Genre: Action/Horror
Premise: A Miami cop joins a secret Black Ops team who are fighting a gang war against a mysterious, possibly even supernatural, opponent.
About: Blood Rush comes from Scriptshadow vet, Andrew Ferguson! The script made last year’s Black List.
Writer: Andrew Ferguson
Details: 113 pages
You know how yesterday I bitched about writers not giving their all in a script, and how easy it is for readers to tell when that’s the case? Well, we can also tell when a writer puts everything into a script. And today’s script is what that looks like.
From the extremely-detailed description:
To the personality-driven dialogue: “Half ton of grade A nazi prime, cut and cooked medium rare. Don’t see that on an average street beat.”
This is a writer who came to play. And guess what? He reads Scriptshadow. So of course he knows you gotta come correct. Let’s check out his script…
We’re in Miami, the city of big behinds and even bigger clubs. 35 year old cop, Vick Lake, heads into a building to take down a perp when she stumbles upon 10 dead neo-nazis tied to the ceiling, all of whom are pale as a ghost.
Miami has been experiencing a giant uptick in gang activity recently, due to a mysterious new gang that’s been going around killing the old guard. The question is, how are they doing it so easily? They’re slicing through these punks as if they were random pedestrians. But these are some of the most violent gangs in the world!
After Vick gets back to the station, she’s introduced to a guy named Mark Bishop and his quiet partner, Atticus. The two want to recruit Vick onto their team. Vick’s intrigued but doesn’t understand why they’re so vague about what they do. But when they tell Vick all they want is to take down this evil killer gang, she accepts.
They first head to a dark side of town run by a Haitian gang that hasn’t been seen in months. They figure these guys might be the ones doing the killing. But when they meet up with the head guy, he tells them a Keysar Soze story about some mysterious dudes who killed a bunch of his buddies as well!
Vick starts getting annoyed by the fact that Bishop and Atticus seem to know more about what he’s talking about than they’re letting on. But the more Vick questions them, the less they reveal.
Off they go to their next lead at some warehouse dock and that’s when a bunch of guys on Ninja motorcycles show up. A firefight ensues and when Atticus takes one of them down, the guy evaporates into smoke. This is when Vick realizes that she’s way above her pay grade. But there’s no time to complain cause they’re in the middle of a battle!
Once they’re free and clear, (spoiler) Vick learns that Atticus is… well… a vampire. And that he once had a kid with a human. That kid is being kept from him. So in addition to stopping this gang of crazy-ass vampires from killing at will, they also want to find Atticus’s kid. But will Vick be able to normalize all this and contribute? Or will she say, “Seeya” to this blood-sucker and her keeper? Curious cats are itching to uncover the truth!
Andrew wrote the sheeeyite out of this script. I mean, the word “exsanguination” is used. I checked online and learned that that word hasn’t been written in 23 years. So kudos to Andrew for bringing it back.
To be honest, I thought the script was a bit overwritten at times. This is an action movie so you want those eyes moving down the page quickly. But at least Andrew got his money’s worth. He’s not just writing big chunks of text without thinking about them. He’s clearly obsessed over every word. It actually reminded me a lot of early Andrew Kevin Walker, who I’m sure Andrew is inspired by.
A couple of things popped out at me right away.
This is a tri-team-up as opposed to the typical two-hander you get in these movies. Why is that relevant? I actually don’t know. But I know it’s not *irrelevant.* One of the things I’ve been focusing on lately is DYNAMICS.
Every group of characters, whether it be a group of 2 characters like Training Day, three characters like Challengers, or a group of characters, like Knives Out, has a dynamic. And how little or how extensively you explore that dynamic can be the difference between a boring movie and an exciting one.
You really want to think about how all of the characters in the dynamic connect to each other. You want to make each of those connections as interesting as possible. That’s why Challengers worked for me. The writer meticulously explored each individual relationship within that trio to make sure there was something compelling going on with each edge of the triangle.
There’s a version of today’s screenplay that doesn’t include Atticus. It’s just Vick and Bishop. But you know what? We’ve seen that dynamic before. By adding Bishop, you not only disrupt the cliche, but you give yourself an opportunity to charge the overall dynamic. Which Andrew does successfully.
Atticus is mysterious. He doesn’t say much. He’s cool and collected and a little bit weird. It takes what was your bargain basement 2-man cop team with a little sexual tension and it builds it into something more ethereal, more exciting. One of the main reasons I kept turning the pages was cause I wanted to know more about Atticus. He was cool.
Another thing I liked about this script was how long Andrew held onto the vampire information. Amateur writers all pop their balloons too quickly. Why not hold onto the fun information as long as possible? Even if we know it.
I knew these were vampires within the first 15 pages. However, THE MAIN CHARACTER DIDN’T KNOW. So there’s still value in seeing our hero catch up to us. It’s fun. It’s fun seeing Vick realize she’s dealing with something supernatural. So hold onto that information. Andrew holds on to it all the way until page 50.
This is a great showcase script for the site. It tells me that people who are reading the site are actually listening to what I say. Cause sometimes I wonder if anybody listens. I do these reviews cause I want everyone to get better. I say these things a thousand different ways in the hopes that you internalize them and use that knowledge to write great scripts.
We’re on a hot streak now. Been reading lots of good scripts lately! Let’s keep it up!
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Every genre has its typical number of characters it uses. Cop movies have 2 partners. Whodunnits have 6-8 characters. Teenage horror movies where the characters head out to some cabin in the woods tend to have 2 or 3 couples. Don’t be afraid to disrupt the standard number for these setups. Play with them. Cause different numbers really do change things. For example, if you’re writing a cabin in the woods horror movie, having two couples go to the cabin is going to give you a different movie than if you have one couple along with one other person. Cause that person is now a third wheel, which is a totally different scenario than two couples. So play with that number as you’re conceiving of your plot. Sometimes going with a number that scares you is exactly what’s going to make your movie different from every other movie out there.
