Genre: Thriller/Horror
Premise: Two years after a free solo accident nearly killed her, a fearless climber enlists the help of her old climbing partners to document her comeback.
About: This script finished number 2 on last year’s Hit List. It was part of a bidding war that Netflix won. Netflix always wins. The project will be produced by Ridley Scott and directed by his son, Jake Scott.
Writer: Colin Bannon
Details: 112 pages
You guys know I’m all about the Free Solo.
The more time I can spend with Alex Honnald’s people, the happier I am. So when I found out there was a free solo spec script, by golly I had to read it!
35 year old Hillary Hall is the best female free solo climber in the world. She’s got an achilles heel, though. She’s arrogant. And that arrogance leads to her downfall, literally, when in the opening scene she slips and falls off the rock cliff.
Lucky for Hillary, she hit a branch on the way down, which slowed her fall enough that when she plunged into the forest, she was able to survive. Two years later, after lots of rehabbing, Hillary wants to climb again. And she’s got her sights set on a virgin wall – the Diyu Shan, 4000 feet of sheer granite in the Sichuan Province of China.
She gets the band back together – the documentary crew who filmed her now infamous fall – to create a comeback story. The leader and head photographer, Neil, is game. He knows Hillary is his path to stardom, maybe even an Oscar. Rounding out the crew are Jen, a scrappy cameraperson, and Ernie, the guy who tried to save Hillary from falling that day and failed.
Off the crew head to China where they immediately start getting bad vibes. Their driver tells them a couple of Americans came here months ago and died on the cliff, their bodies never found. And when they reach the actual cliff, they see a giant cave right in the middle of the ascent, like a mouth waiting to gobble them up.
The good news is, they’re going to be using ropes this time. And Neil’s going up with her. This is a “first ascent” which you can’t do solo. Every foot you ascend is a mystery so you need to be safe. However, it turns out that climbing is the least of their worries. Hillary begins seeing visions of the two men who died on the cliff.
And back on ground control, Ernie becomes convinced that the wall is alive. That it’s going to kill all of them. Needless to say, this turns out to be anything but your average ascent. There’s a good chance that none of the crew is leaving this mountain alive. That’s what you get when you don’t bring Alex Honnold with you.
It’s been over two weeks so I was stoked to get back to reviewing scripts. Thirty pages into this thing, I was salivating. It was exactly what I was hoping for.
And then things started to take a turn.
So here’s the thing.
We’re all looking for that +1.
We’ve got the script idea but wouldn’t it better if we had that ONE EXTRA ELEMENT to put it over the top?!
In theory, that’s a good way to think when constructing a movie concept. But, in reality, 1 + 0 can equal 3 and 1 + 1 can equal 0.
Confused?
Let me clarify. Sometimes, you already have everything you need. You don’t need a +1. Take Rocky for example. Can you have a +1’d Rocky where you turn him into a boxing cyborg? Sure. But you already had a great story about an underdog boxer who takes on the heavyweight champion to begin with. That’s enough to entertain an audience on its own… as long as the execution is good.
And that’s where screenwriters get scared. They don’t know if they can execute the basic story so they add on some horror or supernatural element for insurance.
Which is what happened here, in my opinion.
This was a good character-piece with a marketable hook all on its own. The world’s best free solo climber nearly falls to her death then rehabs to make a comeback two years later on a never-before-climbed wall in China. There’s plenty to work with there, especially from a character development perspective.
Making the mountain a ghost isn’t a bad idea. I was just never convinced the movie needed to go there.
Also, you should always be wary of concepts that allow you to use the “Am I going crazy” trope to create scary moments then never have to explain whether those moments really happened or not. It’s a straight up cheat and while audiences will give you a couple of those in every horror movie, they don’t want you doing it every other scene. It just becomes this ongoing cock tease where you’re not really committing to one side or the other. Is it a drama and they’re just imagining all this? Or is the mountain really attacking them?
It’s not that you can’t make this work but audiences don’t like being fucked with for too long. Sooner or later, they want an answer. And this script doesn’t give them one until the final minute.
With that said, the script manages to finish the climb.
It’s got as clear of a structure as you’re going to find (goal – get to the top, stakes – if you fail, you die). There’s no urgency, per se, but you don’t need urgency if your timeframe is tight. We know this is a 2 day climb so we’re not clamoring for the story to speed up. We know when it’s going to end.
There are also some fun checkpoints Bannon plays with. We’ve got that mysterious cave halfway up. What’s in there? And they’ve already been told that the final stretch is a ‘point of no return’ situation. Once you get past that point, the only way off the mountain is up.
You always want things looming in your story. Give us stuff not just to look forward to – looking forward is good – but stuff to WORRY ABOUT. That’s the real special sauce that keeps us reading. I knew that cave and that point of no return were coming at some point which made me want to keep reading.
Also, Bannon makes his best choice of the script once we reach the point of no return. Hillary has to climb the last stretch of the mountain solo.
This is a tough one to rate because it’s one of those situations where I wanted a different story than the writer wanted to tell. So I can’t ding him for not giving me what I wanted. But I really think he missed an opportunity to tell a compelling character piece about a woman making an impossible comeback in the most dangerous sport in the world.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[x] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: When the size of something is a major component of your story, you must provide a reference for the reader. We’re told Diyu Shan is 4000 feet tall. I have a vague idea of how tall that is but I have no visual reference for that. Bannon clears that up for us with this line: “That’s higher than the Twin Towers stacked on top of each other.” That’s something I can visualize. — Remember that screenwriting is about helping the reader visualize the movie. Anything you can do in your description to facilitate that, do it.
