Genre: Horror
Premise: A recovering alcoholic travels off to his dead uncle’s remote island to battle the disease, but ends up battling a deadly monster who lives in the surrounding water instead.
About: Hooray! A recent spec sale. A few weeks ago, actually. And high six figures even. Never say the dream is dead. However, if you’re going to live the spec sale dream, you probably want to get your script to David Boxerbaum, as he’s the only agent in town the studios go to for original material. Peter Joseph sold this script to Universal.
Writer: Peter Joseph
Details: 105 pages
I’m doing this review for one reason and one reason only. Because I know that Grendl will post a 5000 word essay in the comments section on why it can never live up to its inspiration, Jaws.
There is a specific movie that brings all of us into this bizarre frustrating addictive craft known as screenwriting. And while we fight against copying the films of our past, an argument can be made that all we’re really trying to do is rewrite our favorite movie ever. Grendl knows Jaws so well, he can probably tell you the name of Extra #482 on the beach. So he can tell you how this script fares much better than I can.
I, however, am not bound by these chains. I’m easily entertained when it comes to monster movies. I’ll be the casual fan here and Grendl can be the New York Times critic.
30 year old Henry Wabash just got out of rehab. His sister, Athena, is proud of him, but worried that if she leaves him alone, he’ll relapse. That’s exactly what happens. Henry ends up at a bar his first night back. And so Athena comes up with a plan. She’s going to drive them out to their Uncle Pat’s place, which is located on a tiny island in the middle of a river way out in the middle of nowhere. There, Henry can fix up the house of their recently deceased uncle and truly put this addiction behind him.
After Athena leaves, the only connection to the outside world Henry has is Maurice, a local caretaker. Maurice is going to motor out and deliver him groceries every week. That way Henry won’t have any access to booze at all. One day, while out on the lake in a canoe, a rogue wave knocks Henry out of his boat. While underwater, he spots an old military plane at the bottom of the lake. Later, when Maurice comes by, he explains that the crew got out fine and it’s nothing. But it sure didn’t seem like nothing to Henry.
The next day, while out near the shore, a giant tentacle slips out of the water and tries to yank Henry in! He’s able to chop it off with an axe, but that’s not the end of it! The tentacle turns into its own entity and continues to attack Henry, who’s only barely able to kill it. Henry sends up a flare to have Maurice get him out of here, but on the way back, the tentacle creature attacks them! Not only that, but it seems to have grown! Henry is somehow able to escape but can only get back to the private island.
But if he thought he was safe there, think again! The sea monster is growing so rapidly that it’s able to squirm its tentacles up to and even INSIDE the house. It really wants to kill Henry. Henry realizes that if he doesn’t come up with a plan pronto, he’s going to be sea food. Ironically, Henry’s lone stash of liquor allows him to McGruber together a Molotov cocktail, which, theoretically, he’ll be able to use as a weapon. But this giant sea thing is getting smarter by the second. So whatever Henry’s plan is, it better be foolproof.
Let’s start off by recognizing the EXTREME streamlined writing style here. Pop open the first scene in Don’t Go In The Water and you won’t even see the right side of the page. That’s because there are no words on it. This script is written to read fast. And while I’m not sure a script should be THIS sparse, there’s an argument to be made that it should. All of Max Landis’s scripts read like this and he sold a bunch of stuff as well. Readers like effortless reading experiences and this script selling is proof of that.
Another takeaway is that monster-on-an-island specs are gonna sell at a higher rate than other specs. I know it’s simplistic. It almost seems like cheating. But we saw this with last year’s spec sale of Beast, about a woman running around an island with a beast creature. We saw an extreme version of it with The Shallows. The reason it works is because it hits all the beats that make for a thrilling experience. You’ve got a character who’s trapped. You’ve got a mysterious monster. And you’ve got time ticking down. As crazy as it is for me to say, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to write one of these. It’s sort of like a sneaky loophole to a spec sale. Sure, two of them are now in development. But any studio would like to make one of these because they’re so cheap.
As for the quality of the story itself, it had its pros and cons. I liked that Joseph attempted to explore something real with this character by making him an alcoholic. And I liked how organically that played into the plot itself. He had to come out here because it was his only shot at beating this. But I’m not sure Joseph ever really committed to it. There were times where he did and other times where Henry seemed like he wouldn’t know what alcohol was if a Budweiser hit him in the face. You probably need a writer who really understands addiction to do a pass on this storyline. Cause you can’t just dabble in addiction when its convenient. It’s supposed to be who your character is.
For that reason, I was only casually interested in the story. It was all too simplistic for my taste. However, after Maurice is killed and Henry is forced to flee back to the island, things picked up considerably. In any monster movie, one of the primary variables that you have to nail is the threat level of your monster. This is why Aliens remains one of the greatest monster movies ever made. When we see those aliens first attack the Marines, and they’re so overmatched, we think our heroes are done for, no matter what they do from now on. That’s the threat level you want to bring to your story – if not early, then by the midpoint.
Once I felt that Henry wasn’t safe in his own house, that he didn’t have any way to communicate with the outside world, and that any attempt to use the water for escape was suicide, I became a lot more invested. That final 40 pages is when this script delivered. So it’s by no means a killer screenplay. But once it hits the home stretch, you leave feeling like you got your money’s worth.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Alcoholism is everywhere in movies and TV. For this reason, it usually comes off as cliche. The reason for that is writers think that to convey alcoholism you have to show the character drinking. A lot. The more they’re drinking, the belief is, the more developed the character becomes. In actuality, they’re just feeding the cliche. To accurately convey alcoholism, focus more on NOT HAVING THE DRINK. It’s the moments between drinks – the struggle – that’s where you explore true addiction.
