The Substance will become, to everyone who sees it, the most talked about film of the year.

Genre: Body Horror
Premise: A former Hollywood star signs up for a secret service that allows her to split in two, birthing a younger hotter version of herself.
About: I’ve waited five long years to see Fargeat’s follow-up to “Revenge.” Bringing Demi Moore back for a major role? Count me in. Inject some Margaret Qualley into that equation? DOUBLE count me in. The Substance didn’t have the marketing money to get the same awareness as a lot of these other Hollywood movies. But it did win Best Screenplay at Cannes.
Writer: Coralie Fargeat
Details: 2 hours and 20 minutes

Some context is necessary before I get into today’s review.

I knew NOTHING about this movie going into it.

I went because the director directed Revenge and I loved that movie. I couldn’t wait to see what she came up with in her first American film.

That information is key because had I known what I was getting into, I would’ve prepared myself better. It’s the funny thing about expectations. I prefer to know as little as possible about a script or a movie going in. And yet, there are certain types of movies that you need to be in a certain headspace for going in. This was one of those movies.

50 year old former Hollywood star, Elizabeth Sparkle, who’s barely scraping by doing a fitness show for women of a certain age, is mortified when she overhears her evil boss mention that he’s going to fire her and find a younger hotter replacement.

Distracted by that information on her drive home, she gets in a car accident. Luckily, she’s fine. At the doctor’s office, a young attractive man slips her something called “The Substance.” It’s a service that allows you to split into two, basically. This other version of yourself will be young and hot.

Elizabeth injects the substance and births Sue, who immediately auditions for the replacement position, which she gets easily. Good times, right? Ah, but there are rules with the substance. You can only be young for seven days at a time. Your old version then must be reactivated for 7 days to replenish the cells needed to stay young, while you are deactivated. You must keep this schedule or certain body modifications will start happening.

Sue begins loving young life so much that she gradually starts stretching out her seven days. A few hours at first. Then a few days. Elizabeth will wake up with an old finger. Or an old leg. She complains to customer support but they tell her, “You guys are the same. You have to figure it out yourselves.”

Sue then gets on such a hot streak at work that she simply stops switching altogether. When she’s finally out of animation juice, she has no choice but to reactivate Elizabeth, and ohhhhhh boy does Elizabeth look different. She is a beast. And she’s mad as hell at Sue for doing this to her. This can only lead to one thing – a battle to the death.

Let me start with the concept.

I was in.

I’m always telling screenwriters: Start with a big concept. If you start with a big concept, every stage of selling the script becomes a thousand times easier. Getting people to read your script is easier. Getting people to greenlight your movie is easier. And getting people to see your movie is easier.

This idea of being able to trade off with a younger version of yourself half the year via an injectable serum is about as high concept as it gets. Which surprised me. Fargeat’s first film had such a basic premise (a girl is left for dead by her evil boyfriend in the desert and she comes back and kills him and his friends) that I wasn’t expecting something this concept-y.

And I absolutely LOVE Fargeat’s direction. To the point where I’m obsessed with it. That opening sequence where we hold on a top down shot of a sidewalk as Elizabeth Sparkle’s Hollywood star is put in. We see her, top down still, accepting the honor. Then, top down still, we watch the years pass by, overhearing chatter from the people passing over the star. “Who is this?” “I don’t know. She used to be famous a long time ago.” Over more time still, the star starts to crack. Until finally we’re seeing people casually drop food on it. Homeless people wheeling their carts over it. It was such a brilliant way to tell her backstory.

Since Thursday is Scene Showdown (enter here!), I want to highlight the scene-writing as well. My favorite scene occurred in the middle of the movie. Elizabeth decides she wants to go on a date with an old classmate. They set the date for that night. We then show Elizabeth getting ready in the bathroom. She looks at herself in the mirror. But she’s clearly not satisfied. She’s not satisfied because she’s now experienced life as Sue – being younger, tighter, more effortlessly beautiful. So she applies more makeup, trying to hide more of her wrinkles. Mask her imperfections.

