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Genre: Drama/Supernatural
Premise: After a married woman cheats on her husband with an old high school flame at her reunion, she later learns that the man she slept with has been dead for 12 years.
About: Today’s writer wrote 2016’s “Forest,” with Natalie Dormer. He also wrote and directed the remake of “River Wild” last year.
Writer: Ben Ketai
Details: 106 pages
I saw this idea on last year’s Black List and I thought to myself, “That’s going to be a problematic premise to work with.”
How could I possibly know this? Because I’ve written a version of this idea. I know half a dozen writers who have also written versions of this idea. It’s a fairly common idea.
But what I found with my own script, as well as everyone else’s, is that after you get past the inciting incident… WHAT THE HECK DO YOU DO NEXT???
30-something Fiona lives in Brooklyn. She’s married to this guy who is fine but he’s not exactly killing it on the career front and that’s causing Fiona to see him as… not very appealing. The former rocker-turned-stay-at-home-mommy has two kids, Emma and Oliver. And if you gave her truth serum, she would probably say they’re the reason she’s still in the marriage.
So, one weekend, Fiona heads back to her high school reunion, and that’s where she runs into Ian. She and Ian have a complicated past. He was the friend-zoned nerdy kid she would peripherally hang out with. But now he’s super hot! And charming. So, after a few drinks, they get cozy together.
That coziness morphs into extreme coziness, which is also known as sex. The next morning, Fiona obviously feels horrible about what she did and hurries back to Brooklyn to try and get back to normality.
But she can’t forget what happened that night. No, literally! She’s not allowed to because the song she made love to Ian during starts playing on her Bluetooth speaker. Don’t you hate when that happens? “Hey Carson, what is this random song that just started playing?” “Oh, nothing. Just the song my ghost lover and I always listen to.” In addition to this, anywhere she goes, anything she does, she FEELS Ian nearby. He’s lurking, not letting her forget this.
Eventually, Fiona heads to Ian’s mom’s home and asks her about him. She learns that Ian really liked her and Fiona wasn’t always nice to him. Later that week, Fiona’s daughter vomits blood on stage during a play. Fiona hurries her to the ER and decides enough is enough. She has to tell her husband what happened. Her husband is more weirded out than angry. But it’s now clear that Fiona must do everything within her power to cut things off with Ian.
I frequently discuss the issue of “problematic concepts” on this site but I don’t always get an opportunity to be specific. Today, I want to be specific because ‘Undying’ is one of those concepts that, at first glance, appears to be a good one. You sleep with someone only to later find out that that person’s been dead for years. There’s some high-concept residue in that setup.
But ideas like this are often fool’s gold and I’ll explain why.
The best thing about an idea like this is the moment when our main character realizes that the person they spent an intimate night with is dead. That’s the peak moment of the screenplay because it’s the hook. It’s the reason we came on board.
However, a good hook will give birth to all sorts of similarly compelling moments throughout the screenplay. For example, the hook in A Quiet Place is that you cannot make a noise or these sound-sensitive monsters hunt you down and kill you. You can build a lot of additional scenes out of that.
But what scenes can you build off of finding out that the person you slept with is dead?
Anyone?
There aren’t many.
You’re in bumpy waters because the best thing about your concept – that a mother of two, also a wife, slept with someone and now must come back to the real world of her family and mentally come to terms with what she did – you erase that once we learn that he’s dead. Cause it means she didn’t really cheat.
The only path you have left is that this dead entity – Ian – still wants Fiona. Now you have a sort-of supernatual horror script. Which is the direction the writer went in. But he got gun-shy. He never truly committed to that direction, which left the script in the Genre-less Zone. It’s not quite a drama. It’s not quite horror. It’s somewhere in between.
This is what problematic concepts do to you. They place you in these difficult positions that are hard to write yourself out of.
Is there a version of this that could’ve worked? I don’t know. If he would’ve gone full-throttle horror with the concept… then MAYBE? Maybe Ian was some version of the devil. He was “temptation.” She took the bait and because she took the bait, the devil is going to punish her for it.
From there, though, you gotta go all in. You can’t half-step. A horror film where nobody gets killed until the very last page isn’t a horror film. Doesn’t matter if a daughter projectile vomits blood. If we don’t see an actual death, we will subconsciously think that the writer will always take the safe route. And that means we, the reader, feel safe.
Is there a version of this that works as a drama?
Yes but not a very good one. And, if you’re going to go that route, you at least need a goal within the character themself that pushes them forward. Yesterday’s script is a good example of this. The main character was working towards getting released from her conservatorship. The entire script was building toward a final presentation she had to give in order for her superiors to sign off on giving her her life back.
That’s a narrative right there. That gives the plot forward momentum and you don’t need a big flashy hook to tell that story. I wouldn’t write that story if I were you. Even if you knock the execution out of the part, it’s still a tough sell. But when you don’t have ANYTHING pushing the story forward – an overall plot or a personal character plot – you are a baby leaf dangling in the wind. You have no control over your script.
Final thoughts. I find “almost horror” to be one of the trickier genres to pull off. Cause the horror folks are always going to be frustrated that you’re not giving them enough horror. And the drama folks tend to get judgy when you introduce anything ‘horror’ into the screenplay.
I’m not saying it can’t be done. It’s just harder. It’s hard when you walk the line between any two genres.
This one wasn’t for me. It needed more teeth.
What about you guys? Could you come up with a better narrative for this flashy setup?
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: Killing off characters in scripts is an interesting exercise because it’s always problematic for the logistics of the story if you do kill people off. Cause, let’s say you kill the dad character off at the midpoint of this story. Well, now you have to deal with the ramifications of that. You can’t just mosey on down to the next plot beat. No. The next – AT LEAST – four scenes must be dedicated to the fallout of that character’s death. On the flip side, if you don’t kill anyone, the story has no edge. We never feel that we’re in any true danger. So figure out if you’re going to commit to the intense version of the story or not. And, once you make that decision, go all in on it. Kill some motherf$%$rs.
