Keeping with the theme of lists this week, I’m going to share with you my ten favorite scripts of the year. These are scripts that I read this year and not, necessarily, scripts that were written this year.

One of the defining tools for me to be able to identify a good script is, do I remember it three months later. Just like movies, sometimes you can see something and enjoy it in the moment, yet that movie quickly evaporates from your brain. You can’t even remember a scene from it two months later.

So as I was going back through all my reviews this year, I was surprised at a few of the high grades I gave scripts because I could barely remember them now. Meanwhile, all the scripts here have moments or characters that are tattooed on my brain. They’ve stayed with me.

I tried to find a consistent theme to all the picks, but unfortunately, they can’t be distilled down into one unifying lesson. The scripts do, however, hit key categories that tend to do well with me, and with professional readers in general.

Those are…

A really likable main character.
A really interesting/weird main character.
A really fun concept that stands out from the pack.
A well-plotted story that moves along at a brisk pace.

Are you ready? As always, if you’re interested in reading these scripts, go ahead and ask in the comments. Someone usually has them. If you still can’t find them, you can e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com

Let’s do it!

NUMBER 10

Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel by Michael Shanks
A man wakes up trapped in a mysterious hotel room. All alone in a mind-bending prison, his only chance for escape is through teamwork… with himself.

Thoughts: I read so many scripts that are clearly desperate directors trying to come up with the cheapest best idea possible that entails one room and one actor. Most of these scripts can barely get past page 10 and still be interesting. But Hotel Hotel Hotel Hotel manages to keep throwing weird plot developments at you that keep the story fresh and fun. It’s one of the more inventive scripts I’ve read.

NUMBER 9

Classified by Andrew Deutschman and Jason Pagan
A mysterious terrorist takes over a top secret U.S. mountain military base that contains within it every ancient artifact that the U.S. has ever collected.

Thoughts: One of the flashier projects that was purchased this year. This script represents the pure unadulterated fun that is going to the movies. It evokes the kinds of feelings you got when you went to see Jurassic Park for the first time. It’s got some of that high concept old movie swagger to it. It’s sort of an imperfect script in a way. But it’s so darn fun, you overlook its weaknesses.

NUMBER 8

Van Helsing by Jon Spaihts & Eric Heisserer (newsletter review)
Famed vampire hunter, Van Helsing, is searching for his white whale, Dracula, but is thrown for a loop when he realizes he has a much bigger foe.

Thoughts: This screenwriting super-team wrote a script that’s even more fun than Classified! I always say that it’s the key creative choices you make in a story that decide its fate. And Van Helsing makes a key creative choice to go away from what would be the most obvious direction of the film, and in the process, creates something much better. This should’ve been the movie Universal used to begin their Monsterverse.

NUMBER 7

Challengers by Justin Kuritzkes
Two former best friends, at opposite ends of their sport’s success spectrum, take each other on in a match for the ages in front of the woman they both love.

Thoughts: Luca Guadagnino has hit a speed bump with his latest film (Bones and All). So the decision to follow that up with a tennis movie, the sports genre that has yet to produce a classic film, isn’t looking so great. But Challengers is definitely the most unexpected script on this list. It’s hard to categorize because it seems to drift in and out of sub-genres. Sometimes it’s a tennis film, sometimes it’s a drama, sometimes it’s a sexually erotic flick. But it’s that weird combination of elements that make it such a memorable read. Can’t wait to see how this film comes out.

NUMBER 6

The Bee Keeper by Kurt Wimmer
When his elderly neighbor is duped out of her entire life savings by online scammers and subsequently commits suicide, a bee keeper goes on a rampage to take the scammers down.

Thoughts: Is there a sale that had more buzz in 2022 than this one? Come on, I had to do it. What I love about Kurt Wimmer is he writes these premises that are right on the border of being ridiculous, but because his craft is so tight, he can walk right up to that line and never fall over it. We’ve got an entire agent showdown scene in this script where the agents use bee puns. And yet it works. It’s crazy. Maybe the most fun script I read all year.

NUMBER 5

Drive Away Dykes by Ethan & Tricia Coen
Two lesbians, one slutty, the other conservative, head down to Florida on a road trip, unknowingly carrying a high profile suitcase that belongs to some very bad people.

