Genre: Family
Premise: A family grieving a loss hires a local company to help them create a haunted house for Halloween and get more than they bargained for.
About: Today’s script sold back in 2011 to Platinum Dunes. It comes from the writer of last year’s biggest surprise hit, “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle,” Scott Rosenberg. Talk about a wily old screenwriting veteran. Rosenberg cut his teeth back in the Bruckheimer days, penning such movies as Con Air, Gone in Sixty Seconds, and Kangaroo Jack. It’s a little confusing why a family film sold to Platinum Dunes, a well-known horror outfit, although if I remember correctly, they may have been trying to expand their brand at the time. With the ridiculous success of Jumanji, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see this old Rosenberg project rise from the dead. Hopefully with a new title.
Writer: Scott Rosenberg
Details: 113 pages
Trying to figure out why something sells can be maddening at times. Ideally it’s because the script is awesome. But sometimes it’s because the timing was perfect. Sometimes it’s because the writer and producer have a longstanding relationship. Sometimes a producer will literally tell a writer exactly what to write, semi-guaranteeing a sale. Sometimes it’s a young producer with terrible taste who buys a bad script.
That’s why you’ll sometimes read a script and say, “Why in the world did someone buy this?”
One of the most common reasons for a sale is because the writer’s had previous success. If you’ve got recent credits, virtually everything you write is going to be bought, even if the script isn’t good. Why? Because Hollywood values credits over the unknown. Why would you take a chance on a nobody when you can bet on the guy who wrote several 100 million dollar blockbusters?
Which leads us to today’s script. My first thought was, “This can’t be any good if it got bought seven years ago and I’ve never heard of it.” But I love reading old scripts from writers who’ve had recent success. Let’s see if this project is as lame as its title or if Platinum Dunes botched a potential Jumanji.
At one time, the Truckles were the perfect family. You had Marvin Truckle, who looks like Henry Fonda. Sue Truckle, the quintessential PTA soccer mom. 12 year old Doyle, a future James Corden. 10 year old Antonia (Ant), who puts the preco in precocious. And the Golden Boy of the family, 17 year old football star, Gabe. You’ve never seen a happier family than these five.
But then Gabe dies and the family moves six towns over so they wouldn’t be known as the “the family of that dead kid.” Since then, everyone’s been in a daze, especially Sue, who’s in such a state of depression she can barely operate. It’s unclear if they’ll ever recover.
Marvin gets an idea. When he was young, every Halloween, his family would turn his house into a haunted house and everyone in town would come by and it would be a party. Maybe, just maybe, this could bring the family out of its funk. So Marvin hires the only haunted house decorator in town, some guy named Zornelius Ravensbane, a mix between Beetlejuice and Willy Wonka. Or, as Rosenberg writes, a “whirling dervish of gibberish.”
The babbling insanity of Ravensbane freaks the family out, causing Marvin to ditch the haunted house idea. But after Ravensbane tricks Ant and Doyle to come to his secret warehouse, where they accidentally destroy some of his props, he blackmails Marvin with a lawsuit unless they let him do the haunted house job.
Ravensbane decorates the house, which looks great. But once everyone gets inside (we’re talking Act 3 here), the doors lock and it turns into a REAL HAUNTED HOUSE. The family, as well as the visitors, must defeat vampires and zombies and witches and ghosts and somehow escape the house alive. It’s through this experience that the mother finally wakes up, leading the family to safety, and we’re left to wonder… was this Ravensbane’s plan all along?
Would it be strange if I said I was SCARED of breaking this one down? Get it? Scared?
So here’s the deal. This script suffers from a faulty foundation. And the sucky thing about faulty foundations is that while they’re obvious to everyone else, they can be a blindspot to the writer.
This happens if a writer is so in love with a character or a major plot development that he can’t see his concept through the trees. It’s no different than when you fall in love with the wrong person. You’re so in love that it’s harder for you to notice that they’re selfish or don’t share the same values.
I could never understand why we were creating this haunted house in the first place. The dad having done this as a kid wasn’t a strong enough reason to base an ENTIRE MOVIE on. But even so, we lose that plotline when Ravensbane freaks everyone out, and replace it with this odd “blackmailing” plot, where Ravensbane threatens them unless he can do his job.
What’s frustrating about faulty foundations is that regardless of whether the rest of your script ideas are good or not, everything is going to feel weaker. Take Ravensbane. I could see this character working inside a different setup. But here, I kept thinking, “Why are they going to such elaborate lengths to decorate a haunted house? Hiring this random dude? Why not just do it themselves? Wouldn’t it make more sense as far as bringing the family together?”
And the thing is, the family stuff is good! I liked how Rosenberg went dark with this family and the mom who was in full-blown depression. And the daughter is dating losers because she doesn’t care anymore. And the younger brother is doing weird shit like walking around with bubble wrap wherever he goes. And Ant is trying to pretend everything is okay when it clearly isn’t.
If this were a drama, you’d have the foundation for a good story. I’d want to see how this family got out of this rut. And for newbie writers out there, this is what professionals bring to the table that newbies don’t. They get the character stuff right. Or, at the very least, they put a lot of effort into it.
But if I’m asking “What is the point of this movie” throughout the 60 page second act, that’s a concept problem. Let’s compare this to Rosenberg’s other script, Junamji, which has an ironclad setup. Four people, dropped in a video game, they need to get out. We don’t wonder FOR A SECOND what the goal is. There isn’t a single moment in the film where we don’t understand where we are in the journey and where we need to go to get out. That’s when you know your setup is great. When those questions are answered before you’ve even left the first act.
This was the opposite. You could feel the writer pushing us through a vague narrative just to have an excuse to write scenes for this Ravensbane character.
Can this be fixed? I don’t know. I can tell you that the bulk of the script’s problems revolve around the fact that a family is building a haunted house even though none of them want to build a haunted house. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe, then, if the haunted house was elsewhere, and our characters merely got caught up in it, that would work better. I don’t know what that means as far as giving Ravensbane screen time. But I’m sure you could figure something out.
That’s too bad. I was hoping to find a sleeper here.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: A grieving family is a good setup for any family-based movie – the reason being that all of your family members are going to be in a funk. This allows for what movies do best – take your character from a negative place at the beginning of the movie, to a positive place at the end. That’s their “arc.” The character arcs were the best thing about this script and that’s directly related to the choice of beginning the film with a grieving family.
