Today’s script takes cues from both A Quiet Place and Pitch Black. Is it on par with those screenplays?
Genre: Sci-Fi Horror
Premise: When a photosensitive alien force blacks out the sun, a dysfunctional family must survive together in a perpetually dark world full of predatory creatures, while trying not to lose the only thing that can protect them: the light.
Why You Should Read: Black Sky is my first sci-fi screenplay, though it’s as much a horror/thriller and family drama as it is sci-fi. Definitely a sci-fi concept though. I see Black Sky as a possible franchise, and/or a TV series. It’s in the vein of A Quiet Place, Signs, Bird Box, and The Walking Dead. I wrote it to be produced on a low-budget, but ironically a couple of people who’ve read it compared it to War of The Worlds. I’m not sure about that but I was pleased by the comparison and in any case I believe it can be produced low-budget regardless of that comparison. My last two screenplays, both set in a car and written to be made for a micro-budget, were recently #1 and #3 on the black list paid platform top list and consequently I have a shopping agreement with a great company in LA for one of the scripts, and I’m in negotiations with a producer who’s made more than a dozen movies on the other script, so being high on the black list really made a difference and hopefully I’m on a bit of a roll and can get representation now. In the meantime, it’d be great to get feedback from Scriptshadowers and possibly Carson if it were selected for Sci-fi Showdown.
Writer: Sean McConville
Details: 107 pages
Readability: Medium to Fast
After months of waiting, we FINALLY have our Sci-Fi Showdown winner! BLACK SKY. I like everything about this submission. I like the title. I like the logline. I like the marketability. I could see the poster and the trailer for this script. But the submission still has one last test to pass. Do I like the script itself? Let’s find out!
38 year old Aiden has taken his family on a vacation into the Moors, a remote rural area in England (I’m assuming). Aiden’s family isn’t doing so hot. He’s got a wife, Lara, who’s wanted to leave him ever since he cheated on her. He’s got a 17 year old step-daughter, Riley, who’s never liked her fake father. The only drama-free member of the family is 8 year old Conor, who very well might be the smartest of all of them.
While Aiden and Conor are out fishing, they see a strange black substance slowly move across and block the sun. Spooked, they head back to the cabin, where they find that all of the electricity has been turned off, as well as all access to the rest of the world. Freaked out, Lara demands that they drive back to London. Except that the always lazy Aiden hasn’t filled up the gas tank. Pissed off, Lara says they’ll just sleep here tonight and see what’s up in the morning.
But then the morning never comes. Or, it does come, but there’s no sun. Just blackness. Just night. Confused, the family decides to go into the nearby town where they find all the stores have been raided. Now that they know it’s bad, they head to the gas station, but the gas station is closed. Out of options, they drive back to the house. As they scramble around the property to get supplies to hole up, we see black inky creatures in the shadows that seem to dart away whenever there’s light. Unaware of these camouflaged aliens, they start a fire in the fireplace so they don’t freeze to death.
After a while, they notice that the military has blasted a hole in the dark sky above the town of York (about 60 miles away) so light shines down on it, keeping the people safe. Aiden and the family think if they can get to that town, they’ll be good. But that means finding gas! So they set about going to the neighbors’ houses to steal their gas. However, guess who’s waiting for them? That’s right. Aliens!
I’m really torn by Black Sky because, from page 65 on, it gets pretty darn good.
But I’m not going to lie. I fell asleep twice while reading the first 65 pages. And that’s because those 65 pages are too casual an exploration of the idea. To put it in analogous terms, the first 65 pages never go above third gear.
You have to remember this simple rule as a writer: Make it so they CAN’T NOT KEEP READING. Make it impossible for them to say, “Eh, I’ll get back to it another time.” You have to yank them in and never let them go, especially in this genre, which is built on suspense, scares, and thrills.
We see aliens throughout the first 65 pages of Black Sky. They’re usually in the shadows, watching from afar. But they never DID anything. They just sat around and watched. So why would I be afraid of them? Let’s not forget the very first scene in A Quiet Place has a 7 year old boy getting eaten within a second of making a noise. That’s how you create fear.
The plotting here is too slow and too unimaginative. We hang out at the house. Then we go out to the tree. Then back to the house. Let’s go to bed even though the world is ending. Let’s go get some gas. Eh, we couldn’t find any. Let’s go back to the house. Let’s go back out to the tree. It felt like a writer trying to come up with the next scene location on the spot. It didn’t feel like the story was being planned. Have I had a scene in the bedroom yet? No. Okay, let’s go there.
My guess is that Sean was a lot more interested in the family drama than he was the alien drama. He puts a lot of emphasis on this dysfunctional family. In theory, this is a good idea. You want your characters to be complex. You want your relationships to be complex. To that end, Sean did a good job.
But here’s the irony. Everyone was so miserable in this family that I didn’t really like any of them (besides Conor). I definitely didn’t like the wife. The teenaged daughter was ungrateful and couldn’t stop complaining. And Aiden I could never get a feel for. He’s a good dad to Conor. But he cheated on his wife. He’s also such a schulb that he doesn’t fill up the car with gas.
And that’s another big problem with the script. The entire plot hinged on them finding gas. I don’t think this is the kind of movie where finding gas should dictate everything. Cause let’s be honest. Gas is everywhere. Nobody’s alive anymore so you can steal it from a car. We also find out they have gas in their generator. That irked me because everyone’s desperately running around trying to find gas when all I’m thinking is, “It shouldn’t be this hard to find gas. The only reason it is is so the writer can have a story.”
We do this all the time as writers. We convince ourselves that a plot thread works when, deep down, we know we need something better. Black Sky is so dependent on this finding gas storyline that it easily could’ve been titled, “Gas Search.”
What’s so frustrating about Black Sky is that the moment I was about to mentally give up on it – on page 65 – is the exact moment where it starts to get good. The aliens start attacking them which means now they’re not just walking from room to room talking to each other. They’re actually fighting for their lives. They’re actually having to make choices that affect their immediate safety.
But it was a case of too little too late. I can’t be bored for an hour in a movie then just turn on my interest. Actually, that’s not true. It just happened with Malignant. But that’s because Malignant had a killer twist and the best third act ever.
If Black Sky wants to be a good script from start to finish, Sean needs to rethink those first 65 pages. I’m guessing he’s banking on the slow-burn approach but like I’ve told people here before, there’s slow burn good and there’s slow burn boring. This is slow burn boring. We need more going on at the cottage so it isn’t just a bunch of boring scenes with people talking. And we need a much better goal than to find gas. It just feels too tiny for the situation.
Black Sky has its moments, especially later on in the script. But everything that comes before page 65 needs to be turbo-charged. We need a lot more going on. I wish Sean good luck with it. What did all of you think?
Script link: Black Sky
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Give your creatures the advantage. One of the subtle differences I noticed between this and A Quiet Place was that the Quiet Place creatures seemed to have a strong advantage over the humans. If you made even the tiniest sound, they could kill you within seconds. Conversely, the monsters in Black Sky always seemed to be on the defensive. They’re always hiding in the shadows. Scared of even the tiniest amount of light. I didn’t fear them much at all (until the end, when they all of a sudden become aggressive). Had we given them a stronger advantage, this script would’ve been a lot scarier.
