What? A new feature on Scriptshadow? A full 10 years after the site started? How does that even happen??
Genre: Sci-Fi/Drama
Premise: (from Hit List) When new technology allows people to have realistic sex in virtual reality, a man begins to suspect that the avatar he’s been digitally hooking up with behind his girlfriend’s back might belong to his best friend’s girlfriend. Secrets and lies come to the surface, jeopardizing both relationships in the process.
About: I’m SUPER PUMPED about this script. One of the best unknown directors out there is making his directorial debut with this film. I don’t know anything about the writer other than he made the Hit List in 2018 with this script. But director Saman Kesh is amazing. You can watch his short film, Controller, here.
Writer: Jacob Colman
Details: 107 pages
Writing is so interesting.
Because whenever you write a story, you’re writing about problems. This is a necessity because if everything is okay, it wouldn’t be interesting. That means when you write about a marriage, it typically has to be a marriage in disarray so that we want to keep reading to see the problems resolved. If the marriage is fine, there’s no reason for us to stick around.
However, if you aren’t careful with the way you present the problems with your characters, you risk things feeling depressing or sad. Did anybody see that Mike Nichols movie, Closer? It didn’t do very well for that specific reason. You watched that movie and just felt… depressed.
A little of the same thing is happening with Blur.
These are people with problems which SHOULD MEAN that I want to see their problems get resolved. But I don’t. Why? Because I don’t like the characters. That’s another tricky thing with writing. You have to write about people in bad situations but you have to present them in a good enough way that we like them.
“Blur” follows four people. There’s TV editor and self-esteem poor Liam. There’s ladies-man who’s never had a job in his life Bobby. There’s wholesome but boring Amy. And there’s hot but detached from life Lydia.
Liam and Amy, both on the verge of 30, are married and have known each other since college. They also knew Bobby in college. And the group is close enough that Bobby and Amy had a brief fling before Liam and Amy got together.
Bobby has now brought his latest girlfriend, Lydia – who you could buy a diamond ring for while walking a puppy as the two of you were experiencing Disney World for the first time and she would still find a way to be bored – to spend some couples time together.
Independently, Liam and Lydia learn about this thing called Tryst VR where you can participate in realistic VR sex. The two each secretly buy a Tryst, keeping it from their significant others. The experience is particularly intense for Liam, who’s had a limited sex life. He meets another virtual person in the program and she rocks his world. Little does he know, it’s Lydia.
Liam begins to re-request this girl, named Eve in the program, and they engage in a myriad of sexual acts. Liam obviously feels guilty about the whole thing. But not guilty enough to stop! Meanwhile, Bobby secretly discovers Lydia’s Tryst VR and hops on it to see who she’s virtually banging. And the next thing you know, he’s rage-banging Liam, although neither of them are aware of it.
Will Tryst VR destroy these two couples? Or is it actually solving their relationship issues?
As much as I wanted this script to work it just doesn’t.
For starters, there’s no plot – nothing moving anything forward here. We’re just watching characters talk. Then watching characters go to work. Then watching characters use the Tryst headset. Then watching characters talk again. There isn’t a single active character or plot event pushing anything forward.
I guess there’s the VR stuff. Liam is technically being active by using it. But somehow even that storyline is stillborn. If you’re crafting a movie that’s all about sexual VR experiences, then each time you go in, the experiences should escalate. They should get either more intense or more dangerous. But they mostly stay the same in Blur. In a movie, things need to escalate and evolve, not stay the same.
It’s disappointing because this is the second script in two days that didn’t exploit its premise.
Quick tip for everyone. Be wary of writing a story where characters have miserable lives and don’t do anything interesting. Even if that’s the point you’re trying to make – that life is unfulfilling – there’s a high probability we’re going to be bored by your characters. Why wouldn’t we be? THEY DON’T DO ANYTHING AND THEY’RE ALL MISERABLE. Who wants to watch that? Especially when you don’t have a plot to fall back on. At least with a plot, we’d have something to look forward to.
American Beauty is a movie that played with unhappiness. A guy was unhappy with his life and so he made a drastic change to stop doing what the world told him to do and, instead, do whatever he wanted. It covered the same themes as Blur but it did so in a way that was much more active and entertaining.
Key in on that word – ACTIVE. Lester in American Beauty was ACTIVELY pursuing his dream of living life on his terms. Amy, Liam, Lydia, and Bobby just sit around and complain about their lives.
Based on this director, here’s what I know. This is going to look amazing. And I feel like he’s going to give us sex scenes that we’ve never seen in a movie before – really weird visceral fun shit.
But no matter how good of a director you are, you can’t save a script that a) has no forward-moving plot and b) fails at the main thing it’s trying to do.
This movie is trying to explore relationships but the dynamics that have been set up are aggressively uninteresting. Both of these are lame-duck relationships. They’re doomed. So why do I care if two people cheat? It’s just speeding up an inevitable process. And it’s not even real cheating. It’s computer cheating.
If these couples were in a good place, or even if only one of the couples was in a good place, now you have something to ruin because the character who cheats is potentially destroying the only thing that matters to them – their marriage.
In Blur, there are no consequences. Even if you make the argument that virtual cheating is still cheating, and therefore getting caught means breaking up, THAT WOULD BE A GOOD THING FOR EVERYONE INVOLVED because they were all miserable to begin with!
This was frustrating. Was hoping for more.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: We’re going to add a new feature in script reviews. A Character Description Ranking. Every script I read, I will take a character description and give it a ranking. Black Star – terrible. Bronze star – Barely okay. Silver Star – Good. Gold Star – Great. Platinum Star – Superb. The reason I like this below description is it takes us out of the static two dimensional world of words and pulls us into a real live environment. It’s not just adjectives. We’re in a bar looking at this person.
GOLD STAR CHARACTER DESCRIPTION! – “Amy does her makeup in the mirror. She’s exceedingly cute. That wholesome look that emboldens shy guys in bars.”