Thoughts: Never EVER count out a Coen Brother. This is the rare script that follows the cheap Hollywood formula of combining an over-the-top character and a super-reserved character, but leans into the authenticity of each, allowing their relationship to feel genuine as opposed to ridiculous. Also, this script has the best dialogue in the top 10. Not surprising when you have a Coen Brother manning the typewriter.

NUMBER 4

Horsegirl by Lauren Meyering
A unique young woman enters a hobbyhorse dance competition that she’s way too old for while dealing with her mother’s cancer struggle.

Thoughts: Weirdest character in the top 10 by a country mile. I know some of you didn’t like the main character. But here’s my rebuttal to you. You REMEMBER this main character. And you will continue to remember her for many months to come. Do I have to remind you how difficult it is to create even one memorable character in screenwriting? Newbies can write six scripts averaging 20 characters a script and not write a single memorable character. So when someone figures out a way to create an impossible to forget character, that’s worth something in screenwriting. And, also, I just thought this was a tragic story. It really stays with you emotionally.

NUMBER 3

Mercury by Stefan Jaworski
A ride-share driver who’s just purchased his dream car, a 1969 Ford Mercury Cyclone, goes on the Tinder date from hell.

Thoughts: Best plotted screenplay of the bunch. If you want to know how to keep a screenplay moving from page 1 to page 100, read this script right now. Pay attention to everything Jaworski does because he knows how to make you turn the page. And it’s not just in-script decisions. He purposefully came up with this idea because he knew it would allow him to create a fast-moving plot. He planned ahead. Too many writers pick slow ideas and try to create urgency around them. It doesn’t work. If you want your script to move, you gotta pick concepts like Mercury.

NUMBER 2

Air Jordan by Alex Convery (newsletter review)
In 1984, an out-of-shape bulldog of a sports executive at a small shoe company called Nike attempts to sign the hottest basketball player out of college, Michael Jordan.

Thoughts: It’s Hustle meets Jerry Maguire. Which is a great pitch. It’s also a great script to study to see how to write a fast read. But, unlike Mercury, there are no action sequences here. It’s just a guy trying to get a deal done. But the choices the writer makes – such as making the action description super lean so all the pages read fast – and being so dialogue focused, which also helps the script read fast. This is another writer who understands the burden a reader goes through and does everything within his power to make the script as accessible as possible to anyone who opens it. Plus it’s just a really great underdog story.

NUMBER 1

Galahad by Ryan J. Condal (newsletter review)
One of the Knights of the Rounds table, Galahad, must fight for his life when he is erroneously accused of assassinating the king.

Thoughts: Relentless. Brutal. Intense. Not afraid to offend. Not afraid to take chances. This script literally does everything that every writer is terrified to do today. So it’s not surprising that it was written and sold back in 2008. But this script was a revelation to me in that Condal wrote it before our society turned into a big giant p-word. And you can see how fearlessness – which is something all screenwriters used to have and should have – creates much better material. We need to go back to this fearless place if we’re going to start writing good scripts again. Cause everybody’s writing afraid now and art doesn’t work when you’re afraid. It only works when you’re bold. Even beyond that, though, it’s a killer concept with some killer execution. This is what a spec script should look like.

Darnit, I was going to release the newsletter today and have that be it. But now the Black List has come out and you know the game here at Scriptshadow. Once the Black List is out, I have to go over each and every one of the loglines! I have to make grand pronouncements, ignorant quips, praise certain concepts, shake my head at others. It’s a thing here at the site. Looks like I’ll have to release the newsletter tomorrow.

Okay, let’s get into it!

25 votes
Pure by Catherine Schetina
Obsessed with food purity, Hannah’s trip to her sister’s destination wedding descends into madness when she contracts a mysterious foodborne illness that threatens to destroy her from within.

Thoughts: Points for a unique conflict at the center of the story. I’ve never heard of an idea built around a foodborne illness. I’m a little frustrated as to the vagueness. It seems like this could be a horror script? That she turns into a zombie or something. Need more info!

22 votes
Court 17 by Elad Ziv
An over-the-hill tennis pro, trying to salvage her career, finds herself stuck playing the first round of the US Open over and over again against one of the top players in the world. The only way to stop the loop is to win the match, a seemingly impossible task due to how overmatched she is.