But then she’s not happy with her cleavage. It doesn’t look as good as Sue’s. So she grabs a scarf and awkwardly covers herself. We see the clock ticking, getting closer and closer to the date time, but she’s less and less happy with herself, making more and more changes, desperately trying to look as young and pretty as possible, until finally she has a breakdown where she messes up her entire look, climaxing in her sitting, like a lump, on her living room floor, a series of text messages from her date coming in on her nearby phone: “Hello? Are you still coming?” “Are you here yet?” “Are you okay?”

What I liked about the scene is it had that beginning, middle, and end that I’m always advocating for in your scene-writing. And it did it WITHOUT A WORD OF DIALOGUE. That’s not easy to do! So I always rate writers who are able to pull that off.

Now, if the movie would’ve focused on scenes like that the whole time, I would’ve loved it.

But as I slowly began to realize, this was a body-horror movie. Maybe THE body-horror movie. The best of all time, I may proclaim? The problem is, I am NOT a body-horror fan. I don’t enjoy it. It creeps me out. I find it weird. And that was what doomed this movie for me in the final 45 minutes because the final 45 minutes are all body-horror.

Ironically, the things I loved about Coraline’s direction – the extreme close-ups, the unique angles, the unexpected ways she’d shoot a scene – became the things I hated. Cause she wouldn’t just show an eyeball growing on Elizabeth’s shoulder. She would get an extreme close-up of that eyeball, play the various squishy sounds that eyeballs make when they move around, show you pus coming out of the lip of the eye socket. She might keep you there with that eyeball for an entire 60 seconds. It was unsettling.

But for me, the thing that killed The Substance was the absurd amount of blood during the final scene. Have you ever watched a movie where a character gets their arm chopped off and for about 3 seconds, we see them holding their arm, screaming, with blood shooting out everywhere?

Well, I want you to imagine that happening for ten straight minutes. With deafening high-octane metal blasting. And a million close-ups of 200 different people getting sprayed with blood. And we don’t leave the 10,000 square foot room until every wall, every floor, every ceiling, is entirely covered with blood.

It was so bizarrely unnecessary to get the point across. We literally got the point 9 minutes and 30 seconds ago.

And while, at times, Deformed Elizabeth was fun, seeing every crevice of her pulsating decaying body in extreme close-up again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again… oh wait, there’s more… and again and again and again and again and again and again… nope, the movie’s not over yet… and again and again and again, became unbearable.

Unless you’re a body horror junkie, I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this movie. It’s so hard to look at at times, that I don’t know what the entertainment value is supposed to be. And to be honest, I didn’t think the script was very good either. Sue rarely talks. So I never felt like I understood her. The movie is supposed to be taking place in modern day but the New Year’s Finale production seemed to be set in 1950. Coraline played fast and loose with the rules of her story.

I’m bummed out. Cause I expected to love this movie. I thought for sure I’d have another entry for Top Movies of 2024. Twas not to be.

You can read the script here: The Substance

[ ] What the hell did I just watch?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the price of admission
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: Learn to tell a scene with a beginning, middle, and end, with no dialogue. If you can write a good scene with that limitation, you should have no problem writing good scenes that contain dialogue.

Scene Showdown is THIS WEEK. Details on how to enter are inside today’s post!

I know the suspense is killing you.

You’re all wondering who won the weekend box office.

Was it 80s nostalgia film #1 or 80s nostalgia film #2?

Are you ready for it?

Sing it with me!

Transformers…

More than meets the eye…

Autobots raise the battle for control of the evil… Decepticons!

Those are the words, right?

Oh wait… this just in.

Transformers did NOT win the weekend. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice did. My fault.

Shucks.

That throws me for a loop. I had this stellar 5000 word dissertation all primed up about Bumblebee’s origin story.

