Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Blood List) A goat farmer discovers a newborn baby among the bodies of a cult’s mass suicide. In nurturing the baby, the farmer’s cancer-ridden wife starts getting better. But there’s something dark about the child’s power.
About: We’re just 10 days from The Black List. Going off what I’ve read from the Blood List, expect at least three of those script to make the list. If today’s Blood List script is good, I’ll raise that number to 4. The writer/director is Kevin McMullin, who penned and directed this year’s dramatic thriller, “Low Tide,” starring one of the biggest young actors in the business, Jaeden Martell (It, Knives Out).
Writer: Kevin McMullin
Details: 94 pages
I like when I see a unique setting in a logline. I read so many scripts that feel the same that any break from the familiar is appreciated. If you’re writer number 782,213 writing a haunted house movie, you’re going to find it very hard to differentiate your script from every other haunted house script.
So when I saw “goat farm” in this logline, I thought to myself, “I’ve never read a script about a goat farm before.” That’s not to imply that goat farming is going to lead to storytelling nirvana, but when you start from a unique place, you’re more likely to deliver a unique experience.
It’s 1979. Texas. 69 year old George Viske is barely making ends meet on his goat farm. A major part of the problem is that his corn crop isn’t growing to full term. He’s considering pesticides as a last resort but doesn’t have much faith that they’ll work. Things on the inside of the household aren’t so great either. George’s wife, Alice, is suffering from Stage 4 cancer.
One day after selling goat meat in town, George stumbles across a stray goat who he follows into a valley, where he sees over 100 dead bodies from a doomsday cult. There is only one survivor, a newborn baby. The local sheriff is overwhelmed and asks George if he can take care of the baby while he coordinates all the incoming press and federal agents.
Alice immediately takes a liking to the baby and, wouldn’t you know it, her cancer starts regressing. And that corn crop? All of a sudden, it’s growing just fine. But the good luck baby can’t help everyone. For some reason, all of George’s farm hands start developing intense fevers. Whatever’s going on here appears to be selective. Or random.
George is lukewarm on the baby, who they name Eli. Alice, conversely, becomes obsessed with it. She seems to sense it has special powers and wants to raise it. So when a couple of surviving members of the doomsday cult church arrive looking for Eli, Alice doesn’t want to give him away. Little do they know, they’re going to have to fight to keep him. And to stay alive.
Before I get into my analysis of the script, I want to point out that this is a writer-director and that he clearly has a vision in mind for the story. The script has that quasi “writing it for myself” quality that you see in a lot of writer-director scripts. And after seeing the disaster screenplay that was Three Billboards turn into one of my favorite movies of 2017, I’ll never discount a writer-director until I see the finished product.
With that said, this script had issues.
We talk about STORY ENGINES a lot on this site. What is the engine that’s driving your story – that’s making the reader want to turn the page? The most common example is a character goal. Ad Astra – Get to dad and bring him back.
But a character goal isn’t the only narrative engine out there. It’s just the best one. Another common engine is a mystery. “Get Out” is about a guy who visits his girlfriend’s parents for the weekend and starts to sense that something is off. We keep watching to see how that mystery will unfold. What is going on in this house with these people?
First Harvest doesn’t have a clear engine as far as I can tell. It’s more of a “an older couple inherits a strange baby and weird stuff starts happening” movie. Now if you were debating me about this, you might argue that the baby is the mystery. The reader will keep reading to figure out what’s going on with this baby.
And therein lies why there’s no true formula for writing a screenplay. The writer thinks that mystery is compelling enough to drive the entire movie. I don’t. Who’s right? Whoever reads this script or sees this movie – they’ll decide if that mystery is compelling enough. But I don’t think it is.
Part of the problem is that the mystery is passive. We’re just sort of waiting around to see what happens next. Is the corn going to grow? Are the farm hands going to die? Is Alice going to keep getting better? Strangely, the biggest storyline – 100 dead people in the adjacent farm lot – is barely explored. We instead focus everything on George and Alice’s household, which, again, amounts to a lot of waiting around. As I’ve made clear in dozens of script reviews, I don’t like storylines where people wait around. It’s like you’re deliberately shooting your screenplay in the leg. You make it so hard for the script to get anywhere.
One of things you’re trying to do when you come up with an idea is find the narrative that gets the MOST out of the concept. With a little more brainstorming, I think we could’ve come up with a much better storyline here.
For starters, the sheriff shouldn’t have handed the baby to them and said, “Figure this out yourself.” It would’ve been a lot more compelling had George found the baby before anyone else came along and brought it back home. Now your main characters are trying to keep a secret, which is a lot more interesting. Especially with the nosy farmhands nearby. Throw a plot point in around page 40 where the feds find out a baby is missing, and things really get dramatic.
Then you have Alice, who was literally on her deathbed, start to get better. George believes it’s because of the baby. This means losing the baby doesn’t mean giving something back you found a week ago. It’s George losing his wife. How far would you go to make sure that didn’t happen? That’s your movie right there. I could see George killing the farmhand who knows about the baby when he threatens to go to the police.
Instead of all that, we get one of those scripts that feels like the writer is figuring things out on the page. For example, there’s a scene where George wakes up to find his wife floating above the bed. When you’re writing a scene like that, it feels fun and exciting. But it doesn’t elevate the story in any way (no pun intended). It doesn’t lead to some plot point that takes the story to another level. It’s just a fun isolated moment. A cute effect.
I’ll finish things off by saying this. You want to avoid writing situations where the only thing you know going in is “weird stuff is going to happen.” A baby with strange powers. Okay. There’s a way to turn that into a movie. But if all you’re going to give us is weird stuff happening with an arbitrary rule-set (some people are healed by the baby, some people are hurt by it), the reader is going to find that frustrating. They want a script where the writer understands the magical force at the center of their story and what the point of it is. And I didn’t get that feeling here at all.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: What is the most unique part of your life? Do you have a weird job? Know a weird person? Do you live in a unique area of the country? Did you go on a trip once that was unlike anything else you’ve experienced? These are the things you want to build movie ideas around – the stuff from your life that’s unique. Not only are you giving readers something different. But because you experienced these things yourself, you can write from a place of knowledge. Which means your story will be specific and, therefore, believable.
