Genre: Thriller/Horror
Premise: An overworked mother, frustrated with the lack of duty-sharing in her marriage, gets wrapped up in a community of career-focused women who may be turning their husbands into mindless robots.
About: Author Chandler Baker is primed to make a lot of noise in Hollywood. Not only did her werewolf short story just sell, but this book of hers was snatched up by producing powerhouse Plan B, with Kristin Wiig attached to play the lead.
Writer: Chandler Baker
Details: about 340 pages

I picked this book up the second I finished short story Big Bad, which I loved. The thing I noticed about Chandler Baker while reading that story was: THIS GIRL CAN WRITE. There’s a difference in her writing compared to some of the trash you see gumming up the 405 and the 10 here in Hollywood. She’s got real talent.

So it didn’t take much convincing for me to read this. Let’s find out if it’s movie-worthy, though.

Lawyer and pregnant mother Nora Spangler lives in Austin, Texas with her occasionally annoying but, overall, sweet husband, Hayden. Now in her second pregnancy, Nora needs help every day doing things. But Hayden only casually offers that help. It’s getting to the point where Nora is pissed. She can’t do EVERYTHING herself.

The two are thinking of moving to a nearby pristine housing community called Dynasty Ranch. Nora, in particular, is enamored with the area because it has so many high-profile working women there. Not only that, but all of the husbands are super helpful! One even stops to help her when she gets a flat. And when she meets one of the ladies, she notes that *her* husband is eagerly cleaning out her closet!

Nora is more sold on the home but Hayden’s skeptical. So they’re not buying anything right away. However, while there, a woman named Penny recruits Nora to look into a devastating house fire that not only burned down her house but killed her husband. Nora accepts the case and starts investigating.

Not long after, one of the more popular women in the community, Cornelia, a psychiatrist, nudges Nora to do couples therapy with her. She has a unique method that has transformed the community as nearly every couple in Dynasty Ranch gets along great. Nora thinks Cornelia is a little weird but decides to give it a shot. And, to her surprise, Hayden takes to it well. He almost immediately becomes more helpful around the home.

The deeper Nora digs into this house fire, the more she suspects foul play was involved. Could someone have been… murdered? As soon as she starts operating on that theory, Cornelia becomes squirrely. She interjects whenever Nora wants to speak directly to Penny. Eventually, Cornelia admits that she has a bigger goal – one that involves deprogramming men and women until they reset back to their natural identities, identities where women are the breadwinners changing the world, and their men live to support them. What will this mean for Penny and Nora? I can tell you that when you live in Crazy Town, like Cornelia, you will do everything to make sure your vision is accomplished.

A big reason this sold was because it was pitched as a female-centric Stepford Wives. It’s kind of like Get Out in that way. Base your social horror concept around an old 70s movie and add a twist. I find it to be a great pitch. If I was a producer in the room and someone pitched me this idea, I would be excited. Especially 3 years ago, when this book was written.

But I’m not sure Chandler Baker was able to wrangle that concept into an exciting enough story.

She makes an interesting choice right off the bat. 99 out of 100 writers would’ve had Nora and Hayden buy the house in Dynasty Ranch within the first 30 pages. But they don’t buy the house. The connection between Nora and Dynasty Ranch is, instead, explored through this arson case. And I’m not sure that was the best idea.

If you want to create fear, which I think this story is keen on doing, then you place your characters inside that dangerous community. If they’re a million miles away and safe in their own home, where is the fear? It was a strange choice.

Also, the big hook here is the husbands being turned into obedient drones. But the manner in which this happens is a huge letdown. You’re thinking it’s some advanced lobotomy procedure that permanently changes them. But, instead, it’s this nebulous therapy that Cornelia uses. And it’s never clear why they’re changing. She asks them questions. She does a couple of jedi mind tricks to get them to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. But nothing ever occurred where we understood why the man had turned into a mindless drone. I guess it was up to us to make that leap.

And the conclusion to this arson investigation was lame. It didn’t have that “Holy Shit” moment where everything comes together in some shocking way. It was basically Cornelia working her vague magic over this guy and that’s why he’s dead. In other words, it was something we could’ve predicted ourselves.

