Genre: Thriller/ Serial Killer
Premise: When her sister goes missing, Minnow, a seemingly troubled woman, goes to extreme lengths to hunt down the mysterious man who took her. The disturbing truth goes beyond just one missing girl, and nothing–including Minnow–is as it seems.
About: Today’s writing team secured the fifth most votes on 2025’s Black List, a list of the best screenplays in Hollywood.
Writers: Zach Strauss & Christopher Silber
Details: 91 pages
Maisie for Minnow?
Is anything real anymore? I just learned about this Stranger Things debate that’s raging due to the poorly received final episodes in the series. Apparently, there was a promotional picture taken on set where the Duffer Brothers had a naughty tab open on their laptop – CHAT GPT!
Did Chat GPT write the final episode of Stranger Things???
I’m akin to saying it’s more likely that Millie Bobby Brown’s lip filler wrote the final episode.
Not that I care. I’ve got bigger scores to settle.
Scriptshadow Nation? We are down to our last hope.
I made a proclamation that if none of the top 5 scripts on the 2025 Black List rated higher than a “wasn’t for me,” then the Black List was officially no longer relevant.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean that out of the 75 scripts that routinely make the list each year, all of them are bad. Of course there will be some good ones. But if the way you tally votes results in none of the top 5 scripts being any good, then something is broken here. And the Black List needs to overhaul its process.
Well, we’re down to our last potato. This is it, people. The fifth and final script in the top 5.
The good news? It’s a serial killer script — a good genre to work with if you want to write something entertaining. But I’m nervous! I don’t want to be the person who officially announces that the Black List is dead.
So let us pray one final time to the Script Gods. William. Billy. Paddy. Robert. And, oh hell, let’s throw a living God in there as well. Quentin? Lead us through this screenplay, that it may be gloriously good, and raise us up unto celebration before all. So help me, slug line.
In giving you a plot summary here, a gentle warning that this is a very twisty and turny script. So if you don’t want to know what happens via my review, go read the script first!
When we meet 20-something Minnow, she’s a tatted up drug-addict sleeping in her car. The girl’s clearly hit rock bottom, and seems to only be interested in finding her next score. Gotta find a mark. Gotta steal dough. Gotta buy drugs. Or so we think!
A day after we meet her, Minnow is in a bar being propositioned by a creepy dude. She’s pissed and tells him to screw off. The kind bartender apologizes for the crappiness of the clientele and offers her a drink. But Minnow is already skipping this lame joint. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make it far. Once outside, she feels woozy, stumbles, and blacks out.
When she wakes up, she’s in the “cab” section of a giant semi truck. This is the little bedroom behind the front seat where truckers can sleep on long routes. But this isn’t a normal cab room. It’s a prison. There’s no way to break out of this thing.
Minnow fights and fights to get out but it’s hopeless. The Trucker, ignoring her, just keeps on driving across the country. But where is he taking her?! During this time, through little snippets of dreams and dialogue, we learn that Minnow used to be a Marine. And her sister was kidnapped!
Cut back in time (spoilers follow) and a fresher non-addict version of Minnow meets an odd obsessive man named Buck. Buck’s daughter went missing and Buck’s theory is that a trucker took her. Realizing they’re looking for the same guy, they profile the type of man this trucker is and design a version of Minnow that would fit the ideal look that this trucker is looking for. That’s right – they’re designing Minnow to be bait!
We then cut back to the present where we now realize that Minnow had planned to get caught by this dude the whole time so she could find out what happened to her sis. Minnow calls upon her Marine skills, escapes the cab, and turns the tables on the trucker, putting him in the cab! The trucker then tells her something shocking – “I’m just the delivery guy.”
Once a trailing Buck catches up to them, they argue about what to do next. In doing so, they lose focus and the trucker escapes into the local mountains! So Minnow goes after him! Except that Minnow gets tricked and walks right into a trap he set! He’s about to kill her when… he gets shot! It’s a state trooper we met earlier who was tracking Minnow.
The police consider this serial killer case closed but Minnow tries to explain to them what the trucker told her. That he’s the delivery guy. The real killer is still out there! Naw, the head trooper says. We’re good. This forces Minnow to go off on her own in search of the final boss. But maybe, for this leg of the mission, she’s finally in over her head.
There was a famous screenwriting book written a few decades ago called, “I Liked it, Didn’t Love It.” It was a genius premise for a book about screenwriting because it got to the heart of what separates WHAT HOLLYWOOD PULLS THE TRIGGER ON versus WHAT HOLLYWOOD PASSES ON.
You see, the mistake so many writers make in their assumptions about the industry is that only the bad scripts get passed over. But that’s not the case at all. There are actually a lot of decent scripts out there that don’t deserve to be movies. They don’t have that extra gear, that extra fang, that extra wild card that makes them stand out.
This was the premise in that book. These development executives would read a ton of screenplays that they mildly enjoyed. But there was nothing special about them and, therefore, there was no reason to recommend them to their boss to get produced.
And, by the way, I’m not talking about amateur screenplays here. These development execs were mainly reading scripts sent out by legitimate agents. These were repped writers. Which is a reminder that there are levels to this world.
Minnow is a “Liked it didn’t love it” screenplay. I might even go a step lower. It’s a “liked it in places but didn’t like it overall” screenplay. It does have some good moments. When we jump back in time to a perfectly fine Minnow and go through a series of steps that catch us up to the reality of the situation – Minnow created a persona to deliberately get caught by this serial killer – that was a legit good moment.
But no sooner had that moment settled in than the trucker escaped and headed up this mountain. All of a sudden, I’m now reading a survivalist movie about a woman tracking a killer in the mountains?? We’ve strayed too far from the original premise.
I call these screenplay moments “reboots.” They require the writer to reboot the story for this new setting that doesn’t look anything like the original story that was set up. It can work in rare circumstances. But that moment was the official moment I gave up on the script. Which is too bad. Cause that twist was good.
This is another thing that separates the big paid screenwriters from the struggling ones, is inconsistency. You create a great moment. Then you follow it up with a questionable one. The good writers consistently make strong creative choices.
Of the top five scripts on the Black List, I would put this in a tie with yesterday’s “Untouchable.” It’s completely different from that screenplay but I like that it plays with the execution. This script is definitely better than had it gone about its story linearly. Because by doing it this way, it creates a shocking moment out of nothing.
And Minnow is a mostly cool character. I wouldn’t say she’s great. I thought the Marine background felt questionable. But she’s super active and super active characters do wonders for your plot. They always push things forward because they’re always ACTIVELY looking for the next clue, the next lead, the next opportunity to make something happen.
Sadly, the inconsistency of the narrative towards the end derailed this for me. This is not a bad script. But, unfortunately, it’s not something I would recommend to anyone.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: At a time when Hollywood needs better scripts than ever, the Black List has become unreliable. So, let me remind you that it is very rare I read a script where I feel that the writer gave me everything they had. That doesn’t mean the script has to be perfect. But I feel like they gave me all their best choices. They gave me the best versions of every scene they wrote. They gave me their best versions of the characters they could put into that story. If I said to any of these writers, “Is that opening scene the best you could do?” They would say, without flinching, “Yes.” “Can you make this character any better?” “No.” I mainly run into scripts where the writers get everything to about a 70-75% level and call it a day. Which is exactly why their scripts get the “liked it didn’t love it” response. Cause “good enough” ironically isn’t good enough. You have to leave it all on the page and I just don’t think writers are doing that – in an age, mind you – where the immense proliferation of content across all media platforms has made the margin for error in storytelling microscopic. If you want to stand out from the pack, give us everything. Literally EVERYTHING you have. You can’t afford not to.
