The Shining, the small town version.
Genre: Small Town Almost Horror
Premise: (from Black List) Lukas and Sofia’s new life in a small town is shattered when they return home one night to find their dog gruesomely killed–was it a wild animal, a neighbour or a sinister, supernatural force from the valley? Desperate for the truth, Lukas embarks on a witch hunt after evidence points to a young local boy–but as they are plagued by further unexplained, malevolent events, the family unit unravels with devastating consequences.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer, Lucy Campbell, is also a director, and has directed quite a few short films, which you can check out here.
Writer: Lucy Campbell
Details: 102 pages
I call these sorts of scripts “Almost Ideas.” There’s some semblance of a movie here but the overall concept – all of the characters, all of the beats, all of the creative choices – never quite feel big enough.
Almost Ideas are not to be confused with Low-Concept (Whiplash, Nebraska, The Descendants) or No-Concept (Belfast, Nomadland, Marriage Story, Roma) ideas. They have more of a hook than those scripts. But they’re not big enough to be legitimate movie ideas.
Just like anything that you write that has a high level of difficulty, you can write a good script with an almost idea. But it’s much tougher than when you have a solid premise.
That’s because an “Almost Idea” inevitably leads to a bunch of “almost” scenes. It’s hard to escape a weak story engine, guys. Many of the elements that stem from a weak concept will be, by association, also weak.
Let’s take a look.
We’ve got a middle-aged family here. 52 year old Lukas has recently moved his family to this small town because his wife, Sofia (44), got a good job at a local university. This means that Lukas will be taking on a high school teaching job.
The two have a 17 year old son, Ezra, who’s an amazing cellist. And they have a 13 year old daughter, Chloe.
One night, when they’re coming back from one of Ezra’s performances, they find their dog bleeding and nearly dead. He dies soon after. Lukas is enraged. He immediately gets the cops down to his house and demands justice. Except the cops aren’t really interested in a dog murder, which makes Lukas even angrier.
The prime suspect is a weirdo loner kid named Oliver. Lukas’s suspicions are confirmed when he looks at his neighbor’s Ring cam and sees Oliver sneaking into his backyard on the day their dog was murdered. Things get complicated when Lukas learns that Chloe has befriended Oliver.
The next door neighbors, led by the uber religious prepper, Tony, talk about how there are always spooky things going on in this town. Tony seems to tap into something deep within Lukas and, before long, Lukas is radicalized. He thinks supernatural forces and this Oliver dope are responsible for all the weird things that are happening.
The tipping point occurs when Ezra accidentally chops off his finger while cutting up the kangaroo he and his friend had hunted. This means he’ll never be able to play cello again. The dad freaks, goes wacko, and now nobody is safe – not the people in town, not even his own family.
I started this review by saying that this was “The Shining” but in a small town. To the untrained eye, that may sound like a good pitch. It isn’t. Let’s discuss why. Cause this goes into my whole point about what “almost screenplay ideas” are.
The difference with The Shining was that the story was placed up in a remote deserted hotel in the off-season. That’s a hook right there. That’s a larger-than-life scenario, which is what makes it a movie idea. Once you’re covering a regular family in a regular situation, it’s no longer a hook. That’s what makes it “almost.”
What also makes it “almost” is this mysterious “supernatural” entity that’s causing all of this chaos in the town. Except there’s never any explanation of what this supernatural entity is or what the rules are that govern it. When readers read vague plot elements like that, they become less interested, not more.
Readers want to know what they’re up against. Or, if the writer wants to take their time to reveal what they’re up against, it better be a good reveal. In this movie, there is no reveal of what this supernatural entity is. It’s an excuse to make the story seem bigger than it actually is.
This comes down to a father going insane. And that’s not the worst story idea! But it’s pretty plain and, therefore, hard to work with from a dramatic sense.
I do think the script had some good moments. I liked learning, for example, that Chloe was secretly hanging out with Oliver. But even that didn’t go anywhere. And the more you dug into it, the less sense it made.
Why would a young cool girl want to hang out with the weird loser who everyone beats up? The relationships in your script need to make real-world sense. You can’t just make two characters friends because it results in an exciting reveal. Case in point, that was the most excited I was in the story cause I wanted to see what was going on with the two. But it was never explained. And that’s probably because the writer didn’t know why they were hanging out. She only knew that that would provide a surprising reveal.
I just think you’re in trouble territory when you explore “almost” scenarios. There’s “almost” a supernatural presence here. Readers and audiences don’t like “almost” stuff. They like that bigger larger than life stuff that drives all the best stories.
There wasn’t anything hugely wrong with this script but its “almostness” plagued it from start to finish.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: If you’re going to hurt a character, hurt him where it’s relevant. You never want the things you do to your characters to be random. You’d prefer them to have some connective tissue to the plot, or the character, or the other characters. That consistent connective tissue is what makes your script feel like a story and not just a series of random events. So, here, we set up that Ezra plays the cello. He’s amazing at it. Then, when he accidentally cuts his finger off, it’s more relevant than, say, a random car accident injury. Now, he can never play cello again. The writer has successfully connected the accident to Ezra’s primary character talent.
