I like the Black List. It’s one of the best ways for writers to get recognition for writing a good feature script.
But the Black List has been led astray in recent years. It used to be purely about finding the best scripts in town. Now, there are two major factors impeding that mission.
The first is an emphasis on socio-political variables that have nothing to do with script quality. The second is educated reps who know how to game the system to get their clients lots of votes.
These actions have compromised the list.
Which is why I do this at the end of every year. I’ve read most of the Black List scripts, therefore I know which ones are actually good and which ones aren’t. I re-rank the list so that you, as well as the industry, knows which scripts and which writers are deserving.
Is there subjectivity to my rankings? Only with biopics (cause I don’t like them) and comedy (since comedy is so subjective). But everything else I’m almost always right about. The large majority of people who read these scripts will agree with me.
Before I start the rankings, here are the scripts that I didn’t read due to my having no interest in the subject matter.
Patsy – about Patsy Kline
Forbidden Fruits – weird sounding script where everyone is named after a fruit
Carousel – I actually want to read this but don’t have it.
Hot Mess – tabloid gossip story
We Got Next – WNBA script
The Profit – real life story about dude losing billions in one day
Dickens vs. Andersen – another writer showdown script
Our House – about an insurrection
Our Man in Miami – sports agent Fidel Castro thing
What’s My Age Again – true story about a young governor
Beyond the Grave – illegal immigrant script
Immune – Vaccines
Kazan – biopic writer script
Ferocious – A shark script I still want to read
The Stratford wife – Shakespeare thing
Displacement – Comedy on a geriatric cruise
If you only care about the scripts I deem worthy of your attention, I have listed a LINE OF DEMARCATION in the post. Everything below that line is a script worth checking out. By the way, almost all of these scripts can be found on this site. Are we ready? We’re going to start with the worst and work our way up to the best. Here we go!
58 – American Dreams
7 votes
Tricia Lee & Corey Brown
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: In the not-so-distant future, an Asian-American woman works at a company where you can hire people to write your dreams. When one of her clients mysteriously dies, she realizes that those who have the power to write your dreams, also have the power to write your nightmares.
From Review: I mean, a good 30 pages of this script were dedicated to cutting to the good guys in a room saying, ‘We have to take down the meanie bad guys,’ then cutting to the bad guys in their room saying, ‘We have to take down those goodie good guys!’ It was like being transported back to 1984 watching an episode of The Smurfs.
57 – Return To Sender
20 votes
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A woman who’s moved into a new home and is buying a lot of things from a giant delivery company learns that she is being used for a new delivery scam.
From Review: There may be something to the idea of random stuff being delivered to you. Each item is increasingly weirder. You don’t know how they connect but there’s clearly some message to them. That could be a movie. But the script I just read doesn’t have that clarity of purpose. It’s murky. It stumbles. It has moments but those moments are followed by large chunks of pages that put you to sleep.
56 – Polo (newsletter review)
17 votes
Genre: Drama
Nika Burnett
Logline: When a young woman returns home from the Navy, she joins a local water polo team and finds herself fighting a new battle.
From Review: I’m not going to lie, I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated because I had high hopes for this script. But I’m also frustrated because this isn’t a script worthy of being celebrated. It shouldn’t be on any list. It’s not good. And when you celebrate scripts that aren’t good by putting them on the Black List, it confuses aspiring screenwriters.
55 – Down Came The Rain
9 votes
Katie Found
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a woman gives birth to a spider, she begins to question her unraveling reality and the psychological and arachnid horrors of postpartum motherhood.
From Review: There’s simply not enough happening here where we’re going to give you the luxury of writing an entire uninterrupted page of description.
54 – Woodwork
8 votes
Abiel Bruhn
Genre: Serial Killer
Logline: While settling his mother’s estate, awkward loner James reunites with his long-lost brother Rob who oozes wealth, charm, and confidence–but the chance encounter leads to a twisted game of wits and violence.
From Review: 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.
53 – Propel (Newsletter review)
7 votes
Jeremy Marwick
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A commercial diver fights to survive after a boating accident leaves her for dead underwater.
From Review: I remember this being very average.
52 – The Nest
17 votes
Aaron Benjamin
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Confined to “the nest,” a Secret Service Sniper gets a strange call on the radio from a deranged mastermind who’s holding his family hostage in a box suite during America’s biggest game– The Super Bowl.
From Review: The moment I committed to the story – cause I was on the fence for a while – was when Webb told Jackson that Jackson would be killing people today. I’m a sucker for when good people are forced to do bad things. I just think it gets to the heart of compelling character conflict.
