Genre: Horror
Premise: Two outcast teenagers have their world turned upside-down when they start receiving mysterious DVDs with horrifying imagery on them.
About: Today’s writer, Adam d’Alba, sold his spec pilot, “The Pierce Signal,” to Starz in 2015 (which may be a companion piece to this – I haven’t been able to confirm that). He then sold this script to Paramount in 2017, with spec-friendly 21 Laps producing. D’Alba graduated from Brown University and then worked in the ICM mail room. The Infinity Reel finished with 29 votes on the 2017 Hit List.
Writer: Adam D’Alba
Details: 105 pages
October is right around the corner and you know what that means. SCARRRRY TIIIIIME! Let’s get things started with an early bag of Halloween candy – an ode to The Ring…. but with DVDs!
30 year-old documentary filmmaker Jude Pierce is chilling in his apartment when his wife, Caroline, comes home holding a yellow envelope. While he works, she goes into the other room, opens the envelope, and finds a DVD. She plays the DVD, the contents of which we don’t see, takes the DVD out, then casually walks outside and throws herself over the railing, sending her to her death (the DVD, of course, breaks in the process).
Three months later, a haunted Jude is on a mission to find out what happened to his wife. There was a tragic story of a couple of high school kids he wants to look into. We’re not told exactly what happened to these kids, but we know they both received DVDs in the mail, just like Jude’s wife.
So Jude speaks to Nora, the mother of 18 year old Nick, and Ted and Sheryl, the parents of 18 year old Sarah. Nick is your classic goth type with no friends. And Sarah is an obsessive geek, determined to get into a top college, mostly at the behest of her parents. After Nick and Sarah both receive ominous DVDs, each with their own unique imagery, they meet and discuss what the DVDs could possibly mean.
We cut back and forth between Jude’s interviews with the parents and the growing relationship between Nick and Sarah, which we know has a horrible conclusion. We just don’t know what that conclusion is! Soon, new DVDs are showing up, and they’re not just showing terrifying imagery. They include footage of Nick and Sarah hanging out together. Whoever is doing this has been watching them.
But it gets oh so much worse. In one DVD, Nick and Sarah watch as they’re taped having sex. There’s only one problem. THEY HAVEN’T HAD SEX YET! This convinces Nick and Sarah that the DVDs are from the future, taping things that are yet to happen to them. But then it gets even CRAZIER! In one DVD they watch at school, they see an image of them, live, watching the DVD. But that’s impossible! This is a DVD. It’s already recorded.
But it gets even CRAZIER! One of the DVDs never ends. It just keeps going. For hours, days. But that’s impossible! A DVD can only hold a finite amount of information. Then things really take a turn for the worse, as Nick becomes possessed by the magic of the evil DVDs. One night when they’re alone, Nick takes out a gun, shoots Sarah, then shoots himself. The End.
Huh.
Well, okay. How should we dissect this one?
Look, one of the most important things to get right when you’re inventing a new mythology is the rules. The rules need to accomplish two things. They need to be clear. And they need to make sense. Which is why the mythologies that work best tend to be simple. That way, there isn’t a lot of room to mess up.
“It Follows” had a simple mythology. You pass on the curse through sex. And only the person cursed can see the person following them.
I can’t stress this enough. One of the fastest ways to lose a reader is to start throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks. Which is exactly how the rules in The Infinity Reel feel. At first you get a DVD and it makes you want to kill yourself right away. But then when our high schoolers get their DVDs, it’s different. They don’t want to kill themselves right away. Already the rules have changed and we’re not even out of the first act.
Then things get completely out of control. The DVD images go from random to including shots of the people watching the DVDs. Then it starts including things the characters haven’t done yet. So now we’re thinking the DVDs are from the future. Okay. But then, later, they realize that they might have been in a trance during their actions, and therefore the imagery is actually of stuff they’ve done in the past but forgotten. Then, the DVDs start including images that weren’t available at the time the DVD was recorded. So they’ve become magical DVDs, able to record after the fact. And then, to increase their magical ability, they contain never-ending video.
So here’s what goes on in my head when I read something like this: Writer is making up story as he goes along. He has no idea how he’s going to explain it in the end. But chances are he’s going to do what every writer who writes one of these scripts does once they’ve painted themselves into a corner – say that the characters were “going crazy” and so it was all in their heads. Which is pretty much what happens.
Look, there are a couple of ways you can go when you’re writing a mystery like this. Direction 1 is to make everything up as you go along and figure out the end when you get there. Direction 2 is to figure out the end first and then all of your story choices will be in service to that ending. Both directions have their advantages.
With the former, you can let your imagination go. Any wild idea you come up with, you can include it. When you do it this way, you end up finding exciting story avenues that you otherwise would’ve been afraid to try. With the latter, you’re going to have an incredibly focused story since every choice you make has to sync up with that ending you’ve already written.
But here’s the thing if you go with Direction 1. Once you come up with your ending, you’re going to have to go back and rewrite the s%&t out of your screenplay. Cause what’s going to happen is that most of those “out there” ideas you came up with no longer apply. And it’s probably going to take you 3-6 drafts of work before you get rid of all that junk and have something cohesive.
I didn’t see that here. Infinity Reel reads like Direction 1, but the writer only spent one quick draft cleaning up all the setups. Because nothing makes sense. How is the DVD able to go on forever? I know ideas sound great when it’s 3 am and you’re on your 17th Diet Coke and the juices of the caffeine are coalescing with early morning exhaustion and every wild idea that passes through your fingertips “feels right.” But it’s the duty of your next day self to bring some sanity to the situation and edit out all the nonsense. The nonsense never got edited out here which is why this script didn’t work.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Orient your reader when something big is going to happen later in a scene. This movie opens with a man on a computer, his wife coming home, watching a video, then going outside, then jumping to her death. There was only one problem. I had no idea they lived in a tall building. The writer didn’t tell me. So the moment she jumped was the first moment I knew they were up high. All the writer needed to do was to tell us this was a “High Rise Apartment Building,” as opposed to “an apartment,” and I would’ve had the visual necessary to make the scene work. — Screenwriters, never forget this advice: We don’t know unless you tell us!