Now, this all might be confusing to you because I just told you how much I liked Chandler Baker’s writing. But let me reiterate what I said. I said I like: HER WRITING. This book was going to decide whether I liked HER STORYTELLING. Completely different things (as we talked about the other day).

Her storytelling was not good. A critical component of good storytelling is THE PAYOFFS to all of the earlier SETUPS. The payoffs here were lame. It’s never clear why the men have turned into drones. The payoff to the arson storyline – which was THE PRIMARY PLOT – was so casual, dare I say it was nonexistent.

And for a movie about turning husbands into drones, we know very little about Hayden in this story. I see this happen with weaker writers often. They know their main characters intimately, but any of the characters orbiting that main character get little-to-no depth. And it’s because the writers don’t want to do the work. They know that creating a fully-rounded husband character that feels like a living breathing human being takes time. It’s easier to convince yourself that secondary characters don’t need as much depth and leave it at that.

In that sense, it strikes me as the kind of story that was written too fast and not rewritten enough. I can tell when writers didn’t give everything and that’s definitely the case here. I don’t know if there was an unrealistic deadline involved but something prevented this story from reaching its potential. I’m sad to say The Husbands wasn’t for me.

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

What I learned: I know it’s cheap. I know it’s easy. But gosh darnit, using the “mysterious thing that happened to our hero in the past” carrot WORKS ALL THE FREAKING TIME. Especially in these novels. We keep hearing about some crippling accident that happened in this family and we have to keep reading to find out what it was.

What I learned 2: Powerful payoffs. That ‘crippling accident’ carrot I just talked about? It had a really weak payoff. It amounted to a child crawling out onto the porch because Nora fell asleep. That was the big “accident” that had 250 pages of setup. Something Chandler Baker needs to work on as a writer is her PAYOFFS. Her payoffs sucked. This accident payoff sucked. The arson payoff sucked. The ‘turning husbands into drones’ payoff sucked. You have to go bigger and flashier with all these things if you’re going to make us wait 200+ pages to get that payoff. The payoffs here were worth 20 pages at most.

This might look like a stock image.  But this is what’s on my table right now!

Okay, if you’re coming here to hate on Venom 3’s box office, you do not have a co-conspirator in me. My buddy Kelly wrote and directed it and I would never say anything bad about her or her work so… we’ll have to wait until the next superhero movie to complain about the superhero genre.

Actually, I do have one negative thing to say about Venom. Why didn’t they ever make a Spider-Man Venom movie?? It was their only opportunity to create a big Spider-Man adventure in-house (at Sony) and not have to share it with Disney. Yet they didn’t even consider it! Don’t they have a name for that in the business world? Corporate malfeciense?

I see it as the final nail in the coffin of the “cinematic universe” strategy. It clearly doesn’t work. It worked for that one great Decade for Disney. But it was such a specific confluence of variables that allowed it to happen, it could never be done again. Even Marvel is realizing they can’t do it again.

What the HBO show, The Franchise, is confirming, is that when you rely on the “universe” approach and something goes badly in one of the movies, it screws up all plans to integrate that movie into the rest of the universe. You can’t include Captain Marvel in Iron Man 4 after The Marvels. Nobody wants to see her.

And, unfortunately, the way that movies are made, you have to put Captain Marvel in the Iron Man 4 production BEFORE The Marvels comes out. Which means you’ve already shot Iron Man 4 with a character everyone now hates, and you’re stuck with it.

Kevin Feige is starting to realize this and changing his strategy. He’s only allowing cross-integration between stories when it involves smaller characters and smaller plot developments. That way, you don’t have to worry about putting a poorly received character in the next Thor. The character is too small to matter.

But that then begs the question. If you’re pussy-footing around the universe, barely crossing over anything, then what’s the point of having a cinematic universe in the first place?

Look at how this has affected Star Wars. The Acolyte’s final season teaser is a behind-the-back shot of Yoda. But everyone hated The Acolyte. Which means now you’re tainting one of your most popular characters. There are a lot more pitfalls to fall into when doing cinematic universes than there are launch pads.

