Genre: Action/Sci-Fi/Found Footage
Premise: A group of storm chasers hoping to catch an elusive F5 tornado on camera catch something way more dangerous.
About: This script was written all the way back in 2010. It comes from screenwriters Chris Rossi and Gabriel Scott. Rossi penned a maudlin drama a few years ago called Meadowland that starred Olivia Wilde and was directed by one of the now rising female directors on the scene, Reed Moreno (whose name has been in the hat for a Star Wars project). It looks like the film ultimately fell victim to the competing found footage storm movie WB made, “Into the Storm.”
Writers: Chris Rossi & Gabriel Scott
Details: 101 pages
No.
More.
Black.
List.
For.
At least.
One.
Day.
Good Lord has that list become insufferable. And obvious. And boring. And it’s only getting worse. They’ve telegraphed so clearly what they celebrate that everyone just keeps writing the same scripts.
There’s this thing in baseball that’s occurred recently which many people are predicting will kill the sport. It’s called “the shift.” What some smarty pants MIT graduates realized was that the vast majority of the time, a hitter is going to hit the ball to the side of the field that matches his batting side. So if he’s a right hander, he’s going to hit 80% of his balls to left field. If he’s a left-hander, he’s going to hit 80% to right field.
These nerds, who now work for baseball teams, posed the question to their bosses, “Tell me again why we put our fielders on the side of the field that the hitters never hit to?” This is what led to “the shift.” They began shifting all the infielders over to the side of the field that the hit would probably go to, leaving the other side completely bare. So now what happens is everybody hits directly into the shift and gets thrown out. This has led to way fewer hits and an increasingly boring sport.
In this analogy, the Black List is only allowing you to hit to one part of the field. And that’s led to a ton of mildly entertaining glorified wikipedia entries. It’s maddening. For as long as I’ve been doing this, I’ve never encountered a trend that’s lasted this long that’s been this bad for the craft. It’s soooooo freaking boring.
And that’s why I’m going BACK IN TIME for today’s script. How far back? Found-footage back! That’s right. I’m so sick of the Boring List that I’m actually reviewing a found footage screenplay. But maybe there’s some educational value to today’s review. One of the best ways to stand out is to zig when everyone else is zagging. I’m not banking on found footage becoming hot again tomorrow. But I’d encourage screenwriters to embrace going 180 degrees the other direction of what the Boring List is promoting. Because if you write something different and you nail the execution? You’ll be heralded as the next big thing.
Sean is the leader of a group of storm chasers. Nick, who’s got the connection to the money, is the driver. Kat is the meteorologist. Matt is our tech geek. Finally, Paul is our cameraman, and therefore, since this is a found footage movie, our perspective. This crew is getting ready to take on Northern Oklahoma, otherwise known as “Tornado Country.”
Just before they leave, Sean informs his little brother, Jeff, that he won’t be joining them on the chase. He doesn’t have enough experience and would therefore be in danger. Jeff is angry so Sean informs him he can hang back in the “follow vehicle.” I’m not sure how putting Jeff in a rinky dinky pickup while the five of them are in a tornado-proof tank makes Jeff safer but, hey, it’s a found footage movie so let’s roll with it.
The crew picks up a couple of F4’s on their radar and starts heading towards them. If two F4’s come together, that equals an F5 in tornado math. And if they can get a close-up of an F5, their investors are going to be really happy. While chasing one of these F4s, it turns abruptly and runs right through them. They survive but their tornado tank is toast. Sean is afraid that something might have happened to Jeff and convinces the team to walk back to where he last signed off.
Once at Jeff’s truck, they see that not only is Jeff gone, but something tore the truck apart. And it doesn’t look like a tornado. They find the dashcam footage, rewind it, and see as something attacks Jeff’s truck with him in it. In one of the final frames, a giant weird eye looks down into the camera. Whatever they’re dealing with is not related to a high pressure system if you know what I’m talking about.
Jeff appears to still be alive so they continue looking for him, getting deeper into the affected area. Soon they find an entire army blockade that’s been wiped out. As night settles in, they find the monster, which is traveling through the nearby woods and killing everything it sees. What is this thing? Where did it come from? And how are they going to escape it along with the new F5 that’s coming their way? That’s a darn good question. And the answer is they probably won’t.
I’m such a sucker for sci-fi titles with numbers in them. No matter how many times you give me a bad sci-fi number title movie, I will always be excited for the next one. I just have to know what that number references! Which is ironic in the case of Day 38 since they never tell us.
But that’s not such a bad thing. The script makes the dangerous conceptual decision to combine two big ideas into the same movie. A storm chasing storyline. An escaped monster storyline. When this is done badly, you get readers asking, “What is your movie about? Is it about Thing A or Thing B?” But when it’s done well, you get this elevated crossover genre film that’s fun as all get-up.
That’s the category I would place Day 38 in. It’s a fun script. It’s not perfect by any means. It encounters some of the classic mistakes found footage movies run into, such as repetitive scenarios. Let’s look over here. Oh, there’s a glimpse of a monster. Let’s go over there. Another glimpse. Oh, what’s that? It’s a bunch of dead people. Oh, and there’s the monster again. But not all of him!
And yet the idea is so fun that you could totally see it working onscreen. I don’t know about you, but I love the idea of trying to fight off a monster with a looming F5 tornado bearing down on my characters. Action movies are all about putting your characters into situations that are impossible to get out of. That’s when the audience is most invested. Unfortunately, the scenarios we encounter in these movies are the same old ones we’ve always seen. So when you can create something like this, that’s different, you have a leg up.
One of the reasons found footage died is that the reasoning behind why our characters were still filming became impossible to believe. Audiences sensed that and the suspension of disbelief wasn’t just broken for a few films, it was broken for the entire genre. But Day 38 gets this right. It makes total sense that Sean would want to go deeper into trouble to save his brother. And it’s established by Nick early how important it is to get great footage for their bosses. When it’s pitched to him that capturing this thing on camera would be the story of the century, we believe wholly that the camera would keep rolling.
The script just needs a couple of passes to make things less repetitive and more original. The structure feels way too similar to Cloverfield. And matching common story beats is something we’re all guilty of because it’s easier to write lazy than to do the hard work. “Okay, Cloverfield did this here so we’ll do that same beat in our script.” You can do that but your script loses street cred every time you do so. If you want to stand out, you have to create your own original plot beats. So this would need to figure that out.
But if I were Netflix, I would jump on this in a heartbeat. You don’t even need the found footage stuff. You could shoot it as a regular movie. Storms and a monster? Count me in. This is like a producer’s dream project. And the execution of the script is almost there. Worth the read for sure.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Be careful of “what’s that!?” writing. “What’s that?” writing is an over-reliance on distraction-based plotting. Where something happens off screen and, “What’s that?” and then they’re off to check it out. And then something else happens over there. “What’s that?” Off they go again. And the plot is a series of your characters being dragged along by a bunch of “What’s thats?” You can have some “What’s thats,” but make sure your characters are dominating the narrative with plans and activity as opposed to being reactive robots.
