Genre: Horror
Premise: When an overstressed young woman joins her best friend at a wellness retreat in the Arizona desert, she begins to suspect that the revitalizing spa treatments, serums, and macrobiotic meals are part of something closer to a dangerous cult, run by the retreat’s charismatic leader.
About: This script finished on this year’s Blood List! Co-writers Kevin Aarmento and Jaki Bradley are just getting started in their careers. Jaki directed a small film called Last Ferry this year.
Writers: Kevin Armento & Jaki Bradley
Details: 103 pages
I wondered for years why they didn’t make more horror movies about cults. Cults are freaky, man! Not to mention, there’s so much you can do with the mythology since each cult’s backstory is unique. With Midsommer coming out earlier this year and a few other cult horror scripts floating around, cult horror is becoming a thing.
And that’s not the only script similarity we’re seeing today. Remember how yesterday’s script was about a group of people brought to a remote place who are then manipulated by a psychotic antagonist? That’s the same setup for today’s script. And that’s not a bad thing. This is a format that works well in features. As long as you come up with your own unique characters with their own unique backstories as well as a unique setting, you can get a ton of mileage out of this setup.
Let us take a look at Detox’s plot.
Sam is a 30-something consumer safety officer for the FDA. Her daily existence has been boring ever since her husband killed himself. That’s why her best friend, Madison, has set up an amazing opportunity for them to go to one of the most prestigious wellness centers for women in the entire world.
The two head out to the middle of Arizona and meet up with all the rest of the participants, women of varying ages who are doing extremely well in life but who are blocked in some way by personal setbacks. Soon we learn that Sam’s personal setback is more complicated than we were told. The reason her husband killed himself is because Sam had a miscarriage and blamed her for it.
Things get weird immediately. This center is all about detoxifying and that means they only get to eat a single plant for the first 48 hours of the weeklong excursion. But, in the meantime, they’re allowed to drink juices and elixirs, most of which make them feel woozy and wacked out. Sam is constantly seeing things, like her dead husband in the corner of a room, only to wake up in her bedroom and wonder if it was just a dream.
But the visions are nothing compared to some of the practices they use here. At one point they lock Sam in a negative 300 degree cryotherapy chamber and won’t let her out until she explains in detail how losing her husband made her feel. And in another group exercise, one of the staff members “channels” Sam’s dead husband, forcing Sam to have a conversation with “him,” an exchange “her husband” ends by screaming at her, “I hate you! I hate you!”
Eventually, Sam begins to suspect that Willa, the leader, is up to something, so she sneaks into her office, steals her phone back, and starts googling the names of everyone here. What she finds is far from encouraging. Pictures of some of the staff members hanging out with some of the participants years ago. This leads Sam to realize that maybe the person who brought her here, Madison, is also in on whatever’s going on. Or is it all part of the plan to help Sam finally detoxify her past and start living again?
Look. This script was pretty good.
But here’s something I want all screenwriters to consider because I don’t think the average screenwriter considers this. There’s a very good chance that a reader or a producer or an agent read another script similar to yours recently. That’s because none of are as original as we think we are. There are only so many story situations to pull from.
For this reason, you have to ask yourself if this is the best execution of your idea that you’re capable of. Because if I just read a script yesterday with a similar setup and it’s better than yours, then all I’m going to think of your script is that it’s the “not as good” version of the two scripts in question.
This is why holding yourself to such a high standard is crucial in screenwriting. You can’t get by with “fine.” You’re constantly being compared to other scripts and other writers that readers just read last month, last week, even last Saturday. Every plot choice you make, you have to ask yourself, “Is this really the best I can do?” And if it is, great. But if there’s some doubt in your mind, try to come up with something better. You’d be surprised at how creative you can actually be when you push yourself.
I do give the writers credit, however, for two things. First, they committed to their protagonist’s makeup. What I mean by that is, they could’ve easily lip-serviced the whole miscarriage thing. Draw it onto the character to give her that “depth” screenwriting books always talk about. But they go all in with it. The exercises at the retreat force Sam to dig deep into what happened, not only with the miscarriage itself, but how it destroyed her marriage.
That’s what you want to do in these movies. You don’t want to send your character off to a scary wellness retreat and then throw a bunch of jump scares at her and call it a day. Wellness centers are about exorcising demons and facing your past so you should be marrying that situation to your character’s inner journey.
The other thing is that the second half of this script was a lot stronger than the first half. Which was nice to see since it’s usually the opposite. Writing a script is hard. It takes a lot out of you. And you often see that in the back half of a script. The writer runs out of gas, leading each scene to be less interesting than the previous scene. Your script should always be building. It should always be getting better. And where you usually find that extra gear is in rewrites.
I can tell you the exact moment in this script where it hit that higher gear. Sam sees the picture of one of the staff members hanging out on a beach with one of the participants (from two years ago). It doesn’t make any sense. And Madison, her friend, came here last year. So she’s already vouched for this place. So it wasn’t an obvious scam where they were all putting on a show because then her best friend would have to be in on it. And that didn’t make sense. That turned the second half into a compelling mystery, that so happened to make the main character a lot more active (active characters can be gear-changers all on their own – if your story feels slow in any way, consider ramping up how active your main character is).
One last thing I want to praise the writers for is that everybody in town right now is writing female lead roles. Even if it doesn’t make sense, they do it because they know that’s what studios want. As a result, you get a lot of unnatural scenarios that feel like Ghostbusters 2016. But everything about this all-female setup feels authentic. We never question why there isn’t a single male character in the movie. And that’s the way it should be. You want to create scenarios that are organic for your characters regardless of the genre.
So I say this is worth the read. It just has the unfortunate luck of coming right after The Menu.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Competitive Writing. – When you’re writing a script, imagine someone else writing a script which isn’t that different from yours. Because that’s happening. There will be many writers THIS YEAR who are writing screenplays similar to your own. For this reason, you want to recruit your competitive side. Imagine that other writer (or writers) writing the scene you’re writing next and be competitive about it. Write a scene that you believe is clearly better than any of the scenes any of those other writers could come up with. Writing is such a singular experience that we often forget how much our writing is being compared with others. As a reader, I can confirm that this comparison is going on. So call on that inner athlete of yours to out-write whoever the competition is.
What I learned 2: You get one “hero sees freaky thing then wakes up and wonders if it was a dream” moment in a script. MAYBE TWO, at most. But you should avoid these scenes if possible. The problem with them is that it allows the writer to cheat. They get to show something freaky and then not have to explain it. And the more you do that to the reader, the more they feel f$%#d with. So go crazy with one of these if you must. But please stop at one.