It makes me wonder where we’re going with movies. Some people have been speculating that the next big trend is going to be crossovers. Remember, a decade ago, when we were hearing rumors about a 21 Jump Street Men in Black crossover? That’s the kind of stuff we’re going to be getting. Because if the studios can’t depend on superheroes anymore, they don’t have many other options to make people show up to the theater. But putting two well-known IPs that you wouldn’t otherwise think would appear in the same movie, in the same movie, could be an easy way to get people to show up.

Of course, now you’re cannibalizing your studio because instead of being able to launch TWO big movies and take in all that money, you can only launch one. You also set a precedent to the audience that your character isn’t strong enough to have a movie of his own. Therefore, if you later try and release a movie with just him, people say, “But he’s no longer with Optimus Prime so who cares?” I mean, if they released another Deadpool movie with just Deadpool, how eager would we be to see it now that you’ve established Deadpool and Wolverine? “You mean it’s just… Deadpool? No thanks, I’ll wait for streaming.”

We all know what studios SHOULD do.

It’s obvious.

But they’re too chickenshit to do it.

They need to spend 3-5 years launching as many original titles as possible. I think their original titles make up 5% of their slate right now. They need to make that 70% of their slate. Some of those are going to hit big and now they have a number of cool franchises that can last years if not decades.

But they won’t do it!

They won’t do it.

Unless!

Unless you guys write an amazing spec script that the studios can’t say no too. But I’m going to be real here. A lot of you don’t write stuff that could become franchises. You don’t write stuff that’s commercial enough. You’ve got to find that commercial side of you that still allows you to write what you want to write about. It’s possible to do both, you know. I find the writers who *can* do both to be the ones who last the longest in this business.

What would I tell my young self to write if I was a brand new screenwriter coming on to the scene right now? I would write an action film but with some kind of interesting angle. It couldn’t be a generic idea such as, “A former NAVY SEAL finds himself running for his life when the Armenian mob becomes convinced that he killed their leader.” It needs some sort of interesting twist – something that would be a bit risky.

I know that can result in embarrassment. But let’s be real here. You can’t achieve anything in life without taking some risk. So you’re going to have to try and do something different. You can’t play it safe. I’m sorry but Die Hard on a riverboat isn’t going to cut it.

Let me be a little more specific about that because someone might point out the spec sale of John Wick and say, “The studios always buy generic action fare.”  Actually, John Wick was originally 70 years old.  That was the big risk screenwriter Derek Kolstad took.  But then Reeves signed on and they made him younger.

The action label will put it on the studio radar because studios have looked and will always look for action movies. Action plays EVERYWHERE in the world. So that’s never going out of style. And then your twist is what’s going to make it fresh. It’s what’s going to separate it from all those other action movies out there.

Here are some examples: Edge of Tomorrow, Upgrade, Wanted, The Beekeeper, Into the Night, Big Trouble in Little China. Not all of these movies were great. But all of them either did or would’ve garnered spec script interest FOR SURE.

That’s it for today.

Tell me what you’re watching, tell me what you’re reading, tell me what you’re loving!

Whenever I mention titles, I see a little dance going on in the comments section. It’s an exciting topic these titles, probably because they’re the most elusive element in screenwriting.

Ruminating about what makes a good title gets my anxiety pumping. Do I even know the answer to what makes a good title?

Or are good titles the thing you only know when you see them?

“Jaws.”

That’s a good title. I don’t know why. But I saw it and I felt something and I liked the way it looked on the page so, yeah, boom, I like that title.

Is this method scientific? Most certainly not. But therein lies the complexity of titling.

I also wondered if titles only work when they’re placed next to the logline or poster. Can they work by themselves?

Are loglines worthless unless we know the genre? So many questions.

But I got news. I have all sorts of titles from all the showdowns I’ve run. So let’s lay out 30 random titles from those submissions and use them as the starting point for a conversation about what makes a good title.

