What if Hannibal Lecter was a woman? Oh, and a vampire killer.
Genre: Supernatural
Premise: A young female detective hunts down a serial killer who she begins to believe is killing vampires.
About: This script sold a few days ago to Screen Gems. Stranger Things producers, 21 Laps, are on board to produce. The script comes from the writing team of Gregg Hurwitz and Philip Eisner. Eisner has been doing this for a long time. He wrote the 1997 cult sci-fi film, Event Horizon. But Hurwitz has an even more interesting history. He wrote the 2017 film, Book of Henry, which, legend has it, got Colin Trevorrow booted from Star Wars 9. To my knowledge, these two have only written one other project together, Sweet Girl, starring Jason Mamoa, which will follow a father determined to protect his daughter after his wife’s murder.
Writers: Gregg Hurwitz & Philip Eisner
Details: 120 pages
We live in a polarized society at the moment. People are aligning on either side of heavily charged slogans. Basic everyday activities are politicized. And I’m tired of holding in my feelings about all of it. I’m ready to make a statement that’s going to be really unpopular but I don’t care. You can yell at me or cancel me or whatever you want to do. I’m through. I’m ready to speak my truth:
The only way to make serial killer screenplays work anymore is by including vampires.
I’m serious.
Okay, maybe not totally serious.
But mostly serious.
If there’s ever been a genre hurt more by two movies, it’s the serial killer genre. 25 years ago, we had the two best serial killer movies ever. Silence of the Lambs and Seven. And nobody – NOBODY – has written one that’s even come close to those films since.
We are chasing ghosts, people. It’s not possible to write a serial killer movie as good as those so why even try?
Well, good news. There’s a caveat. Vampires. OR! Ghosts. OR! werwolves. OR! robots. The only way to bring freshness into this genre is through supernatural or sci-fi means. Because, otherwise, the only thing your readers are going to be thinking about when they read your basic b#tch serial killer script is, “God, Silence of the Lambs was so much better than this.”
And that’s what today’s writers have done. As soon as the supernatural element kicked in here, I breathed a sigh of relief. Because I knew this wasn’t going to be the 287th serial killer script I’ve read in a row that was one-tenth as good as Seven.
‘Not even 30 yet’ Jersey Payton works robbery as a cop. But that’s about to change. There’s been a beheading by a serial killer known as “The Guillotine” just outside Los Angeles. This is really bad news because The Guillotine kills multiple people in one city at a time before hibernating for years and moving on to a new city where he starts over again, making him impossible to track.
However, they don’t usually find the heads of his victims until he’s long gone. The fact they’ve found a fresh one means they have a shot at catching him. The FBI races into the Los Angeles Police Department and say they need whichever cop created their latest profiling program. That cop happens to be Jersey.
Jersey teams up with her partner, George Kim, and start checking out leads her cool program spits out. One of those leads leads them to 40-something Anna Cole. Anna is a nobody. She’s invisible to the world. But when she speeds off in her car while being questioned, the shocking truth is revealed. The Guillotine is Anna Cole, a woman!!!
They catch Anna and, surprisingly, the bulk of the rest of the movie is an interrogation. Anna likes Jersey for some reason, which forces the department to let her do most of the interrogating. It’s here where Anna reveals what she’s done. She’s not a serial killer, you see. She’s a vampire-hunter. She’s actually saving the world, not hurting anyone.
Obviously, all the cops think she’s a nutbag. EXCEPT for Jersey. And because Jersey kinda believes her, Anna tells her about Sabine. Sabine is the real villain here. She’s a vampire who roams the world, turning others into vampires. In order to keep her identity a secret, Anna explains, Sabine will find a way into the station to kill her. With that ticking clock set, Anna has to decide if she really truly buys this and, therefore, should she protect Anna?
This was a really solid script.
One of the things you’re looking to do in spec scripts, in particular, is continue to evolve the narrative with surprises. You want to add new plot developments every 20-35 pages that keep the narrative exciting. I read too many scripts where the writers aren’t thinking about keeping the attention of the reader.
Take Palm Springs, a movie about two people who get stuck in a time loop during a wedding. (Spoilers). The first surprise occurs about halfway into the movie. We’ve been seeing Sarah wake up at her sister’s wedding every day. But we never see exactly where she wakes up. Finally, the writers show us. It’s in the groom’s room. Sarah slept with her sister’s fiance the night before their wedding (imaigne that personal hell – relieving your worst betrayal every single day).
Another big surprise occurs near the end of the second act. To understand this better, I have to explain that Nyles has been stuck in the loop for nearly 1 million days. Sarah has only been stuck in it for a few months. And they’ve become good friends during those months as Nyles has initiated her into the loop. Well, late in the movie, they have a big argument and Sarah says something like, “I’d never touch you in a million years,” and Nyles replies, “Oh please, we’ve had sex like a thousand times.” She stares at him, shocked, and Nyles is forced to admit that early on, long before she fell into the loop herself, he figured out how to seduce her every day and always had sex with her.
In “Sabine,” one of the first big surprises is that the killer is a woman. It’s a surprise to them and it’s a surprise to us. We were NOT expecting that because serial killer movies (outside of a few small ones) never have female killers. Then, about 20 pages later, we learn that Anna is a vampire killer. Talk about a surprise twist. Then, about 25 pages after that, we’re told about Sabine, the ultimate vampire lady who’s coming to kill Anna and anyone who gets in her way.
It was just the right amount of big surprise plot points to keep the reader invested.
Another thing this script did well was it found a way to take a big marketable idea and keep it cheap. The large bulk of this story takes place in an interrogation room. If this had come across my desk as a producer, I would’ve snatched it up as well. One, for the cool concpet. And two, because it’s manageable. This isn’t Seven where you’re going to new locations every four minutes. You could shoot 60 pages of this movie (the interrogation stuff) in 10 days if you were really cooking.
I’m not saying that should be at the foregront of every writer’s mind. But it should be somewhere near the middle or the back. Everyone who could make your movie is thinking about how much it will cost when they read it.
Make no mistake, the best story choices should always win. Don’t sacrifice an awesome idea to save money. But if it’s an idea that’s in that 50/50 coin flip territory, it’s better to go with the option that’s cheaper. Now that I’m thinking about it, the Hannibal set where 25 minutes of that movie took place probably cost 100 grand. That must’ve helped keep cost down quite a bit.
But anyway, this was a fun script. I like when writers mix supernatural elements into more real-world genres. So count me as a fan of Sabine.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: This is a great example of adding urgency into a setup that doesn’t naturally have it. Without any urgency, this is two people talking for as long as they want with no worries in the world. But adding the Sabine element (“Sabine is coming to get me”) creates a clever little ticking bomb in the audience’s mind. They are now on the edge of their seats, wondering when Sabine is going to arrive.
