Genre: Horror/Thriller
Premise: A mild-mannered American analyst climbs the ranks of a ruthless London investment firm, only to discover a horror more frightening than the industry itself: the insatiable monster awakening within him.
About: This was a big sale that had 8 bidders. Netflix won it. It will star their new male lead darling, Taron Egerton (Carry-On). The movie will be produced by Safehouse, which made one of my favorite movies last year, Novocaine! Writer-director Halil Ozsan was the lead singer of a band called Poetry for Pornstars, who once opened for Guns and Roses.
Writer: Halil Ozsan
Details: 117 pages
If you want to outsmart the market right now, a tiny little lane that may prove fruitful is writing anything that leans into an exploration of masculinity. The media has spent the last decade doing everything in their power to destroy masculinity. And, finally, the pendulum is swinging back in the other direction.
I’m personally working with a writer who’s writing a show for a major cable network and the show explores masculinity on a deep level. And the network is obsessed with that. It feels like they care more about that theme than the plot and the characters!
In fact, I would go one step further. I would say that if you’re a horror writer, come up with a clever concept built around toxic femininity. I have ZERO DOUBT that a clever horror premise built around that subject matter would sell in seconds. Not something that’s hateful, though. It’s got to be clever.
That whole approach is exactly what’s landed this project a deal. It’s all about masculinity. So let’s get into it!
We’re in modern-day London. American, Petey, is married to his sweetheart of an English wife, Charlie. She loves him more than anything. But she can’t seem to see him for who he really is. Charlie is a weak feminized version of a man. He cowers away when bad guys attack his wife on the train. He allows men at work to bully him around. His testosterone is so low, he can’t even get his wife pregnant.
Petey has just started a new job at Sterling-Wolfe Investment Bank, one of the biggest banking firms in the world. He’s an assistant to a trader and his job amounts to getting coffee for his boss, Jackson, a real alpha male.
Petey ends up getting so frustrated with his lack of aggression that one night, he gets out of bed and just goes running. He ends up naked and passed out in the middle of nowhere. But when he gets home, he feels something… different within him.
The first thing he does is ravish his wife (for the first time in months). He then flirts with the hottest scariest female trader in the company, Alexis. He then embarrasses Jackson in a board meeting, going over his head and suggesting a risky trade that a client ends up loving. All of a sudden, Petey is on everyone’s radar.
But Petey also has a growing appetite… for flesh. First it’s his own wife. As well as Alexis, who he starts having sex with. But it isn’t long before he’s taking night jogs and eating fellow joggers. And here I thought I was flexing by getting a double-double animal style 10 minutes before In & Out closed.
After Petey executes an illegal game-changing trade at his company that makes them tens of millions of dollars, Jackson realizes that Petey is officially coming for his job. So Jackson announces that it’s war. Well, Petey’s new persona takes that declaration very seriously and ends up eating Jackson! I guess that’s one way to get a promotion!
(Spoilers) Eventually, Petey’s now-pregnant wife takes the blinders off and realizes that Petey’s gone absolutely insane. After having the baby, she straight-up leaves him. That’s okay. Petey still has his game-changing trade that’s going to turn him into a generational super-employee at Sterling-Wolfe. That is until Alexis runs off with the money. Leaving poor Petey alone, broke… and hungry.
I want to talk about STORY DESIGN today.
Story Design is: How your story is put together.
And I bring this up because in our recent discussions about AI, I’m realizing that AI is really bad at this. What AI seems to be built on, in the storytelling department, is that classic 1980s 3-Act structure popularized by Syd Field.
The problem with the Syd Field approach is that, when you follow it exactly, it gives you a “correct” movie. But also a very predictable and forgettable one. That’s not to say you shouldn’t use the 3-Act structure. I’m a huge advocate of the 3-Act structure.
But the genius of impressive screenwriting is the little ways in which you make your screenplay messy. That messiness is what makes it human. And Alpha is a great example of that.
Alpha’s first act is its own story. It literally has its own three acts. We meet this guy who’s trying to start a new life. He’s weak and lacks any masculinity. He goes through his daily routine. And we see him get kicked around by life. Then we seem him engage with some animals. And then he turns into this Alpha Male version of himself by the end of the first act.
Normally, you’d do this as you’re telling the entire story. So, you’d have him at work a lot longer before this alpha side of him took over. But the first act is literally its own contained story about a man turning into an animal. And it’s a little bit weird. And some screenwriting professors would probably call it wrong. But that’s exactly why it works. Because it’s a little messy.
And you may say, “Well, how do I make a script that’s messy but not so messy that the whole screenplay falls apart?” I’ll explain how to do that in a second.
But first, another good example of this is The Housemaid. I just watched it the other day. It’s a fun movie! It’s campy and silly. But it knows exactly what it is and executes it perfectly.
Spoilers if you haven’t seen it yet. But The Housemaid has this late Act 2 twist whereby we learn that the wife has been setting up the maid the whole movie so that she’d get stuck in her place with her abusive husband. And it creates this really messy narrative that forces the last 30% of the movie to turn into something completely different from the first 70%.
But that messiness works for the movie. It makes it a little bit weird. And this is something that AI just isn’t ever going to understand. Us humans are human because of our imperfections. Same goes for our screenplays. Our screenplays become living breathing things because of their imperfections.
Now, how do you make something messy that doesn’t fall apart because of its messiness?
The answer, actually, is simple. CONSISTENCY IN YOUR MAIN CHARACTER. As long as you have a main character with some sort of flaw or inner conflict that they’re battling with over the course of the movie, then they’re going to be the CONSTANT that smooths over any messy VARIABLE that pops up in the narrative.
Petey and his battle with his masculinity help smooth over any quirky script problems because he’s interesting enough that we want to see what happens next with him. And that’s it! It’s as simple as that.
If Petey all of a sudden started struggling with his stubbornness in Act 2, the reader’s going to get confused. They’re going to say, “Wait, who is this character again? What are they about? They were about masculinity a second ago. Now they’re focused on being less stubborn?” That’s how character inconsistency rears its head.
I thought this script was pretty good. It made some respectfully risky creative choices. Petey has this pregnant wife. Yet he’s having sex with Alexis. Hollywood doesn’t usually do that sort of thing in a mainstream movie.
I do think Alpha wants to be American Psycho but with a werewolf. But I don’t think it’s smart enough to accomplish that. It’s still an entertaining script, though!
Screenplay Link: Alpha
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Please, all writers, spend one day of your life to figure out the difference between “its” and “it’s,” as well as “there,” “their,” and “they’re.” Your writing will look SO MUCH MORE PROFESSIONAL.