51 – Hit Me, Baby
17 votes
Kurt McLeod
Genre: Action
Logline: After Liv, a world-class hitwoman, breaks up with her boyfriend, Martin, he puts out a massive contract on his own life to get her attention. What Martin doesn’t realize is that it’s an open contract with a 48-hour expiration, so now every assassin in the western hemisphere is coming after him. Liv makes a deal to keep him safe until the contract expires, if he pays her out the full bounty. With the clock ticking, the two must elude some of the world’s most prolific killers.
From Review: Ever since pure rom-coms became excommunicato, these “rom-coms with an edge” took their place. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this became a movie. It would make for a fun trailer. But the script wasn’t for me. Does this mean love loses?
50 – First You Hear Them
19 votes
Sean Harrigan
Genre: Horror
Logline: A group of friends find their lives disrupted after experimenting with a new drug that first makes them hear something, then see something, then become hunted by something.
From Review: It goes back to the dialogue. If your characters would’ve had more interesting conversations and weren’t muttering perfunctory things to get through the scenes, I would’ve been more entertained in the meantime.
49 – Unnie
7 votes
Lynn Yu
Genre: Slasher
Logline: In the cutthroat world of K-POP, a group’s debut is threatened when someone begins to violently attack its members.
From Review: I *do* think this script is marketable. But it doesn’t do anything that gets you excited. It plays out like you think it will.
48 – The Getaway
14 votes
Mario Kyprianou & Becky Leigh
Genre: Romantic Comedy/sci-fi
Logline: A couple on the brink of divorce sets off on a romantic getaway to save their marriage, but when they find that they have inexplicably traveled back in time, they decide to team up to stop their younger selves from ever getting married.
From Review: This script started out strong. These writers have comedic chops. But they focused too much on plotting and, in the process, lost too many opportunities to be funny. I do like that the writers are using the story to try and say something about the choices we make in life and how they can lead us down completely different paths. But that should not have been the priority. The priority should’ve been the comedy.
47 – Foragers
19 votes
Top 10
Genre: Thriller
Logline: When the illegitimate daughter of a Portland billionaire goes missing, her loved ones turn to Juno and Andi, local homesteaders and members of The Foragers–a grassroots network of experts dedicated to finding the lost and bringing them home.
From Review: “Despite this, the script was just a little too weird for me. I’m not sure I ever totally believed in this bizarre network of people-finders. Their too-cool-for-school personas never matched up with their odd way of life.”
46 – Last Resort
11 votes
Larua Stoltz
Genre: Drama/Comedy
Logline: A grieving woman goes to an Icelandic “end of life” resort to kill herself while also looking into the surprise suicide of her girlfriend, who killed herself here several months prior.
From Review: You have a much better chance of people recommending your script to others if it’s hopeful, or upbeat, or optimistic. I see viewers watching this trailer and thinking, “Why would I go see that?” “Why go see a movie about people killing themselves?”
45 – The Final Score
11 votes
Will Hettinger
Genre: Crime
Logline: Two FBI agents are pitted against a crew of bank robbers–and each other–as they grapple with order and chaos inside their own department and home lives.
From Review: THE READER KNOWS WHEN YOU DIDN’T PUT IN ENOUGH EFFORT. You cannot and will not EVER FOOL THEM.
44 – High Concept
21 votes
Alex Kavutskiy & Ryan Perez
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In the early 2000s, two totally opposite best friends, Mike (an uptight lawyer) and BJ (a stoner slacker), awake one morning to find that they have swapped bodies, are stuck in a time loop, and are afflicted with many other high-concept comedy premises of that era. Drawing upon their knowledge of those type of movies, Mike & BJ must learn their lesson(s) and get their lives back to normal.
From Review: “I was just telling this to a writer earlier today in a Zoom consultation about his comedy script. All the reader cares about in the end with comedies is “did I laugh enough?” The plot is secondary. I didn’t laugh enough here to recommend it.
43 – Backcountry
11 votes
Kevin Sheridan
Genre: Thriller/Survival
Logline: A famous former extreme skier attempts to re-ski the mountain that ended his career, this time with the son of his old rival, with the threat of an avalanche looming.
From Review: If our hero isn’t solving problems, why even have a hero?
42 – The Wolf in Chiefs Clothing (Review Missing)
11 votes
Adam Christopher Best
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A lovable loser from a family of criminals becomes the Kansas City Chiefs’ most famous superfan. His newfound status is expensive, so he teams up with his imaginary friend–an anthropomorphic version of the team’s wolf mascot–and goes on a bank-robbing spree.
