Genre: Horror
Premise: (from Black List) A woman with a troubled past invites her teen niece to live with her in the family’s farm house, but the two become tormented by a creature that can take away their pain for a price.
About: This script found some traction last year, allowing it to sneak onto the Black List. It hasn’t sold but it did get the writer, Christina Pamies, an assignment writing Baghead, a popular short film that they’re turning into a feature.
Writer: Christina Pamies
Details: 86 pages
One thing to remember whenever you’re writing a spec script is that, if the spec gets noticed, or better, purchased, it’s probably not going to get made. I’m not trying to bum you out. I’m just going off the percentages here.
However, that’s okay, because there are a lot of movies that ARE being greenlit that need a writer and, if those movies are in the same genre as your spec, you have a shot at getting an assignment that will turn into a credit. And credit is everything in this business. It not only gives you legitimacy. It ups your quote. It makes you a bankable writer, since you’ve proven that stuff you write gets made. And let’s not forget those glorious residual checks that keep showing up in the mailbox years down the line. You’re going to need them to fend off the bills of your 15 different streaming services.
This is why I always remind writers to write in the genre you love. Because you’ll probably get pigeonholed into that genre, which is great if you love the genre. But a nightmare if you hate it. Not to mention, you’re going to write better scripts in the genres you’re passionate about anyway because you’re naturally going to go the extra mile for them.
I’m only bringing this up because I remember when I first started writing and I would write whatever cool concept I came up with. I’d write a comedy then a sci-fi script then a drama then a dramedy then a horror then a sports movie then an action script then a thriller. I was all over the place. And when you start out, you might be all over the place too. But while writing in a bunch of different genres can be educational, it’s better to focus on the genres you love.
Because each genre has its own challenges and you want to master the genres you love as soon as possible, which means writing them over and over again. That’s how you get good at a genre. Which increases the chances of you selling one. Which increases the chances that you’re known around town as a good writer in that genre. Which increases the chances you get called in for an assignment in that genre. Which increases the chances that you get the assignment. Which leads to a credit. Which leads to you being a legitimate paid writer. Which is exactly what today’s writer, Christina Pamies, pulled off, when No Good Deed got traction around town and she got the writing gig for Baghead. Okay, enough lecturing. Onto today’s script…
40 year old Amy Sutton is at the end of a long cancer battle. It’s gotten so bad that she and her husband send their 11 year old daughter, Zoey, off to live with Amy’s cousin, Julia. They don’t want Zoey to see how bad things are going to get with Amy.
Zoey moans and complains from the start and lets Julia know that they’re anything but friends. The two head off to Julia’s farm house, which happens to have been in the family for 150 years. Julia has just recently moved into it, and is excited to show Zoey the place where she and her mom spent so many fun summers.
But weird things start happening. The house seems to be a favored spot for injured animals. Zoey immediately starts caring for an injured opossum (which leads to her getting bitten). Then, there’s weird plant problems that are growing out of control underneath the house, to the point where stubby plants are piercing the kitchen floor.
Later, Zoey spots an old timey family of 3 inside the bathroom. But that’s nothing compared to what Julia spots at the edge of the woods – a ten foot tall pale man-demon who spits out a bunch of bones.
You would think that these two would hightail it out of here. But they decide to stay and look into the home’s history. It has two major family slaughters that have happened in the house which include a seven-body scenario of pure human annihilation. A mystery that was never solved.
But when Zoey’s opossum bite starts unnaturally spreading and the local plant life does a full-on assault of Julia, it looks like these two are doomed. (spoilers) What we eventually learn is that the boneeater guy has promised certain people who live here safety if they feed him. Which means you have to feed him other members of the family. That’s what Amy – I think – did. She fed him for a while. But then she stopped. And that’s why she has cancer. So the question is, who made a deal with the boneeater this time? Who’s about to be turned into a lunchables snack?
After reading the very strong horror story that was My Wife And I Bought a Ranch last week, No Good Deed had a tough act to follow.
You really can spot the difference between the better horror entries in how much detail has been recruited into the story. The less detail and the shakier the mythology, the more horror falls apart at the seams. I mean here we’ve got killer plants, 10 foot tall boneeaters, old-timey ghosts, an animal connection, a teaser opener where a family gets slaughtered. It’s a lot of stuff that doesn’t feel organically connected.
Pamies does explain it all in the end in a way that somewhat makes sense. But that’s not the problem. The problem is the 80 pages where everything seems so disconnected that we’re less intrigued by the mystery than we are frustrated. I actually think the boneeater was a good monster. Why not just stick with him? We don’t need killer plants and sinister possums. That guy was scary enough on his own. And the “deal” stuff it makes with family members opened up some really interesting character avenues. You’ve been shown your death. But this guy gives you a way to survive. Unfortunately, you have to sacrifice a family member to do so.
The best part about this script is its almost brilliant ending. That being Zoe offering Julia to save her mom. The problem is, it’s unclear when they decided to do this. From what I understand, Zoey and her mom talk midway through the movie and hatch that plan. This would’ve been SO MUCH BETTER if that was the plan all along. That was the big twist. Her and her mom actually planned this to kill off her cousin so Amy could get better.
But this script has so many logic problems. The house is somehow both the most evil house in the world (so much so that everybody in the community is terrified of it) yet Julia spent her summers here and found it to be the greatest house ever. I struggled to buy into that. It felt like your classic ‘straddle the fence” screenwriter dilemma. You needed Julia to like this place so she’d believably take Zoey here. But you also needed to make it ‘Amityville times a million’ so we’d have a horror film.
I know these things are hard but you have to figure them out if you want the reader’s suspension of disbelief. Because the whole time I’m reading this, I’m thinking, “Wait, everyone else knows this house is hell except for this one woman who’s actually lived here before?” If I’m always thinking about that, I can’t focus on the story. Plugging up logic holes is the unheralded battle in screenwriting. You never get points for doing it even though it’s one of the most time-consuming things about the craft. But you have to.
Another problem that occurs when you have too much mythology to work into your horror script is that the scares start feeling random. Banging on walls. Scary furry animals. Old-timey ghosts. Killer plants. Boneeaters. You have to understand that, to a reader, randomness is only appealing up to a point. I liked, for example, that in The Ring, we had strange shit coming out of TVs and a weird video tape with a creepy short film on it. But if you start throwing too many different scares at us, it begins to feel like the story is desperate to scare us to the point where it’s willing to not make sense anymore – even if it makes sense eventually.
Like I always say, simplify things. Don’t over complicate it. Adding more complications hurts a story 98% of the time. All we needed here was the creepy boneeater and that shocking twist with Julia being killed (or almost killed but she somehow escapes) and we’re great. But in this current iteration, too much is going on.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Don’t bury your head in the sand on troublesome setup details. Cause I can guarantee you that readers will question them. And those questions will continue in the back of their mind, throughout the script, preventing them from being able to focus on the story in the moment. Another question that I couldn’t get out of my head was, why would a mom kick her daughter out of the house two weeks before she died? I couldn’t buy into that.
