Genre: Thriller
Premise: A young woman invites people up to her remote lake house to murder them. But when a back-stabbing ex-friend apologizes for her past transgressions, our murderess changes her mind, to unexpected results.
About: This script finished on last year’s Black List with 8 votes. Rachel James recently graduated from Columbia University School of the Arts. Her previous script, Big Bad Wolves, was a semifinalist in the Nicholl contest.
Writer: Rachel James
Details: 99 pages
Today’s script attempts to pull off that rare feat of dividing its narrative into two completely different parts. In terms of screenwriting, it’s as big of a gamble as you can take.
But if it pays off, terms like “genius” are thrown around. People respect writers who take big chances, who try different things. So did Rachel James pull it off? Let’s find out together.
30-something Lola is up at her remote New Jersey lake house with her father, Don. We’re told that both of them are inherently angry people. Although they seem to be having a nice enough time together.
That all changes when Lola starts hearing a sardonic “sawing” noise which seems to be egging her on to do something. Lola asks her dad about a friend of his who used to babysit her. The implication is that he did something bad to Lola. The next thing we know, Lola has killed her father off-screen.
Lola then invites up an old boyfriend, Art. After they have sex, she kills him too. She seems to have some sort of homicidal bucket list. Which is why, after Art, she invites up her meanie ex-friend from college, Michelle, who stole her high school boyfriend, Chase.
Lola is all set to kill Michelle but then Michelle, ignorant to Lola’s plan, profusely apologizes for stealing her man and marrying him. Lola then decides that she’s not going to kill Michelle, and the two begin a long weekend together where they play question games like, “Who would you murder if you could?”
As Michelle becomes hip to the fact that Lola isn’t being honest with her, she hurries the defense off the field so the offense can play. Not only that, but Michelle inserts herself as QB, and the call is to kill Lola. Or, at least, I think that’s the call. Because the next thing we see is Michelle back at her bougie New York apartment with Chase. This happens at, roughly, the midpoint.
From then on, we follow Michelle, who starts hearing the same “sawing” noise that Lola heard. During a house party that includes a group of people who hold up Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop as the definitive accomplishment of the Western world, Michelle loses it, goes home, and starts draping the walls in her own blood.
When Chase finally comes home, Michelle invites him into the den, turns on some hard metal, and stabs him to death. As this is happening, the name “Michelle” occasionally is replaced with “Lola,” leaving us to wonder if that was a mistake or intentional. Many Black Swan vibes here. Is Michelle Lola? Is Lola Michelle? Was there ever a Lola? I have a feeling that nobody will agree on the answer. Which is either why you’re going to love The Swells or hate it.
What about me? Did I love it or hate it?
I’m not sure what I think.
It’s definitely different.
I admire the bold choice to perform the Split In Half Screenplay. I’m a proponent of making the second half of your script different from the first so that it doesn’t repeat itself. I don’t necessarily endorse this extreme of a narrative shift. But it did ensure that the story stayed fresh.
I liked how quickly the screenplay read, especially after yesterday’s script, which felt like I was back in Chicago walking to school after 18 inches of snowfall. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge. Stop and catch your breath. Trudge. Trudge. Trudge.
This script was more “spec-y” and respectful of the reader. Small character count. Tons of dialogue. Easy to read. The script moved FAST.
Where it ran in trouble was in how little it told us.
I barely learned anything about Lola. She used to paint. I know that. Her dad’s a meanie. I know that. But everything else was vague. Lola’s past with her mother was an important part of the story but I couldn’t tell you anything about her mom or why things went bad with her. Everything is inferred but never explained.
This is a challenge every screenwriter faces. How much do you tell the audience and how much do you keep from the audience? If you err on the wrong side of either (too much or too little) it’s the difference between a confusing mess and an on-the-nose snore-fest.
I feel like The Swells didn’t give us enough information. And information is important in a script like this because people are dying. And for readers to care about those people, they have to know those people. I mean, I still don’t know what Lola’s dad did to make her want to kill him. She mentions an old friend who may have abused her but I’m filling in the abuse part myself. That was never mentioned. I’m just guessing.
If you force your reader to guess too many times, the story becomes an unfocused blob in their heads. A series of feint images connected by cobweb-thin lines. You sort of understand what’s going on, but not enough to truly be invested.
A great example of a similar script that did this well was fellow Black List screenplay, Resurrection, about a single mother in New York City who begins seeing a mysterious older man from her past and becomes convinced he’s come back to kill her daughter. That script, too, plays with mystery and its main character losing her mind. But the difference was the writer set up the main character in a very detailed way so that we felt like we knew her.
I never felt like I understood Lola. And while we get a lot more information on Michelle, since we get to see her life back in New York, even with her I don’t know what she did for work. How she spends 8 hours of her day.
That’s something I ranted about the other week because you can’t separate a person from their job. So I always get suspicious when the writer doesn’t tell me anything about that enormous part of their life. Now that I think about it, I don’t know what Lola did for a living either.
With that said, the scene writing is good enough to keep you reading. There was always an aggressive level of dramatic irony or conflict in each scene, which meant that literally every interaction had a level of subtext to it. Either Lola’s planning to kill Michelle while they’re harmlessly chatting rowing a boat on a lake, or Michelle’s prying for info on why Lola invited her here during drinks and a card game.
It was weird because, on the whole, I never knew where the script was going, leaving me frustrated. But each individual scene had an undeniable energy to it. I never wanted to give up on the script because the scenes themselves were fun.
The Swells feels to me like a promising writer who’s still trying to figure out the weird format that is screenwriting. I don’t think you can yank people around this much without giving them some concrete pedestals to grab onto. If this was a little less smoke and mirrors, I could see it working. Right now it comes off as a foggier version of Black Swan and that movie played it as close to the line of “Is this happening or isn’t it” as you’re allowed to get.
I like the writer, though. Will definitely keep an eye out for any future material she writes.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: The essence of a well-developed movie character is that there’s something deep within them that is unresolved. For those who liked this script, I’m guessing that’s what they were attracted to. Both these characters have deep unresolved issues within them. And when you have that, you have a character who’s constantly fighting themselves, which is more dramatically interesting than watching someone who has it all figured out.