From Review: Can’t find the review but the main thing I remember is that the execution didn’t push the envelope enough. It was too expected.
41 – Fistmas
14 votes
Genre: Comedy/Holiday
Jack Waz
Logline: In order to propose to the girl of his dreams, a lovestruck guy must first survive her hometown’s annual Christmas fighting tournament.
From Review: I’m not sure what the theme of this movie was. It seems to be that leaders take advantage of violence to control people? But the script is too goofy to sell such a sophisticated theme. Let me reiterate that a grown man fights a teenage girl while everyone stands around and cheers. That’s not the kind of movie you try and push a 12 Days A Slave level theme onto.
40 – Mole People
7 votes
Nathan Elston
Genre: Horror/Thriller
Logline: When an unhoused teen turns up brutally murdered, his estranged brother searches for answers in the underworld of New York City and uncovers a series of horrifying crimes hiding deep in the abandoned subway systems.
From Review: Most readers (and viewers) aren’t going to care if a man has gone missing or murdered.
39 – Personal Best
10 votes
Ryan Hoang Williams
Genre: Comedy/Biopic
Logline: Based on the true story of James Hogue, a talented student and long-distance runner who was admitted to Princeton University under the false identity of “Alexi Indris-Santana”–an orphaned, self-educated, teenage ranch hand.
From Review: The script has its moments. It’s not bad by any means. It’s just one of those scripts you read and nod your head every once in a while thinking, “That was a pretty good scene.” But the totality of the experience doesn’t move you so you’ll never recommend it to anyone else.
38 – 8 Habits of Highly Murderous People
7 votes
Michael Boyle
Genre: Thriller/Mystery
Logline: Psychologist Dr. Martin Park specializes in working with clients trying to curtail extreme violent urges. However, when a series of brutally murdered bodies are discovered in his small New England hometown, it’s up to Martin to figure out which of his patients is responsible.
From Review: This script needed more of a deft touch to handle the tone it was going for.
37 – Undying
10 votes
Ben Ketai
Genre: Drama/Supernatural
Logline: A woman, suffocated by motherhood, has an affair with a man she hasn’t seen since high school– only to discover he has been dead for years.
From Review: 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.
36 – The Pentester
12 votes
Jesse Quiñones
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A Pentester (ethical hacker who plans cyber attacks to help organizations identify security vulnerabilities) is set up in the murder of one of the richest most influential men in the world.
From Review: You must deliver on the Promise of the Genre. If you’re writing in the comedy genre, you gotta be funny. If you’re writing in the Action genre, you gotta have great action set pieces. And if you’re writing in the espionage thriller genre, you need the plot beats built around espionage to be convincing. The laziness of that plot point was the dagger that made this script stagger.
35 – Head Games
25 votes
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Logline: A corporate spy poses as a personal chef to the disgraced founder of a neuroprosthetics firm in order to steal his seismic-shifting new invention from his secluded villa in Greece.
From Review: In the end, this script reminded me of a very specific movie, the 2001 film, “Antitrust,” starring Ryan Phillipe and Tim Robbins. It had the same young-old cat-and-mouse technological slant to it. But just like that movie, it never did anything strong enough to grab you and pull you in.
34 – The Great Pretender
12 votes
Kirill Baru & Eric Zimmerman
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When Tom Hanks, the nicest guy in Hollywood (and arguably the world), finds his life stolen by a Tom Hanks impersonator, the only way to get it back is to do the one thing he’s never been able to: stop being nice.
From Review: I wanted way more instances of Tom Hanks having to be mean. That’s where your humor’s going to come from
33 – Die Fast
9 votes
Julian Meiojas
Genre: Action
Logline: Following a severe, soon to be fatal, brain injury during a violent attack, an NYPD sergeant embarks on a harrowing journey of vengeance, which leaves her only a few hours of adrenaline-bursting consciousness to hunt down those who took her daughter and killed her husband before she dies.
From Review: It’s overly specific try-hard too-cool-for-school writing, which often results in reader “double-takes” (the reader has to re-read sentences to understand them). When you’re writing a script like this one that is so reliant on its fast pace, double-take lines are script killers.
32 – Harness
7 votes
Leigh Janiak
Genre: Sports/Drama
Logline: In the violent world of underground horse racing, a wannabe female jockey and her trainer brother- in-law become entangled in an illicit relationship full of blood, sweat, and sex that pushes the limits of their bodies and the law.