Here we go…

Noah’s Choice
The Best and Brightest
Quiet Storm
Triggered
Bloodlet
Sweepers
Demon Motel
Go Find Her
Hit Squad
Proselytes
A Theory of Wolves
Pariah
An Old Friend
Witness Protection
Oh, Hi Mark
Live Fire
20,000 Leagues Into the Sky
Violence Is the Way
Here Comes Santa Claus
Trephination Falls
Sugar Green
The Glen Meadows Reclamation Project
Our Dead Lives
Youngbloods
Things That Glitter
All American Boy
The Stationary Department
The Pot Washer
Avulsion
Devil In A World of Hurt
Variant
Slide to Survival
The Fourth Husband
The Last Fairy Tale
10 Things I Hate About Demons

I’ll be honest. Quite a few of these, if I’m just looking at the title, make me curious. Some more than others but it’s interesting when you strip everything else away what you find. There’s so little information that your mind is forced to fill in a lot of blanks. For that reason, titles without context will work as Rorschach tests to most. You see what you want to see.

“Avulsion” has a strong intensity to it. “Variant” has a mysterious quality that makes me want to know more. “Pariah” is not only mysterious but also hints at a compelling main character. I think you’re seeing a trend here. One-word titles create mystery. And for certain types of genres, mystery is good. You just have to make sure that word is powerful and memorable. It can’t be something like, “iPhone” or “Sheets.”

Some titles that clearly *didn’t* work for me begin with, “The Pot Washer.” Think of the image that puts in the reader’s head. Someone washing pots. Is there any way someone could interpret that as a compelling story? I don’t think so. So find another title.

“Slide to Survival.” The words don’t gel. A slide is something fun. Survival means “save yourself or you die.” Combining them feels like combining peanut butter and mustard.

“Live Fire” is straight-up generic. It doesn’t put any image in my head that even remotely resembles a movie. Which is what you need these titles to do. They can’t just be a combo of words that you like. They must have purpose. That purpose is to convey an image of a movie people would want to see. This does not do that.

“Here Comes Santa Claus” doesn’t have any creativity to it. You’re just taking part of the chorus of a well-known song and repeating it. Good writers find a spin on the title to make it its own.

At first glance, “10 Things I Hate About Demons” is kind of fun. But something’s missing. It took me a second to realize what it was. The ending of a “10 Things I Hate” title works best when the things hated are the opposite of what you’d expect. So if my title was, “10 Things I Hate About Killers,” you’d scratch your head and say, “I already know killers are bad. Why am I coming to you to remind me of that?” But if I titled my script, “10 Things I Hate About Puppy Dogs,” now you’re a little bit curious, as puppy dogs aren’t hated.

Are there any titles here that, if I saw them and nothing else, I would open the script and check out the first page? Maybe, “Violence Is the Way.” The title is a contradiction. So I have to read the script to figure out why we’re doing the opposite of what is right. Irony in a title is one of the few ways you can make a title work all on its own. Comps include True Lies, The Neverending Story, Dead Man Walking, and Wargames.

There’s something about Sugar Green that I like but I can’t put my finger on it. That’s the thing with titles. They can be personal in the way they affect each individual. Sugar isn’t green. So, that right there has me curious. But also it feels like the title of some indie movie I’d want to know more about.

What are some other lessons we can glean from this exercise?

In order to answer that, let’s take a look at 30 more titles. The difference is, these are titles from movies that have actually been made. Now, just because a movie got made does not make a title “better.” In fact, studios are notorious for getting cold feet on risky titles and replacing them with something boilerplate. Still, I expect these movie titles to be better than what we saw with the amateurs.

It Ends With Us
If
The Wild Robot
Longlegs
Migration
Civil War
The Beekeeper
Anyone But You
Challengers
Argylle
Madame Webb
Trap
Speak No Evil
Night Swim
The Boys In The Boat
The Forge
Imaginary
Abigail
Monkey Man
Arthur The King
Poor Things
Blink Twice
The Bikeriders
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare
Fly Me To The Moon
Unsung Hero
American Fiction
The Iron Claw
The Watchers
Tarot

Of these, several caught my eye right away. “Blink Twice” was at the top of my list. Which is funny because I have no interest in seeing the movie. But the phrase indicates that someone is in trouble (“Blink twice if you’re in danger”) and that can be all you need to get someone to open your script.