Thoughts: This one I have some history with as I helped Elad develop the original version of the screenplay. I’m still in love with the idea of a tennis player who gets trapped in a living hell of having to play the same unbeatable player over and over again. But it looks like the script has changed significantly since I left it as the main character is now a woman as opposed to a man. I was resistant to this choice when we were working on it (it was discussed) because I felt like ego needed to be a big part of the main character. And ego is more of a male thing. But maybe it was the female lead decision that put it over the top with voters. Who knows? Thanks to everyone here who read this script and gave notes on it.  I know it helped me see the script’s weaknesses better at the time and I know it was helpful to Elad as well. You are welcome to discuss it in the comments.  Do not feel like you need to be nice.  There is no preferential treatment here!  I still think it could be the greatest tennis movie ever made but, as Elad and I discussed at the time, the bar for that honor is pretty low, lol.

22 votes
Pumping Black by Haley Bartels
A desperate cyclist and his charismatic new team doctor concoct a dangerous training program in order to win the Tour de France. But as the race progresses and jealous teammates, suspicious authorities, and the racer’s own paranoia close in, they must take increasingly dark measures to protect both his secret and his lead.

Thoughts: Look at this. Two sports scripts in the top 3! Is this a new trend? The logline reads like a true story chronicling Lance Armstrong’s plight. But I would much rather this be a fictional movie as you have so much more leniency to make it cool. I like the hint of “increasingly dark measures.” Now you’re talking my language.

21 votes
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
An 18-year-old pregnant pizza delivery girl falls into an obsession with a stay-at-home mother who is new to the neighborhood.

Thoughts: A modern day Juno? I like the oddness of this logline. There’s something ironic about an 18 year old pregnant delivery girl. It’s not exactly who you expect to be delivering your pizza. And I love weird stalker movies. This could be good.

20 votes
Beachwood by Briggs Watkins & Wes Watkins
Shunned by elite society as a member of the gig economy, a sociopathic dog walker infiltrates an exclusive L.A. community with designs of reaching the top of the neighborhood’s social ladder.

Thoughts: Okay, this is a good logline. It’s built around an underdog. And what do we always say here at Scriptshadow? Everybody likes underdogs. Plus it looks like a fun ride – seeing if this person can start as a dog walker and end up being some sort of rich tech titan.

19 votes
A Guy Goes To Therapy by Shane Mack
When an emotionally stunted townie with no direction is left by his longtime girlfriend, he has no choice but to turn to an option he would have never considered: Therapy. As a result, his entire existence is thrown into flux and his life gets a whole lot worse before it can get better.

Thoughts: This one might be okay. There’s a little bit of irony in the concept. Townies aren’t “therapy” types. That tends to be reserved for the upper middle class and above. Liberal elites with rich people problems. So I like that contrast there. Are the stakes high enough here? That would be my question.

19 votes
Madden by Cambron Clark
After being forced into retirement by the Oakland Raiders, fiery former NFL head coach John Madden teams up with a mild-mannered Harvard programmer to rewrite his fading legacy by building the world’s first football video game. Based on a true story.

Thoughts: Wow! Three sports scripts in the top seven! The return of the sports movie!? Credit Adam Sandler and Hustle, I suppose, for opening the town’s mind up to sports film. I know everybody who loves sports and video games holds Madden Football up as the GOAT. I’m just not feeling this one. The creation of a video game? Not to be rude but who cares?

18 votes
Dying for You by Travis Braun
A low-level worker on a spaceship run by a dark god must steal the most powerful weapon in the universe to save his workplace crush.

Thoughts: You had me at spaceship! Our first sci-fi script of the list. I’m down with that. Looks like we’re looking at a sci-fi comedy, though. I’m not as excited about that. Just because comedy is so freaking hard and I can’t remember the last script I read that made me laugh out loud. But I’m willing to give this one a shot. Cause of the spaceship, of course.

18 votes
Sang Froid by Michael Basha
After a botched delivery of fresh blood, a world weary vampire and a pregnant nurse team up to rob a hospital of their supply.