From Review: I never liked Ruth. I never understood why I would like her. She’s cold. She’s bitchy. She’s selfish. That’s three-strikes-you’re-out.
31 – Untitled Missing Child
13 votes
Brenna Galvin
Genre: Mystery
Logline: A mommy vlogger’s child goes missing but when the detective assigned to the case starts looking into it, she suspects that the missing child may not exist.
From Review: It’s stuff like this that makes me question the Black List’s criteria. Cause that isn’t even the last twist. There are three more major twists, all of which make the story less and less believable.
30 – Toxoplasmosis
13 votes
Andrew Nunnelly
Genre: Comedy
Logline: After his girlfriend dies, a guy who hates cats begins an unexpected bromance with her widowed cat, who reveals himself to be an alien that is here to save the world.
From Review: The problem is that there’s an unhinged quality to the writing. It gets so untethered at times that you stop believing in what’s going on.
29 – Spoiler
42 votes
Jordan Rosenbloom
Genre: Thriller/Comedy
Logline: After passing on a hot new screenplay, a studio executive finds himself trapped as the protagonist inside the film and must regain control before the credits roll.
From Review: They say to never write a script about the industry. I have an addendum to that. Never write a script about the industry UNLESS YOU’RE IN THE INDUSTRY. Because if you’re in the industry, you can inject the requisite specificity required to sell this world.
28 – Better Half
15 votes
Gaelyn Golde
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When her best friend since childhood falls in love and starts spending all her time with her new boyfriend, a selfish codependent career woman will do anything to get her back.
From Review: We see the value of that here when Hank enters the equation. When it was just Bridget and Rae, sure, they had a fun back-and-forth. They said some funny things. But their interactions became infinitely more interesting when Hank entered the equation.
27 – Lure
8 votes
Nick Tassoni
Genre: Horror
Logline: When a park ranger ventures into the wilderness to find a missing hiker before a storm, she finds herself lured into the woods by a dangerous, unearthly predator mimicking her dead daughter.
From Review: Lure is built on that old horror conceit of being stuck in a place where your dead family member keeps showing up to test you in some way. I’m never thrilled with this setup.
26 – Blasphemous
9 votes
Luke Piotrowski
Genre: Horror/Religious
Logline: An inexperienced priest and a charismatic possessed woman form a dark and dangerous bond while on the run from sinister forces within the Catholic Church.
From Review: That’s a microcosm of my bigger issue I had with the screenplay. Which is that I don’t get the sense that the writer truly understands the world he’s writing about. I think he SORT OF understands it. But when you only “sort of” understand your world, the execution of your story only “sort of” works.
25 – Palette
9 votes
Zack Strauss
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: A woman who discovers she is suffering from severe synesthesia gets recruited into the secretive, cult-like industry of color design by a mysterious corporation but then uncovers the bloody, dark, and twisted reality of what it really takes to make the world’s next great hues.
From Review: Then there’s the overarching plot. There was none! We’re just watching her come to work every day and work on colors. There’s no bigger plot!
24 – The Last Tower
10 votes
Aaron Sala
Genre: Zombie Thriller
Logline: When a disaster strikes, a family is trapped in their high-rise Miami hotel. With danger closing in fast, they’re left with only one way to go: Up.
From Review: Despite this, the concept’s fun-factor overrides the negatives. This is definitely a movie.
23 – Blow up the Chat
7 votes
Amos Vernon & Nunzio Randazzo
Genre: Comedy
Logline: When their embarrassing, sometimes filthy, possibly cancellable group chat falls into the wrong hands, a group of dudes must go on a madcap scavenger hunt around town to appease a mysterious blackmailer.
From Review: This script always had one hand tied behind its back because it wasn’t willing to expose the kinds of texts that people would REALLY WRITE. The kind of texts that would REALLY CANCEL someone.
22 – The Adults in the Room
8 votes
Jake Disch
Genre: True Story
Logline: On November 1, 2022, FTX was valued at $32 billion. On November 11, 2022, it filed for bankruptcy. This is the incredible true story of the meteoric rise and catastrophic fall of FTX and its enigmatic founder, Sam Bankman-Fried.
From Review: So Disch, instead, placed Nishad in the protagonist role. Nishad is more sympathetic as he’s constantly questioning Sam’s decision-making throughout the story. It also allowed Disch to include all this commentary on Sam through the eyes of Nishad.
21 – U.P.S.E.T.