Hmmm…

What do we talk about now!?

How bout SCENE SHOWDOWN! Yes, in case you forgot, Scene Showdown is this week. Your entries need to be in by Thursday night. Everyone here should be entering because, guess what? It takes no time at all to write a scene. Here’s what I need from you for Scene Showdown.

Title
Genre
Logline
Up to 50 words to prep the scene (up from 30)
A PDF of your scene (no minimum length, maximum is 5 pages long)
Send submission to carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Deadline 10pm Pacific Time, Thursday September 26th!

To get you primed for Scene Showdown, I’ll share with you a movie I just saw. It was a French movie called, “Last Summer.” It was about a woman who starts having an affair with her step-son (who happens to be a Timothee Chalamet clone). I know. Spicy!

Anyway, the movie starts on the aforementioned mother, who’s a lawyer, priming a 16 year old girl for her defense in court tomorrow. She asks the girl how many boyfriends she’s had in the last year. How many boys she’s slept with in the last year. Clearly uncomfortable, the girl fights through the answers. The lawyer is merciless. She says to her, “They are going to try to make you look like a slut. It is imperative you do not crack.” She then continues to test her until she’s satisfied.

This is a solid example of how to write a good scene.

Note how, right from the start, you’re placing us in an uncomfortable situation, a situation that has TENSION. Even if that’s all you did, you’re ahead of most of the people writing scenes because sustained tension keeps readers turning the page.

But, also – and this is something so few writers are doing these days – there’s a beginning, middle, and end to the scene. The beginning is setting up what she needs her to say. The middle is the conflict, the girl struggling with being able to do this, and the end is the resolution, the lawyer convinces her to man-up and get ready for battle.

To understand why this is a good scene, look at what the alternative could’ve been, an alternative I read just about every day in mediocre scripts. Start with a typical day, our lawyer at her work doing lawyerly things. We cut to the step-son suntanning in the back yard when she gets home. We cut to them all having dinner together later. We’re getting snippets of scenes, sure.  And we’re moving things forward, yes.  But we’re not being entertained by full-on scenarios along the way.

That’s my ultimate goal with Scene Showdown. I want to remind you writers that it isn’t just about stitching together pieces of a story. It’s about utilizing your scenes as stories in and unto themselves – creating them as a means to entertain all on their own.

Okay, now let’s get back to Transformers One because I can’t help myself.

This movie looked… awful.

Hey, kudos to whatever Paramount promotional team convinced everyone that this was the next Citizen Kane three months ago when the buzz for this film began. But those trailers were major buzz-kills. It honestly looked like something that wouldn’t make the grade if it were a free Saturday morning cartoon. Cheesy animation. Cheesier jokes. None of which were organic to the original spirit of the cartoon. I’m not sure what they were thinking to be honest. And no, I’m not bagging on sci-fi animation. I can’t wait to see The Wild Robot this weekend. I expect it to be nothing short of spectacular. But Transformers One? More like Transformers One-And-Done.

As for what’s coming next at the box office, I want every screenwriter here to pay attention to one film that’s being released. It’s a film I guarantee you’ve never heard of before. And yet knowing about this film may be the most important screenwriting lesson of your life.

The film is titled, “Lee.” It stars Kate Winslet and is about the real life story of a fashion model, Lee Miller, who would go on to become a war correspondent in World War 2. Why am I bringing this movie up? Partly because nobody’s going to see it. But mainly because Kate Winslet has been trying to make this movie for years. She’s been told ‘no’ again and again and again. Yet, finally, she’s done it.

Look, Kate Winslet will likely be in the Oscar race for her performance in the film. She’s a great actress. I love me some Titanic. But too many screenwriters write scripts like “Lee” – these boring-sounding biopics – that have zero chance of ever getting made. There’s a reason everyone in Hollywood told her no. Because they know what I know, and what all of you know. Which is that nobody is going to see this movie.