Thoughts: The real question here is… is this as good as Vampire in Silicon Valley? This is a classic example of why the Black List needs to add genres. Cause I don’t know if this is a comedy, action, dark comedy, or drama script. I guess “world weary” implies comedy. But I still need more information to judge this one.

Context: Vampire in Silicon Valley is a logline ChatGLC came up with when I asked it to for a comedy about vampires.  Here’s the logline it gave me – In the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, a young and successful entrepreneur discovers that he is a vampire. As he struggles to maintain his humanity while navigating the cutthroat world of tech startups, he must keep his true identity hidden while dealing with the challenges of being a vampire in the modern age. With the help of his quirky and eccentric team, he must find a way to use his vampire powers to succeed in the competitive world of tech while also staying true to himself.

17 votes
Baby Boom by Jack Waz
When her sister’s gender reveal party triggers the apocalypse, a woman and her husband have to prove to themselves, and the world, that they’re responsible enough to save it.

Thoughts: This one made me giggle. I love the online backlash against gender reveal parties. I think it’s hilarious. If you’ve never seen the viral video of the dad who finds out he’s having a girl instead of a boy during their gender party and he has a fit, you gotta watch it. It’s hilarious. And I love that someone has taken that premise to the extreme and made one of these trigger the apocalypse. This could be really fun.

17 votes
Jambusters by Filipe Coutinho
A mystery about what paper jams can teach us about life. After an inexperienced detective starts investigating a death at the Paper Jam department of a major corporation on the verge of its centennial, she unwittingly embarks on a life-altering spiritual journey that unearths her small town’s dark secrets.

Thoughts: Now this concept I can dig. This reminds of the Black List of old. A weird idea. But still intriguing. A paper jam mystery? I am so in on this one!

17 votes
White Mountains by Becky Leigh & Mario Kyprianou
After an interracial couple in the 1960s has a horrifying encounter with a UFO, they set out to discover if it actually happened, or if it is just a case of folie à deux–madness for two. Based on the true story of Barney and Betty Hill.

Thoughts: You know that if it has to do with UFOs, I’m there. I’m actually really surprised at the list so far. A lot of these ideas are right up my alley. I’m not thrilled that it’s a true story UFO flick. But Betty and Barney Hill is one of the more interesting stories in UFO lore. There were a lot of layers to this one, starting with the fact that they were an interracial couple back at a time when it was really hard to be an interracial couple and, therefore, bringing attention to themselves was a dangerous move and yet they risked it because they believed they saw something extraterrestrial and that the world needed to know about it.

16 votes
Goat by Zack Akers & Skip Bonkie
A promising first-round draft pick is invited to train at the private compound of the team’s legendary but aging quarterback. Over one week, the rising star witnesses the horrific lengths his hero will go to to stay at the top of his game.

Thoughts: What is going on right now!?? Another sports script!? Definitely a trend at this point. I like this concept because it shows you that moving away from the expected setup is usually the better thing to do. Normally, this movie would play out on the team during a season. But it becomes a lot more intimate when it’s just two people all by themselves. It’s almost like the sports version of Ex Machina. Another promising entry!

16 votes
Resurfaced by Alyssa Ross
After Michael Phelps cements his status as the greatest Olympian of all time, he struggles to build a life and identity for himself outside the pool.

Thoughts: Okay, now things are just getting eerie. More sports! Another smart angle from a writer. If you show Michael Phelps winning a bunch of medals, it’s going to be boring. The more interesting story is, what is your life like when your entire childhood and young adulthood was built around a sport, you conquered that sport, and then retired at age 30. What do you do in life after that? I think that’s an interesting question.

15 votes
Oh The Humanity by Gillian Weeks
A dark comedy about the Hindenburg Disaster; or, the mostly true story about one of the biggest f–kups in history, the assholes who tried to cover it up, and the female gossip reporter who made some Nazis very angry.

Thoughts: You gotta love when a logline starts with, “A dark comedy about the Hindenburg Disaster.” We do have some unnecessary capitalization here in this logline. But I’m going to pin that on some assistant to the manager, not the writer. First time I’ve seen the f-word in a Black List logline. The Hindenburg will always be must-see TV so I’m curious about this one.

