wasn’t a script killer for me. There was FAR MORE good here than there was bad. And script-wise, for a big budget summer movie, I’d argue that outside of Pixar, this is as good as it’s going to get. I mean, it certainly made more sense than freaking Inception.

The moment for me when I gave myself over to this movie – when I said, “You know what? This is a legitimate flick,” was the surgery scene. (Major spoiler) In the middle of the movie, Shaw is impregnated with an alien fetus that is growing rapidly inside of her. The ship is equipped with a sort of robotic automated surgery tube. You go inside of it and it performs whatever surgery you need. Shaw realizes that the only way she’s going to get this fetus out of her is to perform surgery on herself.

Unfortunately, the machine doesn’t perform abortions. So she has to manually program a surgery into the machine that’s only SIMILAR to an abortion. She hops inside this thing, all the while feeling this entity inside of her trying to bust out, and watches as the machine rips her stomach apart and takes the foreign body out of her.

The alien organism is alive by this point, and trying to reach its tentacles down and kill Shaw. The only thing preventing it are the machines’ fragile clamping auto-tools. So Shaw is trapped inside a 2’ by 7’ coffin with a killer alien inches from her body, while getting sewn up from a machine performing an incorrect surgery on her. I mean THAT’S A FUCKING SCENE!

That’s what told me these writers had come to play ball. There are SO FEW SCENES you can write into a major Hollywood film these days that haven’t been done before. Yet I’d never seen that scene before. I was riveted.

[ ] what the hell did I just see?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

WHAT I LEARNED – If there’s anything to learn from this, it’s the gamble you take when you rest the majority of your story on a mystery as opposed to a threat. The first two Alien movies worked so well because of the established threat. If you don’t have that threat, your mystery better be uber-inspired, because you’re asking your audience to care only about that. Since audiences aren’t very patient these days, that’s a risky proposition. But I thought Prometheus’ gamble paid off and it worked. What did you guys think?