“The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” is an eye-catcher. Typically, the longer the title, the more dangerous. That’s because long titles can start to feel like run-on sentences. Also, the word choice has to be just right. For example, if I wrote a script titled, “The Dogwalker Sleeping In Albuquerque Has Designs On Running The World,” is that a good title? No. It’s a mish-mash of words that have no meaning.

Meanwhile, look at how many short titles we have here in the produced list. 21 of the 30 titles are 2 words or less. That’s the one title tip I’m sure you should take away from today. Go short with your title. UNLESS you have the greatest idea for a long title in history.

“The Iron Claw” is a strong title simply because it’s a strong image. “Civil War” is probably the only title where I would definitely request the script, even if I didn’t know anything else about it. Others agree. A lot of people who never go to indie movies went to this one SPECIFICALLY because of its title. It’s a title that promises conflict at the highest level.

That’s a good lesson: If you can imply conflict in your title, you are likely to get some interest. We see this with one of the earlier titles on the list, “Anyone But You.”

As for bad titles? “Argylle” is the worst title on the list. It tells us nothing. Is it a surprise, then, that nobody saw it? “If” is weak. I guess sometimes a title can be too short. The Forge is weak. The Bikeriders may be the most bland title on the planet. What does that title tell you about the movie? That people are going to ride motorcycles? That lack of specificity is exactly why myself and millions of other potential moviegoers never saw this thing.

Outside of that, most of the titles are solid.

What have we learned today? Not much! Well, a few things. 1) Make your title short. 2) Create irony if possible. 3) Imply conflict if possible.

You guys are always so vocal about titles. I can’t wait to hear your opinions on this.

There is still time left to grab an October Script Consultation Deal!  $100 off the full price + another $50 off if you have a horror or thriller script.  Also, while I don’t yet have a title consultation option (maybe I should – 99 cents per title consult?), I still have a great logline consultation.  Just $25 for me to evaluate your logline.  If you’re interested in the feature deal or any of my consults, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com!

We’ve got a spec script with another wild twist ending!

Genre: Legal Thriller
Premise: When a rich New Yorker is the lead suspect in his wife’s murder, he hires his daughter from a previous marriage, whose wounds from him deserting her have never gone away, as his attorney.
About: This spec sold earlier this year to NETFLIX. Weren’t writers around here just complaining that specs don’t sell? Don’t tell that to Melissa London Hilfers. This is her fifth feature spec sale! Hilfers loves legal thrillers. Not surprising since she is a lawyer. Another “I have no time to write” excuse taken off the table. Yesterday, a doctor with two kids found time to write a novel. And now a lawyer, the profession with the least amount of time in the world, had time to write five scripts. So come on, guys! Let’s see some more output!
Writer: Melissa London Hilfers
Details: 110 pages

Today we’re going to talk about how weaving character dynamics into a nuts & bolts legal plot can yield solid returns.

Let’s get to it!

40 year old Cecilia Caufield has just won the biggest case of her life, a 150 million dollar settlement. She goes home and celebrates by having sex with her husband, Ryan. But then we see her leave her husband and go to… another home? To… Peter. Oh wait, Peter is her husband. Ryan is just some lawyer she’s banging. Bad, Cecilia. Bad!

Cecilia’s mother calls and tells her that her father (the two are no longer married) is a murder suspect! His second wife was stabbed and killed on the city streets last night. Cecilia’s father rarely engages with her ever since he moved onto his second family but Cecilia races over to see him anyway and makes sure he’s okay. Not only is he okay, he wants Cecilia to represent him!

An old work buddy of Cecilia’s, Aaron, is the lead prosecutor on the case, and he is POSITIVE William killed his wife. The murder weapon was a jewel-encrusted serrated knife that he gave to his wife for protection a decade ago. Aaron theorizes that William knew she had it on her so he got her onto a dark street, ripped it out, and stabbed her.

