Genre: Horror
Premise: When a park ranger ventures into the wilderness to find a missing hiker before a storm, she finds herself lured into the woods by a dangerous, unearthly predator mimicking her dead daughter.
About: Today’s screenwriter, Nick Tassoni, graduated with an MFA (’21) in screewriting at the prestigious University of Southern California. His script, Lure, finished on this past year’s Black List.
Writer: Nick Tassoni
Details: 87 pages
Let’s get Rose Byrne in this movie.
Micro-script alert!
What’s a micro-script? It’s any script under 90 pages.
Micro-scripts were hot seven years ago. Are they making a comeback?
40 year old Evelyn Yang is a national park forest ranger (“sad skin hanging off her bones”). She’s teamed up with 22 year old newbie, Colby Roth, and the old veteran of the group, Jen Parker. We hear little whispers during conversations about how the only rangers who get stuck out here are the ones running away from something.
Evelyn is definitely in that camp. She was a working single mother who went camping with her 10 year old daughter, Angelica, a few years ago and Angelica disappeared. Now she pours vodka in her coffee every morning and does her best to make it through the day.
Well, today is a little harder than most. A huge storm rolls in and they get word that a flash flood is coming. This means that Evelyn has to run around the forest and tell campers to get the heck out. This is exactly what she does but there’s a complication when a camper claims that his brother went out for a hike this morning and never came back.
Evelyn heads deeper into the woods to find this guy but, due to all the rain, she injures herself, cracking a bone in her leg. She tries to radio for help but coverage is spotty. While she considers her options, the brother hiker appears at a distance and asks for help. Although he’s too far away to see clearly, Evelyn notes that something is wrong with his face. It doesn’t look like everything is in the right place.
The guy eventually disappears and Evelyn sees someone new in his place. Angelica. She’s alive. And she’s asking why Evelyn stopped looking for her. Evelyn knows something is off but the sight of her daughter blinds her and she begins to follow her into the forest. Eventually, she heads into an old mine shaft and that’s where, deep within the shaft, she finds a pit, and in that pit, a terrifying monster known as the Angler.
The Angler nearly lures her into his lair but Colby appears out of nowhere and pulls her back just in time. We soon learn that Colby escaped out here because his father was dying of cancer and he couldn’t handle it. So, naturally, Colby starts seeing his father, who wants him to come back to the lair. Both of these two must figure out a way to not only detach themselves from the Angler’s spell, but destroy the thing so it can never do this to anyone again.
A little love thrown to Nick Tassoni. Having his script reviewed a day after the screenplay of the year is like being a first-time stand-up comic following a Bill Burr set. How can you possibly measure up?
Let’s start by discussing…
Repetition.
It is the scariest word in all of screenwriting.
Well, that’s an exaggeration. But to repeat anything over and over in a script is dangerous because good scripts EVOLVE. They provide us with a series of new locations, new plotlines, new conversations, new characters, new relationships, new dynamics within those relationships, new twists, new turns, new information – all things that keep us on our toes and make us want to turn to the next page.
It was one of many reasons that yesterday’s screenplay excelled. New developments were constantly happening that would change our hero’s situation.
But when you write a script like Lure, one where someone’s stuck in the woods, one where there are very few story variables to work with (the forest, our hero, her daughter’s death, two other rangers), you are at risk of boring the reader to pieces. Cause it’s hard to keep that scenario fresh and different.
At this point, I’d guess I’ve read 300 screenplays about people stuck in a forest. It’s a very common setup. So if you’re going to play in that sandbox, you better be ready to bust out the best toys. Otherwise, why would we bother playing with you?
Lure is built on that old horror conceit of being stuck in a place where your dead family member keeps showing up to test you in some way. I’m never thrilled with this setup. Yes, it does allow you a good way to explore grief and healing within your hero.
But you lose so much due to how forced the setup feels. I don’t think it’s worth it. It’s obvious that the writer is artificially creating a “monster” to achieve the character transformation they want to achieve. It never feels as natural as you want it to.
That doesn’t mean the script still can’t work. But in order to achieve that, you need BOLD CREATIVE CHOICES. If you can surprise me and bring me to cool unexpected places, the script still has a shot.
The closest Lure gets to that is the Angler. I’ve never seen this type of monster in this type of movie before. So that part did feel fresh. The problem is that, by the way it’s described, it seems very close to the Sarlac Pitt in Return of the Jedi.
When you steal things from other movies, this *is* the way you want to do it. You bring the item over from a completely different genre. That kinda tricks the audience into not making the connection. But it gets tricky when you take something from an iconic movie. Cause everyone knows iconic movies. Which means, now, everyone’s at least acknowledging that this monster is based on something they know.
I’m also looking for good fresh scares in these scripts. I don’t know if I got any. But there was one scare I liked. When Evelyn is injured and sitting at the fire early in her journey, she sees this man in a raincoat at the edge of the trees. He’s standing there saying, “Help me.”
The reason it’s scary is that he seems totally fine. If he needs help, why not just walk to the fire? It’s that confusion, that contrast between what he says he needs and his lack of need, that freaked me out.
It’s actually a good lesson for horror writers. The imagery rarely scares us on the page. Every horror image has been done a hundred times over anyway. It’s the things that seem out-of-place, the things that are being done or said that don’t make sense – that’s what scares us. Why is there a clown in the gutter in It? That doesn’t make sense. That’s why Pennywise is so terrifying in that moment.
One last point I want to make here is to introduce a concept called “Assumed Execution.” I tell you guys all the time not to write plot beats that the reader expects. And, to your credit, a lot of you listen. The problem I’ve found, however, is that when you do make these unexpected plot choices, it doesn’t change the story enough that the reader still isn’t ahead of you.
In other words, even if I don’t know EXACTLY what’s going to happen in your story, if I generally know where everything is going, that’s still bad. The second I get a good read on how your script is going to be executed, you’re toast. I’m ahead of you. Maybe I don’t know exactly what’s going to happen but I know enough that I’m bored.
Look at one of the breakthrough horror movies from a couple of years ago, Barbarian. I had no idea where that movie was going.
That’s why, even though this script had a few nice parts, I always knew where the story was headed. I knew the daughter was fake. I knew we were going to get some voice over or flashback showing that Evelyn wasn’t paying attention while her daughter wandered away. I knew we were going to get all these fake people or imagery trying to lure Evelyn to the monster. I knew the framework of what would be happening on page 80 by the time I was on page 10. You have to work harder to stay ahead of the reader. That’s one of the things that separates today’s writer from yesterday’s writer.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I’m not going to beat this dead horse about “be more unexpected.” I’ve said that way too much on this site. But I will say that when it comes to your big “this is what happened” backstory reveal, for the love of all that is holy, please make THAT DIFFERENT. Cause you’ve been talking about it all movie so our expectations are high. But when we find out what happened to Angelica, IT’S EXACTLY WHAT WE EXPECTED. Please. That ONE PART OF YOUR SCRIPT: BE ORIGINAL! Just like I know that if I see ants on my table at McDonald’s, then it’s obscenely dirty back in the kitchen, I know that if you’re not being original during your FEATURED SCRIPT MOMENTS, you’re not putting effort towards being original everywhere else.