15 votes
There You Are by Brooke Baker
When a non-confrontational playwright loses her engagement ring, she must travel through Italy to get it back with a man who was supposed to be just a one-night stand, discussing love and lying along the way.

Thoughts: Hmmm… I have mixed thoughts on this one. I like the irony of someone who’s about to get married having to look for her ring with the man she just slept with. Although, unless the writer uses some high-tech writing wizardry, I suspect that this protagonist will be very hard to root for.

15 votes
Viva Mexico by Miguel Flatow
When a washed-up superhero gets betrayed by a Mexican government, he must lead a populist social movement to fight the Narcos, topple the government, and free the people.

Thoughts: Can’t say this is my favorite logline of the bunch. More bluntly, it’s my least favorite. I guess taking down the Narcos is good. But since this logline lacks specificity, it just feels like a generic movie in my head.

14 votes
Colors of Authority by Kevin Sheridan
Escaping his father’s shadow, James Sexton, the son of a Sheriff in Alabama joins the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department with lofty ambitions of one day becoming Sheriff himself. But these dreams quickly sour when he realizes that the department he serves is mired in corruption and a systemic culture of moral depravity. At war with powerful figureheads within the department, threats of death looming from all sides, James betrays the department’s code of silence in order to incriminate his father’s close friend, Sheriff Lee Baca. This is based on a true story.

Thoughts: We officially have the longest logline of the list so far. This is also the most serious sounding script. And it looks like the most ambitious script. There are a lot of things that it looks like the writer is trying to do in this story. Hopefully he can pull it off but I probably won’t read this one unless someone I know tells me it’s great.

14 votes
The Midnight Pool by Jonathan Easley
Burdened by the loss of his wife to a suicide cult, an embittered investigative journalist infiltrates an elite secret society, only to find something far more sinister.

Thoughts: I like elite secret societies. But not so much something “far more sinister.” I’m not a fan of those vague logline endings. There are a lot of scripts like this out there. So I’m going to reserve judgement until I read the script. Hopefully there’s a unique voice or a unique angle to the story that differentiates it from all the imitators.

14 votes
They Came From a Broken World by Vanessa Block
The year is 1955. The small town of Boon Falls has provided a local forest as refuge to aliens fleeing their war-torn planet. When Mia–young woman dealing with the trauma of her mother’s death–stumbles upon an Alien woman who needs her help, a series of haunting revelations in the refugee forest leads her to an unimaginable truth.

Thoughts: I love aliens. This feels, however, like one of those wishy-washy not-really-about-aliens type scripts that’s more about the metaphor than a riveting story. Not saying that dooms the script. But it’s much harder to makes those scripts pop. I’ll read anything with aliens in it, though.

13 votes
Dumb Blonde by Todd Bartels & Lou Howe
The origin story of Dolly Parton, following her rise through the male-dominated music scene of late 1960s Nashville.

Thoughts: And we have a new least favorite logline of the entries so far. I feel like you can cut and paste these loglines and just add a new quasi formerly big celebrity each time. Dolly Parton does have her fans, though.

13 votes
Pikesville Sweep by Brendan McHugh
After a young, newly widowed janitor in a small mining village is unexpectedly elected Mayor, she navigates a new relationship with a mysterious man from the city and tries to determine how to use her new position of power to confront the corruption that has plagued the town for years.

Thoughts: This one doesn’t have that big shiny hook in it anywhere. Which means it’s an execution-dependent screenplay. It used to be that if one of these made the Black List, it was a really good script because it meant it was so good that it overcome its weak logline. But these days, that’s less the case. So I’m lukewarm on this entry.

13 votes
Wild by Michael Burgner
A young woman is determined to protect a thief on the run when he holes up in her small town, even if it means revealing a darker, more violent secret of her own.

Thoughts: Lots of dark secrets in this Black List! I hope everybody can see for themselves how the lack of a special attractor (or a “hook”) hurts a logline. When there are little to no unique elements in a logline, we’re less likely to want to read it. I’d argue this logline doesn’t have a single unique word in it.

12 votes
Clementine by David L. Williams
Set in real time, a Colombian mother barely escapes a pawn shop shootout and goes on the run from her violent ex-husband, a terrifying mob boss, and a bloodthirsty hitwoman sent to collect an overdue debt, all while trying to keep her diabetic daughter safe.

