This week, I’ll be reviewing the five screenplays that just missed The Last Great Screenwriting Contest finals. Script Number 10 is today, 9 tomorrow, 8 Wednesday, 7 Thursday, and 6 Friday. The Top 5 from the contest have already been announced. You can see them here.
Genre: Horror
Premise: When an estranged daughter returns to her childhood home to help with her mother’s extreme hoarding, she must find a cursed object in the clutter before a malevolent spirit can possess her mother forever.
About: Today’s script, Possessions, is special in that it was voted into the Top 10 by you, the readers of the site. I had a large pile of “Almost” scripts in The Last Great Screenwriting Contest which I then had a secondary competition for on Scriptshadow. Possessions beat out all the other scripts. Katherine Botts has been a frequent contributor to the site over the years and has gotten a [xx] worth the read for one of her previous Amateur Showdown efforts.
Writer: Katherine Botts
Details: 101 pages
I was reading Possessions for the second time last night (more on that in a sec) and there’s this moment that arrives where we realize the mother is possessed by a dead man. I stopped reading, looked up, and said to no one, “It’s a hoarder movie about possessions… and she’s ALSO possessed! Genius!” It was one of those cool little moments that make script reading so fun.
Ah, but what did I mean when I said I read the script twice? “You don’t have time to be reading scripts twice before you review them, Carson. You’re a producer now!” Well, it just so happens that I read an early draft of Possessions a couple of years ago. So let’s just say I “possessed” more information about the Possessions script than your average reader. Heh heh heh.
What I remember about that draft was that it was rough. There was a lot going on and it hadn’t all coalesced together yet. So I was curious to see what kind of progress Katherine had made. Let’s find out together, shall we?
Real Estate broker Norah Dodds is annoyed when her brother, Dylan, calls and tells her that their mom, Felicity, is acting up again. More so than usual. We get the impression that their mom has special needs. And now those needs are getting in the way of Norah’s career momentum! But since it’s her mom, she heads home to tackle the problem anyway.
Once at her childhood home, Norah is horrified to see that her mother, a practiced hoarder, has taken her hoarding to Def Con fire hazard levels. The house has become so decrepit that the city is threatening to condemn it unless they clean it out! Which is why Dylan called. Furious, Norah schedules out the week to get all the crap out of the house.
Meanwhile, the small town Norah grew up in is dealing with a problem of its own. While clearing out his deceased father’s home, Mark Echt finds a bunch of dead bodies in the basement!!! It turns out his dad was a serial killer! And the reason that’s relevant is because Felicity bought some items from Mark’s estate sale. And those items, which are possessed, are scattered around this house, hidden inside the hoarding!
Norah doesn’t know this yet, though. She’s too busy cleaning out the bazillion pieces of her mom’s crap so the city doesn’t condemn the property, as that would mean she’d have to spend even more time with her mother trying to find her a new place to live. We can’t have that happen. But Norah’s priorities change when an extensive yarn set in the basement ties her down and attempts to strangle her within the endless pile of trash scattered everywhere. We can see the house itself almost swallow her up.
After barely escaping, Norah realizes that there’s more going on here than mere hoarding. She does some research on the serial killer and suspects he’s cheated death, hid himself in his possessions, which will allow himself to transfer into a new body and keep living. Which is exactly what happens. Echt takes over Felicity’s body and kills her next door neighbor! When Norah identifies that her mother is now Echt, she takes him on in a final battle to save her mother, and maybe in the process, save their relationship!
There’s SOMETHING here.
I can see a horror movie built around the act of hoarding. There’s some sort of link there that makes sense.
Katherine’s also improved this script a lot since I first read it. My main note was that there was too much going on. Norah’s dad was still alive, which complicated things (he’s dead now and a big reason why Felicity’s become such an uncontrollable hoarder – much better), and Felicity also had Alzheimer’s, which added this whole other complex component to everything. It felt very “everything and the kitchen sink.”
Everything-and-the-kitchen-sink writing is when writers don’t have an editor. Whatever they think of, they put in their script. The problem with that is ideas start competing against each other. Imagine if in A Quiet Place, instead of just having alien monsters with super-hearing, there were also zombies. That’s everything-and-the-kitchen-sink writing. It doesn’t allow the most important subject in your movie to shine.
And that’s where I’m still having problems with Possessions.
It’s cleaner. It’s more focused. The story is sharper. But something about this serial killer storyline isn’t working for me and I’m trying to figure out what it is. It feels a little “everything-and-the-kitchen-sink” to me in that: What are the chances that at the exact same time that your mother’s home is being condemned for hoarding that, a few blocks away, they learned that one of the townspeople was a psychotic serial killer who cut up body parts and kept them in suitcases?
When there’s a serial killer like that – a “national news” type of serial killer? That happens maybe once every few years in our country. So no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t buy into that aspect of the story. The counterpoint to my complaint is that it’s part of the setup. It’s established early on in the first act. The unwritten rule is that you get one big coincidence in your first act. So why am I not giving Possessions that coincidence?
I gave it some deep thought and I think I may have figured out the problem. A serial killer is going to be the bigger idea in a movie 9 out of 10 times. So if you’re an audience member and you’re over here watching this slow family drama about hoarding and across town you’ve got this really interesting serial killer story…. you’re going to wonder why we don’t get to watch that.
I mean think about it for a second. Who’s the more interesting character? The woman who just came home because her mom’s been hoarding more than usual? Or the guy who just came home to find out his dead father was a rabid serial killer his whole life? Isn’t that guy the one we should be following?
I understand that the serial killer storyline makes its way into the hoarder storyline eventually. But it takes a while. And maybe that’s the real issue here. The hoarding story isn’t as potent as it could be and doesn’t move as fast as it could. There’s “slow” burn and there’s “too slow” burn. This is more of the latter than the former. If we could ramp up the pace and inject some plot developments with more punch, I might not have all this time to wonder why we’re not following serial killer dude’s son.
It’s frustrating because the script is DEFINITELY better than the first draft I read. In particular, the relationship between the mother and daughter is much more complex and dramatically interesting. But there’s a clunkiness to this serial killer component that needs to be ironed out before I can get on board with Possessions. And more needs to happen in this script for sure. It feels like the screenplay has three big horror moments. It needs seven or eight. The horror needs to be more potent.
Possessions got a ton of votes so make sure to counter my thoughts in the comments section!
Script link: Possessions (latest draft)
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Preferably, you should be following the most interesting character in your story’s orbit. So, early on, when you’re doing those initial drafts, keep an eye on your other characters. Do their lives sound more interesting? Are their situations more compelling? If the answer’s yes, consider making them your main character. If you still want to follow the character you originally envisioned, that’s fine. But you’re going to have to reimagine them to the point where you can honestly say they’re the most interesting character (or are in the most compelling situation) in the story.
