“Lakewood” may be the single most intense script I’ve ever read.
Genre: Thriller
Premise: (me being deliberately vague cause I want you to read the script yourself) A school shooting told in a very unique way.
About: Man, Chris Sparling has come a long way. He started out placing a man in a coffin for 90 minutes. His latest movie, Greenland, is a studio disaster film. Now, he’s going back to his roots. “Lakewood” comes from the same production house, Limelight, that produced Scriptshadow Top 10 2020 film, “Palm Springs.” It stars Naomi Watts.
Writer: Chris Sparling
Details: 97 pages
(Scriptshadow Recommendation: Read this script before you read the plot synopsis! The power of this script is in its exciting plot developments)
The Obvious Angle.
Why is it every screenwriter’s worst enemy?
The Obvious Angle is the movie idea that approaches the subject matter just like everybody else would. If I told you to write a Western, the obvious angle is to have a mysterious no-name dude strut into town and start to stir up trouble. Borrrr-ing.
What makes or breaks a writer on the conceptual level is finding a fresh angle into well-explored subject matter.
And today’s script does that as well as any script I’ve ever read.
42 year-old widow, Amy, is going for her morning jog. This is the only time for Amy to clear her mind and alleviate some stress. Which she’s had a lot of lately. Her husband died two years ago in a car Amy was driving. And her kids – a daughter in elementary school and a son (Noah) in high school – are both still battling depression.
While on the outskirts of her town, Amy observes a strange sight. A couple of cop cars zoom along the road. It’s not something you typically see in this middle class suburb, but she doesn’t think much of it. Instead, she answers a couple of calls from her bougie friend, Heather, and her mom, who’s annoyed with Amy’s lack of communication.
And then Amy sees a couple of other cops zoom by. These with lights and sirens on full blast. This gets her attention. A quarter mile later, Amy receives a text: “THIS IS A CODE RED ALERT FROM THE LAKEWOOD SCHOOL DEPARTMENT. YOU WILL RECEIVE A RECORDED MESSAGE FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT WITH INFORMATION AND INSTRUCTIONS. DO NOT DISREGARD THIS CALL.”
The call comes in and a recording explains that “All Lakewood schools have been placed on lockdown due to an ongoing incident.” Amy immediately calls a teacher at her daughter’s elementary school. The teacher assures her that her daughter is okay. The problem, it turns out, is at the high school. The thought of something horrible happening at the high school is terrifying but luckily for Amy, her son, Noah, stayed home sick today.
At least, that’s what she thought. Amy calls Heather back since Heather has a daughter at the school, and learns that Noah did, indeed, go to school today. Amy hangs up and tries to call Noah, something she will attempt to do a lot over the next hour. But he’s not answering. So she decides to call the police. Except the police call her first. They want to know some information about Noah. “Why?” Amy asks. They refuse to say. Amy tells them everything she can, including one detail she’d forgotten until now, at least in how it relates to her son – tomorrow is the anniversary of her husband’s death.
During this time, Amy is desperately trying to get people to pick her up. But everybody’s already at the school, trying to figure out if their own kids are safe. So she calls an Uber. An Uber that’s going to be there in 5 minutes. Then 10 minutes. Then 15 minutes. Everything in town is being affected by the situation at the school. If Amy’s going to get there, she’s going to have to do it with her own two feet.
Amy is able to get in touch with an auto technician working on her car who happens to be right next to the high school. She orders the guy to go to the school to try and see if he can find her son. Within minutes, the technician tells her that the cops are towing away a car – HER SON’S CAR. Now Amy is really freaking out. As she continues her journey towards the school, she makes a series of frantic calls to try and figure out where her son is and what’s going on. Until finally, Noah answers… and she finds out the truth.
“Hey, Screenwriter A. I want to make a school shooting movie. Can you write it for me? Please come up with a good idea.” 999 out of 1000 screenwriters are going to come up with the Obvious Angle, which is something like this.
