Today’s writer does something really clever. He takes a recent hit movie and slides it over to the horror genre.
Genre: Horror
Premise: While meeting her boyfriend’s dysfunctional family at their ancestral manor, a young woman finds herself entangled in a bizarre and terrifying mystery when the family’s patriarch claims to have been cursed by a demon.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 9 votes. Screenwriter Edgar Castillo is new to the game. This is his first major achievement as a screenwriter.
Writer: Edgar Castillo
Details: 116 pages
Sydney Sweeney as Katie would INSTANTLY up this screenplay’s rating to an ‘impressive’
Ever hear of a little movie called Knives Out?
What if you wrote that movie… BUT MADE IT A HORROR FILM!?
That’s the smart move today’s writer made. Like they always say, you know it’s a good idea when you read the logline and think, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Which is exactly what crossed my mind while reading Fiendish.
But are the knives out here? Or are they all those plastic fakey knives that retreat into the base when you stab someone?
35 year old Ben Vandererg is taking his new girlfriend, Angie, to his father’s mansion. His father, who’s in his 70s, ran a gigantic private equity firm and is worth 2 billion dollars. He’s invited all of his children home for the weekend, and the expectation is that he has cancer.
Once at the mansion we meet the rest of the family. There’s the Zak Efron like Colin, with his wife Ingrid. Colin has a mean streak he’s been keeping up since he was 5. Then we have daughter, Brie, who snorts a lot of cocaine. She shows up with her husband Rick, who’s described as, “a homeless man’s Patrick Bateman.” Completing the family is the weirdo son, Tobin.
Once at the house, they sit down for dinner and are finally joined by their father, as well as some sort of paranormal investigator woman named Joanna. The dad explains that a couple of months ago, when he was away on vacation, someone did……. THIS! He removes the rug to show them a giant pentagram shape carved into the wood floor.
It is his belief that this pentagram has opened a door to hell and a demon has entered the estate and is now haunting him. He knows it was one of his children who did this. So he gives them 24 hours to talk it out, figure out who the culprit is, and fess up. If they do this, the remaining innocent children still get their inheritance. If they don’t, all the money goes to charity.
Let the games begin.
The kids immediately think that their dad has gone crazy and their first order of business is to get some lawyers involved to ensure that their obviously insane father’s new will is eradicated. But the more they talk, the more secrets spill out, the most damning of which is their father’s involvement with a former maid who eventually killed herself. Could this maid be back from the dead to get her revenge? And if so, who has she brought with her?
Fiendish is a mixed bag of treats with a few tricks thrown in and also some toothbrushes and raisin packages. To be honest, I don’t know exactly what genre this is supposed to be. Is it a horror movie? A horror-comedy? Or a horror-spoof?
It starts off as a horror movie. That’s clear.
But then the family comes in and they’re a little bit funny.
And when we get to the end, we have this theatrical monologue about who the killer is and how their guilt was deduced that I, swear to god, could’ve been cut and pasted from a Scooby-Doo episode.
So I’m a little unsure of what I just read.
I will say that quite a few red flags popped up along the way. One of the things I’m super-wary of whenever I read a horror script are cliched images and cliched scenarios.
In Fiendish we get a person who pulls up to a house only to see a momentary skeletal face in the second floor window that quickly disappears. We get someone who keeps having random unprovoked nose bleeds. We have ominous whispers whenever anyone is alone. And at one point, I kid you not, we have a literal cat jump scare.
Screenwriters everywhere. I beg of you. Never. EVER. Write a cat jump scare into your script. It is LITERALLY the most cliched thing you can put in a horror movie.
There were other issues as well. This is a whodunnit without a killer. Because nobody’s been killed! So it takes a while to wrap your head around that.
Then we have this will deadline. If they don’t find the non-killer by midnight, the inheritance is left to charity instead of the family. Well, the midnight deadline passes. So I guess the characters don’t technically need to solve the mystery anymore? Yet we keep going.
From there, we’re trying to open up some demon porthole but it isn’t clear what we’re going to do once it’s open. Are we sending the ghost maid back there? There’s an implication that we might be traveling to the demon realm to kill the demon, Andromalius, on his own turf. However I thought that Andromalius was here, in the earth realm. So I’m not sure who you’re killing in the demon realm. Maybe Andromalius’s troublemaking brother, Corqualiqus? I hear Corqualiqus is sort of the Jake Paul of the demon realm so in the grand scheme of things, maybe that’s a good idea.
Sometimes we writers can twist our plots into such elaborate knots that it takes an enormous amount of effort to explain what’s happening. So let this be a reminder. You don’t want the reader to have to connect too many dots to figure out what’s going on. Because the reader never has as much information as you, the writer, has. And they haven’t read the script nearly as many times as you. So they’re going to be more confused. Which is why you should err on the side of simplicity, not complexity.
As I was putting this review together, I thought to myself, “Carson, aren’t you being too hard on this script? Is it really as problematic as you say?” And the answer is no, it isn’t.
I think that whenever I read a Black List script, though, I have an expectation. I expect the script to be better than solid. “Solid” is still a high bar to reach in screenwriting. You have to know how to construct characters, how to set up a story, how to keep that story moving, how to write entertaining scenes, how to elevate moments (as opposed to giving us the same old thing). So when the script only reaches that “solid” territory, I’m disappointed. I wanted more.
In regards to “write entertaining scenes” – that’s is a big one. And while I could talk for hours about what makes an entertaining scene, it boils down to creating scenes that are memorable. And there’s only one scene in here that’s memorable.
It occurs when Angie gets stuck in the service elevator in the middle of the night, and we watch as it creeps up, story by story, and she sees really terrifying things as she passes each floor. It’s an original scene. It’s a suspenseful scene. But more than anything, it’s a SITUATION. The character is trapped. We understand the rules (an elevator slowly moving up). The moment builds. It’s a smart and interesting construct for a scenario.
You need at least 4 or 5 of these scenes in a horror script. Not one.
I still have whiplash from Fiendish. It’s a decent screenplay. But I’m not sure it’s elevated enough to recommend. The writer did nail the concept though. Taking successful movies and adding horror twists is one of the best ways to come up with a good idea. Let’s see what non-horror concepts you can turn into horror ideas in the comments section.
There’s gotta be a horror version of Top Gun out there, right? You could probably sell that pitch tomorrow. Who’s going to come up with it?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I challenge all horror writers from this point forward – whenever you’re about to write a scare or a plot beat into your horror movie, ask yourself if you’ve seen it before. And if you have, YOU MUST DITCH THAT IDEA and use something else. Sure, I want to write some creepy person up in a window too. It’s a horror movie staple. BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO USE IT. Wouldn’t you rather be known as the person who came up with new exciting images? Not ones that have already been done to death? It takes more time to think of them, yes. But who the heck said writing a good screenplay was easy? Oh yeah, my fault, I did. :)