Thoughts: HEY! It’s longtime Scriptshadow reader and contributor, David Williams. So happy to see him on the list this year. The man had to run into a grumpy Carson each and every time he submitted scripts for Amateur Showdown. But regardless of whether he advanced in competitions or not, he was never bitter. He was the opposite. He was always positive. And I have no doubt in my mind that that’s why he’s on the list today. He’s a great example to screenwriters everywhere about what happens when you keep doing the work and you stay positive. Congrats David!

12 votes
Fog of War by Peter Haig
When a retired war journalist returns to the outpost where her son was stationed to investigate the mysterious circumstances surrounding his death, she uncovers unspeakable horrors.

Thoughts: Echoes of In The Valley of Elad here. And that’s why I’m worried about it. These dark super serious movies about investigating death are tough sells, especially in a time like this where everyone is looking for respite from all the darkness. The script will have to be really good to overcome this issue.

12 votes
Jingle Bell Heist by Abby McDonald
At the height of the holiday season, two strangers team up to rob one of New York’s most famous department stores while accidentally falling in love.

Thoughts: I like the irony of doing something bad on the ‘goodest’ holiday of the year. But, personally, as I’ve told you guys here before, I like my holiday movies to be heartwarming and uplifting. My favorite Christmas movie of all time is the ultimate heartwarmer, It’s a Wonderful Life. With that said, I’ll probably review this one before Christmas and, hopefully, it will prove me wrong.

12 votes
Let’s Go Again by Colin Bannon
When her domineering director makes her film the same scene 148 times on the final night of an exhausting shoot, actress Annie Long must fight to keep her own sanity as she tries to decipher what is real, and what is part of his twisted game.

Thoughts: One of the wildest writers out there right now. Definitely a guy who comes up with interesting concepts. This one is no different. It’s got a high concept feel and yet it’s completely original. Nobody’s ever written a movie like this before. That’s always a good sign. My only issue with Bannon is that his third acts get a little too wild for me. And this – “must fight to keep her own sanity” – sounds like it will continue that tradition.

12 votes
The Americano by Nico Bellamy & Chase Pestano
An everyday guy who accidentally starts working as a barista inside the CIA headquarters building gets lured into a spy mission by a beautiful secret agent, known only to him as Caramel Macchiato.

Thoughts: This logline made me chuckle. Again, guys, this is the power of irony in concept creation. When you think of something as big and sophisticated at the CIA, you don’t think about the fact that there’s a coffee shop inside the building. And baristas work there. It’s the perfect contrast. And the idea that one of these baristas gets recruited into a spy mission is really clever.

12 votes
The Boy Houdini by Matthew Tennant
New York, 1889. When young street urchin and aspiring magician Harry Houdini discovers a mysterious puzzle-box, he must use his talent for illusion and escape to unlock the box’s powerful secrets and keep it from the hands of a vengeful occult sorcerer hot on his tail.

Thoughts: Smart move to write a Houdini spec. Back in the 2000s, Houdini was a very popular subject in the spec world. But since none of scripts ever became movies, he fell out of fashion. However, he’s still a known property – an operating IP – and he’s an interesting guy whose life is perfect for movies, since he’s a magician. Color me curious.

11 votes
Match Cut by Will Lowell
While filming on location in Rome, a movie stuntman is mistaken for an infamous assassin, leading to 48 hours of madness as he’s chased through the city by both gangsters and police.

Thoughts: Okay, this is an example of a concept WITHOUT IRONY. Or maybe that’s a strong statement. It doesn’t have enough irony may be a better way of putting it. A movie stuntman is fully capable of running and fighting, shooting guns, and racing cars away from pursuers. So there’s little irony to the fact that he gets mistaken for an assassin. We all know he’s probably going to be okay since he does most of this stuff every day at work anyway. Maybe if they had said, “the world’s worst movie stuntman,” I’d be more interested.

11 votes
Mega Action Hit by Sean Tidwell
After Hollywood’s leading action star hits his head on set and wakes up thinking he’s a real-life action hero, he embarks on an international mission to track down a real stolen nuke before it’s too late.