The only reason it got made was that Winslet begged, borrowed, and stole until finally convincing a studio to allow her to make the movie. But they said only if you star in a more marketable movie of ours. Which was the deal she made.

You are not Kate Winslet. You do not have billions of dollars worth of proven box office in your browser cache. You are a faceless entity. And faceless entity screenwriters need to write scripts that have big ideas that sell themselves. You want to think big. You want to think flashy. Unless you have ten years to pitch how your movie is going to be good despite its boring premise, let your logline do the work for you!

That’s all I ask.

That, and write some grade-A scenes.

I’m being totally honest when I say if you possess these two skills, you are un-freaking-stoppable as a screenwriter. :)

A famous “sneaking on government base” scene.

I’m currently working with a writer who’s writing an elaborate spy/science-fiction script that involves infiltrating the US Government. The final 45 pages are the main character infiltrating a series of complex checkpoints and well-guarded areas on a giant base created by the most advanced military in the world.

When that first draft came in, the script completely fell apart in those final 45 pages. Often, what would happen, is there would be a checkpoint, and the hero would hide in the back of a car, allowing him to sneak through the checkpoint. Then he’d get to a building he’d have to breach. So he’d sneak around the back and override the passcode to open a door.

There were almost a dozen moments like this, which is why I said to the writer: The reason this ending falls apart is because every time your hero encounters a challenge, the challenge isn’t difficult. He hides in the car. The guard walks around the car. He pauses for a moment, creating a teensy bit of suspense. And then he tells the driver to go ahead.

In other words, THE WRITER IS THE HERO’S GUARDIAN ANGEL. The writer is a protector. He is on the hero’s side. Therefore, whenever a problem pops up, he’s going to make sure that the hero gets out of that problem just fine.

This is the WORST approach you can have to writing a script.

When you write a script, YOU WANT TO BE THE HERO’S WORST ENEMY.

You want to be the VILLAIN.

Even bigger than the actual villain in your story. Because the worse of a villain you are, the better your script is going to be.

Let me give you an example.

Go back to the scene where the main character is hiding in the car. We’ll say he’s hiding in a compartment in the trunk. The Guardian Angel Writer will never have anybody even open that trunk. The Guardian Angel Writer is a screenplay killer because no moments in his script have any tension at all.

The Good Buddy Writer *will* have the guard open up the trunk and look inside. But something will happen at the last second – another guard will call him away for a more ‘important’ matter – that keeps our hero protected. This Good Buddy Writer is definitely better than the Guardian Angel Writer because he’s created more suspense out of the scene. But he’s still helping our protagonist out when he needs it.

You know what the Villain Writer does? He has that guard open up the trunk. He has that guard dig around in that trunk. And you know what he has the guard do next? Think about it for a second. You’re the villain. You want to make things as bad for the hero as possible. So… YOU HAVE HIM DISCOVER YOUR HERO.

Because guess what? If he discovers the hero? You’ve got yourself a scene now! And not just an okay scene. A MEMORABLE scene. Because now we, the reader, are wondering how the heck the hero is going to get out of this. Which is the ideal place to have your reader in.

Why don’t writers do this more often?

Simple. Because they don’t have any clue how to get the hero out of that situation. So they’d rather avoid the situation than give themselves a difficult job to do. But let me make this clear. The more times you are the Villain Writer to your hero, the better the chances are that you are writing something great.

In one of the great sequels of all time, The Empire Strikes Back, a big chunk of that film’s finale is dedicated to the build-up of encasing Han Solo in carbonite. The Guardian Angel or the Good Buddy Writer would’ve found a way to save Han Solo from this fate. Luke or Leia would’ve gotten to him in time, shot or sliced up some stormtroopers, grabbed Han, and it’s off to the Millennium Falcon we go!

This needs to be you!

Not the Villain Writer. The Villain Writer encases Han in carbonite. Cause that’s the story direction that’s going to get the biggest reaction out of the audience. They’re going to be confused. This is not supposed to happen. Why couldn’t he have gotten away!?