13 votes
Ben Bolea
Two border cops in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula find themselves in the crosshairs of Canadian biker gangs, international drug cartels, and shady government agents after intercepting a drug deal gone bad–all the day after an awkward one-night stand.
From Review: I’m always looking for ANYTHING FRESH in a script. The more freshness you can provide to your script salad, the more eagerly I will chow down. So to start with a cop snowmobile chase was a cool opening!
20 – Didier
24 votes (top 5)
Jackson Kellard
Genre: Biopic/Sports
Logline: Set in the early 2000s, superstar Ivory Coast soccer player, Didier, joins his flailing home-country team again, but finds that they’re divided by the political civil war brewing within their nation.
From Review: I would still be surprised if anyone who wasn’t an Ivory Coast history buff made it through the whole thing. It’s still a biopic so it’s never going to win over the casual movie fan.
19 – If I Had Your Face
9 votes
Ran Ran Wang
Genre: Thriller/Horror
Logline: When Jo’s best friend, Rina starts dating a white man, she begins transforming into something different: a white woman. Through it all, Jo can’t seem to convince anyone that there is cause for concern. But when three unidentifiable white women turn up dead, Jo realizes that they had all been Asian women who dated the same man, and now that he has Rina in his sights, it’s up to Jo to save her before she becomes his next victim.
From Review: This is something newbie writers do all the time in horror. They write trippy stuff and expect the reader to do the work for them.
18 – Sea Dogs
11 votes
Josh Woolf
Genre: Drama
Logline: After two down-on-their-luck lobster fishermen botch a hijacking attempt on the high seas, they are forced to confront the consequences of their actions as they struggle to navigate a world they no longer recognize.
From Review: There are a million scripts about guys running from cops in small towns. But there are very few where people are trying to rob a giant container ship.
17 – The Crowd
11 votes
Jack Heller
Genre: Horror
Logline: In a claustrophobic race against time, a woman must unravel the mystery behind a malevolent crowd before she succumbs to their relentless pursuit.
From Review: I’m guessing the writer thought that if there was too much crowd stuff, it would lose its impact. I suppose that’s an okay argument. But not if you get inventive. I already liked this rule he created where sometimes the crowd just watches. It doesn’t move in on you.
16 – Please Come Back
7 votes
Mike George
Genre: Horror
Logline: A young couple who perform rituals to raise people from the dead get more than they bargained for when they attempt to re-animate a young girl who doesn’t remember how she died.
From Review: Two things I absolutely love in a screenplay are 1) Show me something I haven’t seen before. And 2) Give me a deep compelling mythology that I know you know intimately. This script nailed both.
THE LINE OF DEMARCATION – EVERY SCRIPT LISTED BELOW THIS LINE IS WORTH READING
15 – Old Time Hockey
7 votes
Kevin Jakubowski
Genre: Comedy
Logline: A forty-three-year-old snowplow driver decides to get his high school hockey team back together to play a state championship game.
From Review: It takes courage to write a script like this because, let’s be honest, these types of scripts aren’t in favor these days. With that said, I’m constantly telling you guys to write AGAINST the grain, not with it.
14 – Boy Fall From The Sky
9 votes
Hunter Toro
Genre: True Story
Logline: An anxious playwright finds himself tangled in a web of deceit, injury, and intellectual property as he adapts his first Broadway musical, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark. Inspired by a true story.
From Review: I don’t like true stories. But if you’re going to write one, this is the exact type of story you want to re-tell. It’s big, it’s weird, it’s chaotic, and let’s be honest – it’s funny to watch something fail so spectacularly.
13 – Stakehorse
47 votes
Justin Piasecki
Genre: Crime
Logline: A racetrack veterinarian who runs an off-the-books ER for criminals finds his practice and life in jeopardy when he’s recruited for his patient’s heist.
From Review: if you’ve got a character piece that doesn’t have a hook, consider turning it into a crime film. Cause it all of a sudden becomes a million times more marketable. It’s one of those few times that crime does pay.
12 – Boxman
7 votes
Adam Yorke
Genre: Thriller
Logline: After a botched bank heist leaves nineteen people locked inside a state-of-the-art vault, the FBI recruits the world’s foremost box-man from federal prison so he can break them out before they suffocate inside.
From Review: The attention to detail, the deep research that went into the safe-cracking, the multilayered story, the clever subplots (there’s an “inside man” in the vault), and the fun central plotline (will this safe-cracker both save 19 lives AND free himself from prison) combined for a script that is worthy of producing.
