Genre: Thriller
Premise: When old college friends on a trip to Mexico get trapped in an underwater cave system with a bull shark, old tensions and power struggles resurface as they fight to survive.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List!
Writers: Aja Gabel & Myung Joh Wesner
Details: 100 pages
After yesterday, I was ready to have some fun.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved Unorthodox. But had you told me that the most celebrated piece of writing I reviewed all month would’ve been a character piece about an Orthodox Jew searching for the meaning of life with Yiddish to English subtitles, I probably would’ve told you to move a few inches to the left while attaching the noose to my neck to ensure that it killed me instantly after I kicked the chair over.
Shark.
Caves.
Entitled 20-somethings.
Carnage.
That’s the kind of entertainment I need during Day #107 of Quarantine. Let’s get to it.
27-year-old Kate is a worrywart who over-plans everything to make sure that nothing goes wrong. Whatever your definition of spontaneous, she’s not that. Meanwhile, her frenemy, Charlie, is the opposite. She shoots first and asks questions later. She’s also been with the object of Kate’s desire, James, for five years.
Kate, James, and Charlie team up with oversexed Adrienne and her dumb but pretty new boyfriend, Greg, to go to Aguas Serenas Eco-Resort where there’s a cave system called “Ojos Rojos” that’s supposed to be one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world. The group goes over the game plan with their guide, Miguel, and into the caves they go.
The “system” has six caves and the most impressive cave is, of course, the last one. So when things start to go wrong (something scratches Adrienne’s leg, Greg reveals he has asthma), they push forward cause they really really want to see that last cave. Even when Kate swears she sees something big lurking below the water, they continue on.
Once they make it the final cave, it’s as advertised. Truly magnificent. There’s only one problem. A shark has followed them in here. Some of you may already be crying foul. “Sharks can’t survive in fresh water, Carson!” But according to this script, and why would I doubt them, bull sharks can survive in both salt and fresh water! And that happens to be the shark that’s after them.
The bull shark takes out poor Greg first before setting its sights on Adrienne. She puts up a fight (punching the shark in the nose) but it ultimately takes her down to Death Town. Despite his experience, Miguel also gets chomped into pieces, which leaves our love triangle – Kate, Charlie, and James – all by themselves. Will they get out alive? Or will their contentious history and subsequent spatting do them in?
All right.
Real talk.
I could go into a detailed breakdown of all of the issues in this script but the reality is, I’ve already talked about these things. I mean, when you name a character “Charlie” and automatically assume we’ll know it’s a girl, that tells me you haven’t read enough screenplays to understand why that might be confusing to a reader.
When I saw that inside the first five pages, I knew I was in for a rough ride.
But there’s a bigger problem here. Which is that something is missing in screenwriting lately. I’ve reviewed lots of the so called “most celebrated” screenplays of the past year and time after time, they’ve disappointed.
What’s going on?
Cause a script like this should be fun. It has the makings of a good movie. We’ve seen a lot of shark movies before. But we’ve never seen one where they’re blocking the only path out of a submerged cave system. There’s a lot of potential in that idea.
Why did it, then, fail to meet its potential? And why is that happening time and time again lately?
While there’s no catch-all answer to this question, I’ve noticed one thing that’s doing writers in. And that’s that they’re using their premise as a crutch.
They believe the premise is going to do the work for them so they don’t have to try that hard. When it comes to writing a screenplay, you have to do something special in one of two areas – the plot or the characters.
The reason for this is we need something beyond what we’ve seen before to excite us. If your execution is the same as every other similar movie we’ve seen, we’re going to get bored. For example, if you would’ve told me that I had to bet my family’s life on who was going to die first in this script, I would’ve said, “Greg,” and then taken the most peaceful nap of my life because that’s how sure I was that my family would be safe.
It cannot be the case where your execution is so predictable that I can take a nap when my family is in danger.
Now let’s say that you’re not good with plot. You’re lousy at coming up with creative story ideas. Are you screwed?
No.
You can still excel if you can create compelling characters. If I like a character and relate to the issues they’re going through and you present that character to me in a way that is both honest and unpredictable, I don’t need a great plot. I’m fine watching the story of that person.
Look no further than yesterday’s review of Unorthodox.
There is more entertaining character exploration in the first 3 minutes of a movie about an Orthodox Jewish Woman that there is about all of the characters in Apex FOR THE FIRST 40 PAGES.
All that happens in the first 40 pages here is characters talking to each other. There isn’t a single dramatic event that occurs like there is in Orthodox, where the first scene is a woman escaping her community.
So here’s how to combat this.
When you come up with an idea – and hopefully it’s a strong idea like Apex – imagine in your head what that movie looks like. Think about all the scenes that might happen. Chances are, you’ll come up some good ones. Write those down because those are the scenes that the audience is looking forward to.
But when it comes to everything else, you should be questioning it. Cause a lot of those ideas you’re having come from other films. They seem inspired when you’re thinking about them. But, in reality, you’re just recalling characters and plot beats from movies you’re familiar with.
From there, you want to ask, “How am I going to make the execution of this story different from what people have seen before?” And I’m not going to lie to you. This will be one of the hardest questions you’ll have to answer. You’ve got a hundred years of cinema and TV to compete with so pretty much everything has been done before.
However, just the act of ASKING THE QUESTION improves the chances that you’re going to give us something fresh. And it may just be one revelation. It might be the act of Annie Wilkes bludgeoning Paul’s feet so he can never leave the house in “Misery.” That creative decision was so controversial, the screenwriter begged the director not to include it. That’s how sure he was that they’d gone too far. And it ended up being the most talked about scene of the year. You have to be willing to go down that road as a writer.
I always try to remind writers to get inside their readers’ heads and ask, “What are they expecting me to do?” And then make sure you give them anything but that. Not always. But enough to keep them off balance.
That’s today’s lesson. Coming up with the concept is half the battle. You then have to push yourself beyond what you thought you were capable of if you truly want to impress us.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The personal stakes have to line up with the situation. A movie about the impending demise of the planet is going to have higher personal stakes than the trials and tribulations of fitting in at high school. The personal stakes in Apex are that James cheated on Charlie once with Kate. While cheating may feel like the end of the world in a high school movie, it doesn’t have the same cache in a movie where everyone is being killed one by one. The personal stakes here needed an upgrade. There was one moment where it seemed like the time James cheated with Kate resulted in her getting pregnant and having an abortion. But that turned out not to be the case. However, the stakes of that choice lined up a lot better with this concept than just someone who cheated on his girlfriend once. (note: This is, of course, assuming you’re treating the deaths in your movie seriously. If this was The Meg, which obviously has a tongue-in-cheek approach to death, it’s okay to lighten the personal stakes)