Getting back to the spy sci-fi script, let’s look at that final obstacle where the hero has to sneak into the building. The way it was written, the hero did an override on the code panel. My first question to the writer was, “Where are the cameras?” “Aren’t there cameras outside this building so they can monitor people who are trying to break in?”

The writer began rambling, “Well, it’s not that kind of facility. They don’t usually have people in this area so it wouldn’t be expected that someone would be trying to break in here…” I said to him, “Listen to yourself. Does that sound like the real world AT ALL??” OF COURSE they’re going to have cameras! These days, they’re going to have drones combing the facility as well. They’re going to have every single inch of this base secured.

The writer looked at me with a blank stare and I knew exactly what that blank stare meant. It was the writer thinking to himself, “Well if I put all that in there, I’m going to have to figure out a way for my hero to get past it.”

EXACTLY!

And when you start writing this way, THAT’S WHEN YOU START BECOMING A GREAT WRITER.

Let me make something clear cause screenwriters seem to forget this all the time. The more CERTAIN the reader is of what’s going to happen next in your script, the more bored they are. The more UNCERTAIN the reader is of what’s going to happen next, the more engaged they are.

When you are the Villain Writer, you are constantly creating UNCERTAIN SCENARIOS. I have no idea how the hero in this spy sci-fi script is going to get past drone security. WHICH IS WHY I WANT TO KEEP READING! So I can find out. In contrast, if you’ve written an entire script holding your hero’s hand through all the obstacles, I know that once we get to this base, the hero’s going to figure it out. I’m going to be CERTAIN of the hero’s success. Which means I’m BORED.

Likewise, when we get to that back door, don’t place a number code on it. Just have it be a steel door with no apparent way to get in. Hell, if you want to be a true villain, TAKE THE DOOR AWAY COMPLETELY. Actually, let’s go one step further. In the planning stages of infiltrating this base, this door was a key part of the plan. It was, according to their reconnaissance, the least guarded door on the base. So it’s essential to their plan.

What would a true Villain Writer do? When the hero gets there, THERE IS NO DOOR. It’s no longer there. NOW WHAT???

You should love that phrase as a screenwriter: NOW WHAT??

Place your hero in a bunch of situations where the next thought is, NOW WHAT?

Because what does “Now What” imply? It implies UNCERTAINTY.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite Villain Writer moments, just to show you that you can be a Villain Writer in any genre. Not just action or spy movies. It occurs in the romantic comedy, Notting Hill.

Anna, the movie star, has invited William, the nobody local dude, on a first date. Now, the Guardian Angel Writer is going to have William show up to her hotel room. She’s going to open the door. There’s going to be some cutesy romantic comedy banter. And off they go on their date!

Instead, what happens?

William shows up, and when the door opens, it’s some random guy. The guy then walks William into the middle of a press junket. The Villain Writer makes sure that NOTHING is easy for their hero. William is forced to pretend he’s part of a magazine and must ask questions to all of the stars of Anna’s latest movie before finally getting a chance to see her.

Richard Curtis, the writer of Notting Hill, is actually really good at being a Villain Writer. Later in the movie, William comes over to Anna’s hotel for another date, only to find her a-hole ex-boyfriend (played awesomely by Alec Baldwin) in the room with her. She had no idea he was going to show up.

I am so convinced of the value of today’s lesson that I challenge you to go into your current screenplay and find one of the biggest scenes in it, and rewrite the scene being as big of a Villain Writer as you can possibly be to your hero. I GUARANTEE YOU that the scene will get better.

Go try it and report back!