Cecilia is diligent in getting all the details of that day from her father, even down to the specifics of he and his wife’s sex that morning. If she’s going to prove her father’s innocence, she needs all the details, no matter how nasty. Cecilia suspects that William’s long-time driver knows more than he’s letting on. As such, she starts to doubt whether her father is really innocent. Regardless, she’s going to fight tooth and nail for him to go free. The question is, what will it cost her?

I had a long think about this one.

Did I like it? Did I not like it?

I’ll start by saying this: The writing was MUCH BETTER than yesterday’s offering. At no point did Melissa London Hilfers describe any character as “handsome” 917,212 times.

But I still had to ask, “Why is this idea movie-worthy?” “How is this storyline any loftier than, say, a The Lincoln Lawyer or Suits episode?”

The answer to this is the reason the script sold. And it’s an important distinction that I want you to pay attention to.

The weakness of a show like The Lincoln Lawyer or Law & Order is that the court cases are more about the nuts and bolts of the case rather than real human emotion. Therefore, you can only ever watch those shows with casual interest.

We know this because whenever a big episode comes around, like a premiere or a finale, it isn’t just some random person who’s on trial for murder. It’s one of the main characters from the show. That’s because they know that, in order to really pull you in, they have to engage you on a deeper emotional level.

That’s what Hilfers does here. This movie is just as much about what’s going on outside the trial as it is inside. It really is the only way you can elevate one of these trial case storylines from what you see on TV. Well, that or some crazy high concept, like the “first ever defense of a ghost” or something.

This script works because Cecilia isn’t just defending her father. She’s getting to spend time with her father again for the first time since she was a child. And there’s this sad irony that the only way she got to do that was for his wife to be killed and for him to be the number 1 suspect.

Which the script needed.

Because the plot itself *is* the exact same stuff you see in a Law & Order episode. There’s the spoiled half-sister who got pissed at her mom when she said she was going to cut her out of the estate. There’s the dead wife’s trainer who claims that she was planning on leaving her husband to be with him. There are not one, but TWO, one-of-a-kind jewel-encrusted knives, either of which could be the murder weapon. And, as is always the case in these stories, nobody seems to be telling the whole truth.

I rarely cared about any of that. I was only mildly curious about who killed the mom. I was more invested in Cecilia’s complex relationship with her father. Particularly, I was wondering if her father was playing her – being charming to get her to do what he needed her to do. But, as soon as this was over, he was going to leave her again.

And then came the twist.

(MAJOR SPOILERS)

This is a good example of the influence a twist can have on a script. Cause I had this as a “wasn’t for me” all the way through. But the twist brought it up to a “worth the read.” The thing you have to remember about a twist ending is not just that it provides the story with a twist. But that it provides the story with a twist RIGHT AS IT ENDS.

That creates a swell of energy within the reader that they then feel the need to expunge. It’s hard to come off a big intense final twist AND NOT WANT TO TALK TO SOMEONE ABOUT IT. So this generates one of the most important things a script requires for success – the reader telling other people about it.

I will often read scripts that I think are good. But they don’t compel me to talk to others about them. They don’t infuse me with a burst of energy that I then must pass on.

The twist, for those of you who are curious, is that Cecilia did it. The reason it works is because there isn’t a single moment in the script that points in that direction so you never consider it. And yet, it’s still paid off.

That’s REALLY HARD TO DO. To not show a single clear setup and yet the payoff is obvious. So let me tell you how the writer did it. She used this infidelity storyline as a fake-out. The whole time, we were thinking that was a subplot meant to explore Cecilia’s marriage. It was so separate from everything else, that we wouldn’t, in a million years, have thought to connect it to the case.

But later, when we see what really happened that night, we see Cecilia and Ryan kissing outside, then him get into an Uber, and who should walk up, but Kimberly. Kimberly is ecstatic that she’s caught her husband’s daughter in this weak moment and delights in telling her that as soon as she gets home, she’s going to call up Cecilia’s husband and tell her that his wife is cheating on him. That’s why Cecilia kills her.