11 – Chaperones
10 votes
Sarah Rothschild
Genre: Horror/Comedy
Logline: A single dad tries to bond with his teenage daughter by chaperoning her field trip, only to have to save the world (and possibly her virginity) when an ancient evil is unleashed.
From Review: This script is actually good and if you’re into these types of movies, read it. It’s a great template for how to approach this genre with just the right balance of humor, horror, character, and craft.
10 – Sundown
8 votes
Nick Hurwitch
Genre: Horror
Logline: Monsters that roam in daylight keep a small, rural family confined to a nocturnal lifestyle. But when their son starts to question the monsters’ existence, his parents must see how far they’re willing to go to keep him safe.
From Review: Get ready for a nifty little twist.
9 – The Nowhere Game
9 votes
Alex Pototsky
Genre: Thriller
Logline: Two young women are kidnapped, brought deep into the woods, given a head start, and then hunted down by their sadistic captor all for the pleasure of the online fans of “The Nowhere Game.”
From Review: I’m really happy that I came across this script because it’s a wonderful reminder that if you can tell a simple story well, you’re a screenwriter.
8 – Blood Rush
11 votes
Andrew Ferguson
Genre: Action/Horror
Logline: A Miami cop joins a secret Black Ops team who are fighting a gang war against a mysterious, possibly even supernatural, opponent.
From Review: Every group of characters, whether it be a group of 2 characters like Training Day, three characters like Challengers, or a group of characters, like Knives Out, has a dynamic. And how little or how extensively you explore that dynamic can be the difference between a boring movie and an exciting one.
7 – The Peasant
12 votes
Will Dunn
Genre: Period/Thriller
Logline: In the 14th Century, a lone shepherd rages against a company of mercenary knights after they ransack his peaceful peasant community, proving that he is more than he seems.
From Review: It appears that this script was (smartly) written to become a franchise. There are so many John Wick clones these days, how do you separate yourself? You separate yourself in the way that I told you to at the beginning of this review. Jump back 800 years or so. That world is so different from ours today that you can literally copy the exact same template as John Wick and it feels like a completely different movie.
6 – Runner
13 votes
Logline: A high-end courier has three hours to transport a liver from LAX to a Santa Barbara hospital to a dying seven-year-old girl with the rarest blood type on the planet while contending with the head of the Southland’s most dangerous crime syndicate, who needs the organ to survive.
Tommy White & Miles Hubley
From Review: There’s this scene around page 35 where Hank and Ben are pulled over by these bad guys. The scene just sits there in its suspense, soaking the silence up, as we wait for the bad guys to move. What are they going to do? That was the peak of the screenplay for me. The story AND the writing were firing on all cylinders.
5 – The Masque of the Red Death
13 votes
Charlie Polinger
Logline: The long-lost twin sister of a Duchess infiltrates the kingdom’s walls, impersonating her dead sister, who, unbeknownst to the kingdom, fell victim to the fast-rising killer pandemic known as “The Red Death.”
From Review: It’s also built on a powerful storytelling device – LYING. Lying is a very powerful engine in and of itself because it requires characters to hide things. And that’s always fun to watch.
4 – People Walk Dogs Late At Night In The Suburbs
7 votes
Drake Wootton
Genre: Drama/Thriller
Logline: A charming high school math teacher-about to be a father-comes up with a plan to course correct his life after having an affair with his student.
From Review: This is the closest script I’ve seen to matching the power, the character-exploration, and tone of one of my favorite movies, American Beauty. It has the potential to be that good.
3 – 10/24/02
16 votes
Genre: Sci-Fi
Logline: Told in real-time, a man who recently broke into Area 51 stops at a motel and begins to execute his plan to send the incredible footage he took to the five biggest news sources in the country.
From Review: There’s another thing going on here that’s important to note for anyone writing a single location low-character-count screenplay. It has to feel like you don’t have enough time to tell your story. It can’t feel like you’re trying to fill time up.
2 – Roses
8 votes
Evan Twohy
Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline: A married man takes his girlfriend on a romantic getaway to a villa. There is a swimming pool.
From Review: The genius of this script is that it never stops leaning into its unique premise. It keeps going back to that swimming pool well.
1 – Bad Boy (newsletter review)
49 votes
Travis Braun
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A rescue dog suspects his loving new owner is a serial killer.
From Review: Braun then turbo-charges the writing by keeping it “vertical.” What that means is he keeps the paragraphs as short as possible and minimizes his sentence length. This ensures that the eyes keep moving down the page, which gives us less time to talk ourselves out of that suspension of disbelief.