Genre: Thriller
Premise: When a major volcano in Hawaii is slated to erupt within a week, the scientist responsible for managing the eruption learns that the US military has been hiding a secret on the outskirts of the island that threatens to turn the eruption into a world-ending event.
About: This is an interesting one. This was Michael Crichton’s (Jurassic Park) final book he was working on before he died. The unfinished novel, which is nearly 20 years old, made its way to super-seller James Patterson, who decided to finish it for him. The package recently went to auction this year and sold for 7 figures to Sony. The directors who will helm this film? None other than Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, who directed one of my favorite films from 2021, Free Solo. Keanu Reeves is loosely attached to the project but is expected to officially attach soon.
Writer: Michael Crichton and James Patterson
Details: 420 pages

Michael Crichton is responsible for the most high concept movie idea of all time: Jurassic Park.

When you hit it big in Hollywood, you have this moment. That moment becomes bigger than you. It becomes bigger than the industry. You are “THE PERSON” that everyone and everything orbits around.

That moment happened with Crichton after Jurassic Park and, for a good five years there, every one of his books was slotted to become a movie. For some writers, that’s more than they can handle. But for Crichton, he was ready for this moment. Every one of his books was a big idea that felt tailor-made to become a summer blockbuster.

But the problem with having that big breakout hit movie is that it’s hard to live up to. How many writers can write a hit movie and have two, three other stories that will do just as well? The answer is very few. But Crichton gave it his best shot.

Not many people know this but he co-wrote the novel for Twister. That’s two bona fide monster hits there. Reality then caught up with Crichton as his follow-up films, Congo, The 13th Warrior, and Timeline, fizzled.

But that takes nothing away from a master of the “big idea.” Let’s see if his final book, ironically, is the beginning of a comeback.

36 year old John “Mac” McGregor, is the director of the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. He lives on the big island, in a town called Hilo, which has always been a tricky place to live since it’s right at the bottom of active volcano, Mauna Loa. There have been a couple of times in history where an eruption nearly destroyed the town.

When earthquakes start happening, it’s confirmed that Mauna Loa is going to blow, once again, in a week. Just as John starts preparing for that reality, he’s ushered away by the local military who bring him to a nearby cave.

It’s here that they reveal hundreds of containers of radioactive waste being stored. Mac is enraged that they would be this stupid but it gets oh so much worse. The containers are old enough that they’re starting to splinter. Even trying to pick them up will likely cause them to break.

Oh yeah, and this isn’t just normal radioactive waste. It’s been mixed with herbicide, which makes it insanely easy to spread. In layman’s terms, if these containers were to break, every human being on earth would be dead within four months.

Mac immediately gets to work on a plan to divert the lava as far away from those containers as possible. His plan is to build a wall along the side of the volcano to steer the lava. But then a douchey billionaire shows up with his own plan, creating all sorts of conflict regarding what to do next. They better figure it out soon because the hours are ticking away. Any time now, Mauna Loa is going to blow.

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to read something other than one of these so-so-so-very-serious Black List scripts. Everything’s so SERRRRIOUUSSSSS on the Black List. So insanely SERRRRIOUSSSSSS.

I don’t know when movies that are made for entertainment got such a bad rap but imagine the alternative? All these SEERRRRIOUUUSSS movies. Who comes away from those feeling anything other than bummed out? We have enough bum-outy things going on in the world. Movies should be there to make us feel better!

Which is exactly what today’s movie – err… book – is about. I nearly said ‘movie’ because this novel is written like a movie. There are 108 chapters here. In other words, each chapter is insanely short. Crichton and Patterson did this so that each chapter would read like a scene.

In the spirit of the high-concept idea, Crichton makes a decision here that every high-concept writer faces the choice of making. Which is whether to add a “multiplier” or not. A “multiplier” is when you take a big idea and add a similar big idea that “multiplies” the scope of the concept.

To understand this, let’s note what this idea looks like without a multiplier. Without a multiplier, this is a BIG ERUPTION movie. You could’ve even made it a “super eruption” which I hear is something certain major volcanos are capable of which could end mankind. That would be a big idea. But there wouldn’t be a multiplier in it. The concept is told to you straight away.