Another thing about the twist is that it makes Cecilia quite the complex character because she does *not* ultimately offer her husband the truth. So, is that good? Are we really happy this girl won? I think we are because Kimberly was an awful person who delighted in taking William away from his wife and daughter. But Cecilia, by no means, gets away scot-free here.

It’s enough to get an endorsement from me. I don’t know what that means going forward in the spec market. Are we about to hit a streak of twist endings? I guess we’ll find out!

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

What I learned: When it comes to legal scripts, I like the structure used here, where the trial starts at the halfway point. Starting a trial right after the first act means that an entire 75% of your script is going to be a trial. I’m not saying that can’t work but it’s a looooonnnng time to be in trial. Commencing the trial halfway through the script feels like a perfect bifurcation of the structure.

The viral book is now being turned into a movie starring Sydney Sweeney

Genre: Thriller
Logline: Hard up for a job after spending 10 years in prison, a young woman is hired by a seemingly perfect family to be their housemaid, only to learn that her boss, the mother, is a raging gaslighting lunatic.
About: This project just came together last week. It will star current Sydney Sweeney, Sydney Sweeney, former Sydney Sweeney, Amanda Seyfried, and be directed by Paul Feig. It’s an adaptation of the enormous literary sensation that has garnered over 300,000 reviews on Amazon. It’s being adapted by The Boys staff writer, Rebecca Sonnenshine. Novelist Frieda McFadden generated her success all on her own, self-publishing her first book, The Devil Wears Scrubs, on Amazon a decade ago.
Writer: Rebecca Sonnenshine (based on the book by Freida McFadden).
Details: Roughly 330 pages

As the self-appointed leader of the Sydney Sweeney Global Fan Club, I consider it my God-given duty to track every project she signs up for. Well, except for that boxing movie where she looks like a man. As soon as I saw this project announced on Deadline, I clicked straight over to Amazon and downloaded that sizzling piece of digital magic onto my Kindle.

I was going to find me out what The Housemaid was about!

Word on the street was that it had the twist of all twists. And I loooooovvvvve a good twist. Little did I know, I was about to go on a journey that I would never be able to come back from, a journey so fraught with gaslighting that I just filled up my car on the book rather than from the 76 station down to the street.

But this gaslighting came with a special side of OMG. OMG good? OMG bad? You’ll have to read the book to find out. And if you’re worried about spoilers, I’ll alert you when they’re coming. Okay, time to synopsize the plot.

Millie, who’s in her late 20s, just got out of prison (for reasons we’ll never learn) and is therefore having a tough time finding even a minimum wage job. So she’s shocked when Nina, a well-off wife, hires her to be a live-in maid at her gorgeous upper middle class home with her perfect husband and psycho 9 year old daughter.

Everything seems fine when she shows up on her first day until Nina introduces Millie to her attic bedroom. Millie notices that the door locks FROM THE OUTSIDE as opposed to the inside. And don’t worry if you didn’t catch that detail. Because the author, Freida McFadden, is going to tell you 691 more times over the course of the story.

Almost immediately, Nina starts acting weird. She’ll tell Millie to go pick up her daughter, Cecelia, at school, then once Millie gets there and learns Cecilia is going to practice with her friends instead, she’ll call Nina and ask what happened and Nina says she never told Millie to go pick up her daughter. Huh?

This gaslighting happens frequently to the point where Millie starts to wonder if she’s going nuts. But Millie’s got other problems, dude. Like the fact that she’s falling HARD for Nina’s husband, Andrew. Millie finds Andrew very handsome by the way. How do I know that? Because McFadden tells you 14,722 times.

One night, when Nina has to unexpectedly leave town, Millie makes the unthinkable decision to go to the broadway play with Andrew that he and his wife were supposed to attend. After 792 more reminders that Andrew is handsome, stupid Millie sleeps with him!

Just a couple of days later, Nina finds the playbill of the Broadway show, which erupts into a home-destroying drag-out-all-night fight. Andrew does the unthinkable. He declares he wants to live with Millie instead of Nina and kicks Nina out! Nina is beside herself! Millie is over the moon! Until the next evening, when she goes to her attic bedroom to move everything downstairs, and she finds that she’s been LOCKED INSIDE.

