Today’s script attempts to CARVE its way into our turkey-loving hearts.
Genre: Thriller/Horror (Serial Killer)
Premise: After losing his mother, a man finds the birth certificate of an, up to this point, unknown brother. He connects with him, only to learn that his new brother engages in a particularly violent hobby.
About: This script finished with 8 votes on last year’s Black List. The writer has one smaller produced credit, writing the 2018 movie, The Night Sitter.
Writer: Abiel Bruhn
Details: 106 pages
I don’t know if any of you saw this but John Krasinski just signed onto a serial killer show called Silent River, about “the cracks that emerge in a small town when it’s discovered a serial killer lives among its residents.”
Serial killers are big business.
And I know that confuses some people. Why does anybody joyfully tune in to people murdering other people? Innocent people at that!
I’ll tell you why. Because DEAD BODIES SELL. And what’s more high stakes than the life of a human being?
James has been taking care of his cancer-stricken mother for two years when she finally dies. After going through her things, he finds an old birth certificiate… for a son she had TWO YEARS BEFORE HIM. James can’t believe his eyes. He finds out his mother gave her first son up for adoption. Which means James has a brother!
James seeks this brother out and is shocked to learn that the dude, Rob, is a high-roller. He’s got a cool car. He lives in a baller condo in the city. And boy does he do well with the ladies. Not only is James infatuated with Rob. But Rob is infatuated with him too! This is all Rob has ever wanted – a sibling! So it’s brotherly love at first sight.
It doesn’t take too much hang-out time before James realizes his brother is… interesting. He oozes positivity, leaning hard into Andrew Tate energy. The world is the matrix, Rob tells James. You can have anything you want. All you have to do is take it.
It’s then when Rob introduces James to his secret hobby. Rob likes to watch. Usually women. He takes out his fancy telescope, he picks a condo across the city, and watches people live their lives. Even better, Rob explains, he gets to watch them live their lives thinking that nobody can see them. You see the true unedited person that way. And we can tell that turns Rob on.
James isn’t so sure. He thinks it’s weird. But when Rob offers to Ryan Gosling Crazy Stupid Love his brother up, James loves the result. He’s got a cooler haircut, nicer clothes, people start paying attention to him. If James has to do some weird things to live this new exciting life, maybe doing so is a minor price to pay.
But when James is looking through the telescope one night and sees Rob in the apartment of one of the women they were looking at, he puts two and two together and figures out his brother is a murderer. Not only that, he’s likely the one responsible for all these recent killings in the city. James freaks out and runs across the street to stop the impending murder. When he gets there, the woman is fine. But her neighbors have been slaughtered!
The cops bring James in, convinced he had something to do with this. But when they can’t prove his guilt, they let him go. From there, we start to wonder if James even has a brother. Maybe there is no Rob. And, oh yeah, if you’re wondering about the title, it’s because each brother carves out a mask made of wood. Or did only ONE brother carve out the mask of wood? CAUSE THERE’S ONLY ONE BROTHER.
It’s Thanksgiving.
I don’t want to be negative on Thanksgiving!
I want everyone to eat food that they would normally never eat in a thousand years and pretend to enjoy it. Stuffing. Who created this anomaly? We’re going to stuff a bunch of junk into something else and then we’ll serve it also. “But what are we going to call it my good sir?” “Let’s call it… stuffing!” “Brilliant, your majesty.”
I’ll start by saying this. Woodwork is better than the 3 million dollar script I reviewed on Monday. That’s a positive, right?
There’s some voice and creativity on display here. The whole angle with the woodworking was kind of unique. And there’s an interesting relationship between the two brothers. We’ve got a little Fight Club inspired plot going on between them. That’s fun, isn’t it?
I also believe this to be a solid example of, “You can create an entire franchise with a good mask.” It’s true! Hockey mask. Michael Myers mask. Scream. Saw. This wooden mask will certainly stand out.
But the script is just so messy.
Instead of a perfect melodic blend of turkey, biscuits, green beans and mashed potatoes, someone added hot pockets, Cheetoes, and ramen. Individually, these things are wonderful but, together, they resulted in a meal that looks like it was made by Guy Fieri on ayuscha.
And that’s no exaggeration. We get a couple of drug-induced sequences here. Rob is convinced that LSD is the key to helping you unlock your killing potential. After sneakily giving James a thousand doses, James is more than happy to slash some people up. I would’ve preferred the LSD unlock a cohesive plot.
Let me give you a more obvious example of the messiness, though.
In the scene where James runs across the street and into the other building to try and stop James from killing the woman, he must first recruit the building manager woman in the lobby. To do so, he screams at her that there’s a man about to slash a woman to death.
So the woman joins him, rushing up to the floor the apartment is on. They bang on the door, and the woman comes out. She’s alive. Confused, James charges in. AS DOES THE LOBBY WOMAN. When they can’t find him, they hear screaming from the next apartment. So they charge into that apartment where they find a mangled bloody dead body. When the lobby woman sees this, SHE CHARGES INTO THE BEDROOM.
You can sell me on Rob charging forward. The killer is his brother. So conceivably, he can talk him down. But why is Lobby Woman blindly running into rooms that contain SERIAL KILLERS THAT CARVE BODIES INTO HEAPS OF FLESH??????
Because most scripts aren’t good enough, there’s a specific moment in each one when I mentally check out. This was that moment in Woodwork. Some writers will ding you for this. They’ll bring up that, on page 74, this amazing scene happens and you didn’t acknowledge it. Or you missed some key plot point on page 89. And it’s like, “Dude, don’t have women willingly running into rooms with killers in them and I’ll continue to place all my attention on your story.”
Attention is not guaranteed. It must be earned. In the scripts that I love, I don’t even consider whether I’m engaged or not. I’m so lost in the story that I couldn’t lose focus if you spent the next half hour tickling me.
Woodwork is okay. There are hints of a good movie in here. The brother angle. Does Rob really exist? The striking imagery of the wooden mask. Rob’s view on existence. But there’s too much noise and not enough melody when it’s all said and done.
[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: I find it hard to know who a character is if I don’t know what he does. In fact, I would say that I have NO IDEA who a character is if I don’t know what he does. Therefore, if you never show me the character working and you give them a job title like “customer relations representative,” (James’s job) I’m going to be lost trying to figure that character out. I know that some writers like to give their characters bland jobs to convey that they are bland. But there’s a difference between a bland job and a job like this, where I don’t even understand what it means. This puts you in a poor position as the writer because you’re heading into the meat of your story (the second act) with the reader not sure who your lead character is. That’s a bad place to be and it definitely hurt this script, as I never had the best feel for James.