But Chris Sparling learned, early on, that it’s possible to tell stories in the unlikeliest of ways. And so he came up with a really cool angle for a school shooter movie. A school shooter movie told in real time through the point of view of a mother out in the middle of nowhere whose son may or may not be the school shooter.
That’s freaking genius.
Because think about it. When you put us in the school with the shooting, what kind of scenes are you going to get? Students pleading for their lives while an outcast kid in a black jacket shoots them dead? How many times have you seen that image before? A lot. Moments lose their dramatic impact the more that you see them.
Okay, so you can’t use that. What can you use? Well, what’s just as horrifying as a school shooter? Being a mother who learns that there’s a school shooting in progress and not knowing if her son is dead or not. That’s real horror. So Sparling built an entire screenplay around that. It’s so simple yet so brilliant that it makes you feel like every great idea does: Why didn’t I think of that myself?
Watching Amy desperately call person after person seeing if there’s anything she can do to help her child is way more riveting than anything you could’ve shown us inside the school.
Plus, Sparling adds this fun secondary plot element. It isn’t just, is my son okay? But is my son the person who’s killing everyone? In a way, that’s even worse than your son dying. So we go through a good 30 pages wondering if Noah is the shooter or not. But even after that question is answered, Sparling uses his concept to his advantage. We’re still nowhere near the school. We still don’t have all the answers. So we still have a series of phone calls to make where Amy is trying to figure out what’s going on.
The script is also a reminder that immediacy is a spec screenwriter’s best friend. Concepts with immediacy work well with specs because spec scripts are the ones readers give up on the quickest. Spec script are usually from writers trying to break in so they’re often not as good. Even if a reader likes a spec, there’s a good chance they can’t do anything with it since it’s harder to get original material made. So when you have a concept that’s immediate, the reader has no choice but to keep reading. That’s on full display with Lakewood.
Another nut that Sparling has cracked is the old screenwriting trick of making every beat of your hero’s journey difficult. A common beginner mistake is to roll out the red carpet for the protagonist. Give them all the help they need every step of the way because you want them to win at the end. Unfortunately, that’s not how good stories work. You need to make things hard for your hero. And Lakewood is a great example of the benefits of doing so.
How do you get information about someone inside a school during a shooting when nobody has any information? How do you get to the school when you’re in the middle of nowhere and everyone you know is too busy seeing if their own kids are okay? How do you get in contact with your son when he won’t answer? Sparling doesn’t give Amy a single break during this movie. Even ordering an Uber is a nightmare. Who hasn’t experienced the fury of seeing your Uber three minutes away… then check a minute later and now it’s eight minutes away? Well imagine that happening when your son’s life is on the line.
It was fun seeing Sparling go back to his roots here. This is, essentially, Buried. A guy in a coffin with a cell phone. It’s just that, this time, the coffin is the “middle of nowhere.” It’s also a GREAT way to get a movie made – a big idea (school shooting) and you could literally shoot it in 12 days. It’s just Naomie Watts out on a road. It’s crazy how cheap this probably was yet it feels HUGE. That’s the dream concept.
Don’t have anything bad to say about this one. Definitely a script all amateur screenwriters should study.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[x] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Throw out breadcrumbs instead of the whole loaf. The writer could’ve easily said, “Your son is the shooter” up front. But that’s boring. That’s the whole loaf. Writing is about leaving breadcrumbs. We learn that Noah didn’t go to school today (breadcrumb). Then we learn that’s not true. Someone saw him show up (breadcrumb). Then we learn that the police are towing his car (breadcrumb). Then we learn tomorrow is the anniversary of Noah’s father’s death (breadcrumb). Another great thing about breadcrumbs is you can lead the reader wherever you want to lead them. In other words, you can make them believe Noah is the shooter and then flip it on them. Turns out it’s someone else. Of course, none of this is possible if you throw the loaf at them right away.