Here, we get the multiplier of the nuclear waste containers. I didn’t go into it in the plot but, basically, the herbicide acts as a virus whereby if birds or insects come in contact with it, they can easily spread it to other places. Which is why the entire planet would be in danger.

But the multiplier here is those containers at the bottom of the island. That’s what elevates this idea into something that feels BIGGER. With high-concept ideas, that’s what you should be looking for. You should be looking for any elements that make your idea BIGGER.

With that said, there’s a way to use multipliers and there’s a way not to use them. If I wrote a movie about dinosaurs and then, at the end of the first act, I introduced aliens, sure, by the letter of the multiplier law, this would be a “multiplier.” But for multipliers to work, there has to be an elegant or clever connection between them, which there was here.

Hawaii is a major military base for the United States. It makes sense that they would secretly store nuclear waste out there. And, for those of you hemming and hawing about why in the world would the US place nuclear waste at the bottom of a volcano, Crichton actually spends a good portion of the story explaining it and it made perfect sense (it essentially comes down to the government trying to cover its ass by hiding this stuff away).

Another thing I liked about this book was that it created a world-ending event that had nothing to do with nuclear bombs. When you’re writing these REALLY BIG ideas, you get lazy, and you go with the lowest-hanging fruit (nuclear bombs!). Writers have been using them for decades now.

Push yourself!

Come up with something fresh and new, like Eruption did. I’ve never seen this particular combination of concepts before and it was really fun.

My only pushback on the novel is that these ideas tend to have a “worth the read” ceiling. They focus so much on the plot and the bells and whistles that the characters rarely resonate. If you’re going to write one of these, put some extra work into the characters because if you can elevate a high concept to a double-worth-the-read or even an impressive, it’s like discovering plutonium. It’s a rarity and it will make your script unstoppable.

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

What I learned: One of my favorite phrases in screenplays is, “It’s better if I show you.” When the military picks up Mac to explain to him that this impending eruption is actually much worse than he realizes, he asks, “Why?” Their response: “It’s better if I show you.” From there, we get to see the actual containers. How fragile they are. A demonstration of what happens when an insect interacts with the herbicide. We SEE all this. That SEEING is our golden example of SHOW-DON’T-TELL and it’s so much more effective than a character just doling out exposition dialogue.

Genre: Horror
Premise: After a pregnant woman and her rich husband head to his remote country house, she has her baby, which turns out to be a spider, who she then uses to wreak havoc on those who have wronged her.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List. Writer-director Katie Found has one produced credit, a lesbian-romance film titled, My First Summer.
Writer: Katie Found
Details: 92 pages

Today, I would like to discuss something that plagues the movie industry. It usually starts happening around this time of year. Hollywood begins releasing movies not that people WANT TO see. But rather movies they SHOULD see.

It is the only reason anyone outside of the film industry sees these movies. Because the marketing tells you, you SHOULD. Movies like Nomadland, Dallas Buyers Club, and Killers of the Flower Moon. That’s not to say that none of these movies are any good. But very few of them are. Their hit-to-miss ratio is WAY worse than studio movies.

This issue trickles down to screenwriting as well and happens when a writer writes a script not to entertain people. But to IMPRESS people.

Let me make something clear. If you are writing a script to try and impress ANYONE, you’re not writing a good screenplay. You should be writing to entertain the reader. Give them an enjoyable experience. If you focus on that one simple rule, I promise you you’ll give yourself the best chance at writing something good.

With that in mind, let’s get into today’s script…

30 year old Mary is very pregnant yet also quite sickly looking, for reasons that are never explained. Her rich and powerful husband, Charles, thinks it would be a good idea to visit his remote cabin until the baby is born.

So he and Mary drive out to the middle of nowhere and, within a week, she gives birth to the baby. Except the baby is not human. It’s a spider. Or, at least, that’s what Mary thinks it is. She and Charles never explicitly talk about what the baby looks like so it could be that Mary is simply imagining that it’s a spider.