(Big Spoilers Follow)

We then switch into Nina’s POV for the first time and we learn THE TRUTH. Which is that Nina is actually a really nice person. She married Andrew and found out he was a psychopath who would lock her in the attic to punish her. Andrew threatened hellfire if she ever left him so Nina concocted the whole “housemaid” plan as a way to get Andrew to fall in love with a younger hotter girl so that she could leave! But once she’s done so, she’s burdened with the guilt of leaving Millie out to dry. Will she come back and help her? Or let her suffer like she did?

I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book as poorly written as this one.

This writing is so garbage, I could actually smell the stink coming off the page.

The level of writing here is SO BAD that you’ll often stop and stare at the page with your mouth open. There are a million examples of this but the biggest is how embarrassingly on-the-nose McFadden is throughout the book.

For example, there’s this handsome (yes, handsome!) Italian gardener (no, I’m not kidding, he’s Italian) who seems to warn Millie in Italian on her first day. Millie goes to look up the Italian words he said online and they translate to, “Danger!” McFadden then has 50 other scenes with Enzo where he KEEPS SAYING THE EXACT SAME THING. Danger. Danger. You’re in danger. Stranger danger. Leave, you’re in danger. Danger danger danger danger danger danger danger. I honestly thought it was a joke book at a certain point with how much she repeats everything.

There is zero subtlety to anything and I was previously under the assumption that being on the nose was a writing no-no. But with this book selling millions of copies, I’m starting to wonder if subtlety is dead. Because whatever she did definitely worked.

Okay, let’s get to the root of the question here, which is, why is this book so big? Why is it being turned into a movie with a major package of actors and director? If it’s as bad as I say it is, how can it be so successful?

I think I know.

Two reasons.

One, McFadden does something kinda genius here. You know romance novels, right? They used to sell like hotcakes and various versions of them still do today. McFadden did what I tell all of you to do. Take an established genre or established story and put a spin on it. McFadden took the romance novel and spun it into a thriller.

Cause this is, essentially, mommy porn. Wish-fulfillment central. Moms imagine themselves as younger Millie, working for a strong handsome (you guys can’t imagine how handsome this man is – I have no idea what his actual physical appearance is. But I know he’s handsome!) older man. The temptation of romance is in the air at every corner. I don’t know women that well but I know most of them love this sh*t.

So that’s number 1 for why the book was a success.

And number 2 is because the book’s twist *is* pretty good. It’s not going to rewrite the twist book or anything. But I could see most casual readers not seeing it coming. *I* knew something was up with Nina, of course. She was acting too weird for there to not be some secondary motivation. But that’s only because I’m trained to figure out character motivations after reading billions of scripts. The average reader will be duped for sure.

So that’s the reason for the book’s success. It’s not complicated. What it is is a writer who gets two very important areas of the story right. The wish-fulfillment aspect and the surprise ending. Those two things can definitely result in a breakout hit.

This isn’t my jam. It’s too silly. And the writing – oh my god you guys, the writing is SO BAD. But I understand why it’s become successful. Not to mention, it’s a very simple story, like I always tell you guys to write. :)

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

What I learned: Check how many times your favored words are used. A quick search for the word “Handsome” would’ve alerted McFadden that she had used the word way too many times. It’s often not until you see a number next to your favorite words that you realize just how excessively you’ve used it. I use the word “just” a lot in my writing, for example. Do a quick search for the word, find out you used it 300 times in your script, be shocked, and get to work erasing most of them.

What I learned 2: I mean, you really don’t have an excuse not to find time to write after you learn about Freida McFadden’s story. She was a doctor RAISING 2 KIDS when she wrote her first novel. Imagine how easy it would’ve been to say, “Eh, I’m too tired to write today.” Yet she always found time. Now, according to the New York Times, she’s the “fastest-selling thriller writer in the United States.” Stop making excuses! Pick up that pen! It ain’t going to write itself!