Oooh-oooh-ahh-ahh-ahhhhh. It’s that most gorrrriest time of the year. Which means, in addition to some eyeballs and fresh liver, I shall serve you a horrifying script review. As David Pumpkins would say… any questions??
Genre: Horror
Premise: Two young Indian brothers living in England head back to their dying grandmother’s home in a remote part of India only to learn that her house may be haunted.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with seven votes. The writer has worked on a couple of small movies as a crew member. He’s still looking for that first writing credit.
Writer: Vikash Shankar
Details: 118 pages
Ms. Marvel’s Rish Shah for Dev?
I chose this horror script today to get you in the Halloween Logline Showdown mood! Send me the logline for your Horror or Thriller script by next Thursday night. The five best loglines will compete over that weekend. It’s going to be a spoooooooooky fun time.
What: Halloween Logline Showdown
Send me: Logline for either your Horror or Thriller script (Pilot scripts are okay!)
I need: The title, genre, and logline
Also: Your script must be written because I’ll be reviewing the winning entry the following week
When: Deadline is Thursday, October 19th, by 10:00pm Pacific Time
Send entries to: carsonreeves3@gmail.com
Okay, onto today’s horror script.
We’re constantly told as writers to bring the reader somewhere new, somewhere fresh. And yet, often times, when we do that, the feedback we receive is, “It’s a little too out-there.” “It’s too inaccessible.” “Not marketable enough.”
Today’s scripts is the perfect example of that. The writer is doing what you should do, which is find a new avenue into the horror genre. Take us somewhere unique. Because that’s where you’re going to find all the fresh scares.
But I’m guessing that the majority of you saw this logline and thought, “Ehh. Not interested.” “A horror story set in India? Not my jam.” I know this because it’s the reason it’s taken me so long to review it. Whenever I see the logline on the Black List, one of those two thoughts pops into my head and I move on. Which is why choosing a concept as a writer is so hard. You’re trying to hit that elusive target of “fresh but familiar.”
The good news for the writer is that it’s still horror. And horror sells. So if he’s a good writer and he’s come up with a scary story, he can overcome our bias. Let’s take a look.
Dev, 18, and his little brother Sid, 13, live in London circa 1989 at a foster care home called “Bring Them Home.” Dev is at the end of his foster care service and is desperately working the government system to get custody over Sid so that they can live together.
That’s when Dev learns that their grandmother, who lives in India, is clinging to life, which means that they may be inheriting money. This would solve Dev’s problem of taking Sid out of foster care. So the two head out to Varanasi, India to their grandmother’s place, a large rural farm house.
Once there, Grammy dies pretty quickly and Dev and Sid work with their aunt, Parvati, not related to the opera singer, to try and sell the house. As we’ve established, Dev needs that money badly. The problem is that the villagers in the area all think the house is haunted.
This is where Dev and Sid learn about why their parents got rid of them. Long story short, there used to be a lot of child labor here and the parents were afraid that Dev and Sid would be sent off to work the fields their whole childhood. Which is a load off of their backs since they always assumed their parents hated them.
It turns out their parents story is a lot more complicated, though. The land they’re on is sacred and a lot of the neighbors thought that, if they sacrificed their own children on the land, that God would look over them. So there were a lot of child sacrifices here. Their father, in an attempt to stop it, burned everything, including his wife. It looks like something survived this burning, though. Something evil. Something that now wants to claim Sid.
One of the great things about horror movies is that if you’re clever with your soundtrack and your cinematography, you can hide a lot of script problems. You can literally loom on a shot of a church from a low angle for 60 seconds, with a slow zoom-in, accompanied by some “Exorcist-like” piano chords, and you look like the most visionary director ever.
I get the sense that this script was designed under that principle. It wants to be a movie first and a script second.
Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The script always comes first. That’s where you build your story. But Shankar is so into the details of his world – the imagery that is going to make the movie look so great – that he forgets to move his story along at an acceptable pace.
There’s a moment on page 56 where the priest, Anand, has Sid and Dev grab a giant pot and perform an elaborate fire ritual with it.
He tells them, “The soul’s liberation from its physical form in this life and the next. It can take its rightful place in the Cosmos knowing its fulfilled its duties here on Earth.” Sid looks at him inquisitively. “Didn’t we already do that?”
WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS THINKING.
Just eight pages ago (!!!) we had a scene where they did a ritual with burning her body that helped her get to the next life or something. It’s the same scene!
You never want to repeat beats in a screenplay. I can’t emphasize how quickly the reader gets bored. If you’re going to repeat plot beats? You are opening the gates of boredom.
And, oh yeah, you read that right. We’re still dealing with the grandma’s death on PAGE 56!!!! We should be WAY PAST that by now. The grandma should be dead and gone by the end of the first act.
We need to start a mandatory course for all screenwriters going forward to read Scriptshadow. Because if they did, THEY WOULDN’T MAKE THESE MISTAKES. I’m saving your scripts from disastrous errors if you’d just listen!
The one thing the script has going for it is an extensive, and quite imaginative, mythology. Kudos to Shankar for conceiving of this child-sacrifice backstory as it is definitely not something I’ve seen before. But even that great part of the script is overshadowed by endless detail and lackluster pacing.
Something all horror writers should be aware of is that if you’re stuck in one location – which often happens with haunted house scripts – you need to move your plots along quicker because we’re going to get bored faster in contained locations. Characters sitting around is script ambien. So you need your plot to offset that.
Having your inciting incident – the grandma dying – on page 45 (and then lingering on the death for another 10 pages) is guaranteeing that the script ambien is going to set in.
I also thought Shankar missed some creative plot opportunities. Whenever you’re dealing with haunted house movies, you have to be able to answer the question, “Why don’t they just leave?” In this story, the grandmother screams at them to leave as soon as they come. Then dies under mysterious circumstances. Pavarati and his orchestra go tumbling down the stairs and almost die, also under mysterious circumstances. Sid seems to see a new monster every night when he goes to sleep.
So why is Dev staying? Especially since nobody wants to buy the house due to it being haunted.
A cool plot choice that Shankar could’ve used was to make the priest sketchy. For starters, you get irony, which is always great. Since the priest is the one telling Dev that he won’t be able to sell the house, Dev should think that the priest is lying. And that, as soon as they leave, the priest will take the house and sell it for himself. That’s why Dev stays. Cause he thinks he’s being played. The priest is lying about all this haunted nonsense so he can make some cash. This would’ve also given you more conflict to work with as well, which is great for any story.
Irony. Better Logic for why Dev stays. Conflict.
That’s three great things with just one smart creative choice.
I suspect, if Shankar is directing his script, that the final product will be better than the screenplay. But even if he directs the roof off of this thing, I don’t think the movie can overcome the leisurely-paced story. This script needs a faster pace to get the most out of the concept.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Action turbocharges description – “Dev and Sid fan themselves in the heat, glistening with sweat.” This is a good example of how to convey relevant description. You add an action to it. This line could’ve been, “Dev and Sid ride in the car, their foreheads glistening with sweat.” That tells us that it’s hot, yes. But there’s something about adding an ACTION that resonates more with the reader. That action of “fanning themselves” conveys how hot it is.