Thoughts: This concept feels a little dated – like it could’ve conceived in 1998. But it is high concept. And it sounds a little funnier than Match Cut. It’s weird how The Black List always has two of these concepts back to back that are carbon copies of each other. It’s got to be because of some glitch in the voting process.

11 votes
Semper Maternus by Laura Kosann
On a private island off San Francisco, a nanny goes to work for a mother who is one of America’s most powerful tech entrepreneurs. Things slowly begin to devolve as the mother’s hyper-monitoring and surveillance become suffocating.

Thoughts: Another Ex Machina premise! And I’m not mad! I like these premises. They’re one of the most ideal setups for a budget-conscious movie. And I love nanny stories dating back to The Hand That Rocks The Cradle. Grab me a cradle on Amazon cause I’m down for this adventure.

11 votes
Subversion by Andrew Ferguson
When her family is abducted, a disgraced submariner must pilot a narco submarine to its destination in less than eight hours or her husband and daughter will be killed.

Thoughts: Andrew is a trusted member of the Scriptshadow newsletter and it looks like he’s been paying attention to my ramblings! As this script, more than any other script on the list, has the GSU in place! Nice job, Andrew!

11 votes
Total Landscaping by Woody Bess
A day in the life of the employees of Four Seasons Total Landscaping and its neighboring businesses on November 7th, 2020: the day an average, working-class strip mall in East Philadelphia became the focal point of the most divisive presidential election in American History.

Thoughts: I was thinking the other day. What we really need in movies right now? More than anything else? Is more politics. Cause I don’t think there’s enough. For those new to the site who don’t know me, I am emitting extreme amounts of sarcasm right now. I just can’t get pulled down into that depressing hole anymore. Concepts like this literally make me physically ill. With that said, I know many people in the industry can’t get enough of this stuff. So don’t go by my assessment of these concepts.

10 votes
Cheat Day by Emma Dudley
When a young woman in a decade-long heterosexual relationship realizes she needs to explore her bisexuality, she and her boyfriend institute a “Cheat Day:” 24 hours in which they can do whatever–and whomever – before deciding whether to get engaged or break up.

Thoughts: Echoes of Hall Pass, which should’ve been better than it was (million dollar spec that movie, by the way, from the original Project Greenlight winner, Pete Jones). What I loved about that movie was how the guys were so excited to have their hall pass but then they couldn’t get laid if they paid someone. The problem with these concepts is always the same. The guys given the chance to be with someone else never actually do. Someone needs to write a version of this concept where they actually have sex with other people. That’s where you’re going to find a truly compelling movie.

10 votes
Going for Two by Kevin Arnovitz
An openly gay NFL quarterback finds his meticulously-planned life upended on and off the field when he falls for a charming high school teacher during the most important season of his career.

Thoughts: Well I can definitely see why this made the Black List. But I’m not reading it unless it’s the real life story of Bachelor fence-hopper Colton Underwood. That’s a biopic I can get behind. No pun intended.

10 votes
Popular by Marley Schneier
GOP strategist Lee Atwater won the presidency for George H.W. Bush in 1988, and his campaign changed politics forever–and gave him the worst reputation in America. Now, Lee is on his deathbed, and he needs to tell God his side of the story… before it’s too late.

Thoughts: It took waaaaay too long to get to another political script. At most, it should’ve taken 1 slot. The fact that I had to wait this long is a crime. Can’t wait to not read this one.

10 votes
Ravenswood by Evan Enderle
To save her friend, a maid in a decaying manor must unravel the secrets of its inhabitants while confronting spirits, her own terrifying abilities and the very real horrors of Depression-era America lurking outside the door.

Thoughts: If this is a ghost story, it’s one of the most roundabout ways of describing a ghost story that I’ve ever come across. But if it’s got ghosts, I’m in! By the way, note how much better those high ranking concepts were compared to what we’re getting down here in the lower ranks. There’s clearly a difference in quality.

10 votes
The House in the Crooked Forest by Ian Shorr
A mother and her young son fleeing Nazi-occupied Poland are forced to take shelter from a blizzard in an isolated manor, where they discover the Nazis may be the least of their worries.

Thoughts: Ian is a longtime Black List contributor and he tends to have high concept ideas. This one is no exception. My only issue is that he should tell us what’s in the manor. Let us decide if it’s worse than Nazis. We shouldn’t have to take the logline’s word for it.