Charles is your typical 2020s evil toxic male character, always looking for sex even though Mary is in no mental state to reciprocate. One day, Mary has had enough and allows her baby spider to kill Charles and wrap him up in its web. She’s finally taking charge in life! Not letting evil dudes dictate her actions.

Mary enjoys the experience so much that she lures another older toxic male from in town, ties him up, and then has her baby spider kill him as well. All of a sudden, that postpartum depression ain’t feeling so bad!

After killing one more dude, her father-in-law, her sister comes to the house to save her. Mary grabs the baby and the three flee in their car, presumably to happier times.

One of the more frustrating things I encounter in screenwriting occurs in scripts like this, which are highly specific in the areas that don’t matter and highly general in the areas that do. For example, we get a lot of passages in Down Came The Rain like this one…

Note how nothing happens in this scene. It’s just mood-based imagery. Yet there’s a lot of effort placed on describing it. Meanwhile, when we met Charles earlier in the script, he’s giving some extremely vague speech about bettering the world to a bunch of rich people. Yet we don’t have any idea what he’s talking about. We don’t have any idea what his actual job is.

THAT’S the stuff that matters. That we understand the man who’s holding our hero captive. Not the way our protagonist feels when she puts on earrings.

You can make the argument that the writer is creating a mood with the above passage, which enhances our understanding of how she feels. But that logic only works if it’s balanced with a story that’s MOVING FORWARD. A story where THINGS ARE HAPPENING. There’s simply not enough happening here where we’re going to give you the luxury of writing an entire uninterrupted page of description.

You need to focus on the right things when you write a script. There’s a reason why one of the first screenwriting lessons you learn is: “Every scene must move the story forward. If it doesn’t, get rid of it.” That’s because readers get bored fast. So if they read three, sometimes as few as two, scenes in a row that don’t move the story forward, they give up on the script.

You need a plan when you write.

You need to structure your story in a way where we’re constantly moving forward, where we’re constantly BUILDING towards something.

There were basic mistakes made here in that department.

Charles, the husband, is the big bad of the film.

Why are we killing him off at the midpoint?

Once Charles died, the story had nowhere to go. You keep luring these other people into your web but they’re all small potatoes compared to the husband. So it feels like we’re going backwards. Oh, we killed the annoying drunk guy from down the street. How is that building from the murder of the husband?

I suppose you could make the argument that she’s now at risk of being discovered for killing her husband. So the suspense comes from these other men potentially figuring out her secret and then her, I don’t know, going to prison for it. But none of these guys are formidable opponents. The second they walk in the house, we are 1000% sure Mary will easily kill them. So there’s zero suspense.

In the end, this script represents one of my least favorite screenwriting combinations: Description and Metaphor. The focus is on the description (let’s spend a page describing this room and the way Mary walks through it) and metaphor (what does the spider represent!?). Neither of those things move the story forward.

Between today and yesterday, we have two scripts, both of which place our characters in a remote rural home where danger enters the equation. Yesterday’s script attempted to entertain you with every scene. Today’s script wants to be discussed in a college English class. For that reason, I could not connect with it on any level.

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

What I learned: If you asked me what the most underrated mistake in screenwriting was, I might tell you it’s when a writer doesn’t know what his main characters’ professions are. A person’s job takes up 8-10 hours of their day! If you don’t know exactly what that profession is and what they do all day, you have no idea who that character is. And I promise you, that will come across in the writing. I will not understand that character either. I have no idea what Charles does other than that he’s rich and deals with rich people. But what’s his job?? I mean think about it for just a second. You have this high-paying top 1% of top 1% job. Yet you can just jet off to a cabin for two weeks? That’s clearly CLEARLY a result of a writer not knowing what their character does on a day-to-day basis. To extrapolate that, I’m not going to care that Mary kills him if I don’t understand who he is! I need to understand this man in order to have an opinion on his relation to this story.