10 votes
The Pack by Rose Gilroy
A group of documentarians braves the remote wilderness of Alaska in an effort to save a nearly extinct species of wolves. When the crew is brought back together at a prestigious awards ceremony, tensions flare as a deadly truth threatens to unravel their work. The team lived through the harsh elements of the wild but will a secret they share survive the night?

Thoughts: What. Is. THE SECRET!? It’s not a logline unless you tell us what the secret it. The secret is the hook. You can’t deny people that.

10 votes
Vitus by Julian Wayser
In 1518, a Dancing Plague overtook the city of Strasbourg in the Holy Roman Empire. Hundreds of people danced themselves to death over the course of a summer and no one knows why. Encircling medieval medicine, the uncanny, and the origins of mass hysteria, Vitus is a wildly visual exploration of a crucial (but little-known) moment in European history.

Thoughts: Highly curious about this one. I’ve heard of the dancing plague before. I always thought it was really weird. Whenever you have something this bizarre, it opens the door to tell a story about it. So kudos to Wayser for identifying the potential behind this weird historic moment.

10 votes
What We Become by Amy Jo Johnson
A successful author/wife/mother plans a trip to a bucolic island to crack her next book and finds herself in a surprising situation.

Thoughts: The Scriptshadow part of me wants to grumble about how the logline needs to tell us what the surprising situation is. However, I want to share a quick story with you.  When I first moved to LA, I was out one night with a buddy and we stumbled upon a couple playing pool. The girl, shockingly, was Amy Jo Johnson (Power Rangers). The guy, it turned out, was not her boyfriend, but rather, her brother. We played a game of pool together and Amy was the sweetest most fun person you’ve ever met, joking and giving us crap the entire game. To this day, I kick myself for not getting her number but I just figured, what would a Hollywood actress want to do with me? These days, I know that you never know unless you ask! So you know what? This is one logline where I don’t care that the writer didn’t tell us what the hook was. Amy Jo Johnson, you get a pass!  Also, apropos of nothing, are you single?

10 votes
Who Made The Potato Salad? By Kyle Drew
A family’s Christmas dinner goes awry when a xenomorphic demon starts to duplicate and imitate each member of the family. What does it want? To show them their greatest fears.

Thoughts: I read these scripts all the time and while they make pretty good loglines, trying to write them is bit of a demonic task in its own right. They all end up reading the same. So you have to have a very unique voice to make them work.

9 votes
It’s a Wonderful Story by Alexandra Tran
In the aftermath of WWII, a traumatized Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart use the making of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE to attempt to find a way back into normalcy.

Thoughts: It’s like the Black List is reading my mind now! I told it my favorite Christmas movie was It’s a Wonderful Life, then 10 loglines later, it’s giving me an It’s A Wonderful Life script. Wait a minute. Does this have something to do with AI? Is this ChatGTP? Has the singularity almost begun? We are all in the Matrix.

9 votes
The Sister by Alexander Thompson
Identical twins Aurora and Gabrielle live in a secluded commune where all twins are raised knowing that in adolescence, one of the two of them will abruptly turn into a terrifying monster. Discovering the full truth of their situation one fateful night, the sisters plot their escape into an outside world they know little about.

Thoughts: Getting some strong young adult novel vibes here. I have issues with concepts where the buy-in is based more on the writer feeling like they’re granted an automatic buy-in rather than the buy-in actually making sense. It feels like the only reason one of the twins turns into a monster is because the writer needs that to happen for their story. I might be wrong. But unless there’s a believable reason for why that happens, this one probably isn’t for me.

8 votes
An Oakland Holiday by Yudho Aditya & Emma Dudley
When a neglected and lonely Southeast Asian Princess goes undercover in an Oakland high school to live out her dream of being a normal teen, she discovers that happy endings come with many hard lessons about life, love, and humility.

Thoughts: I don’t know about you. But many of my dreams start off with the words, “An Oakland Holiday.” This is a tried and true concept. Special Person hides out in normal society. It’s samey. But it usually works. And this one has a slightly different angle with the Asian connection.

8 votes
Better Luck Next Time by Kristen Tepper
Two best friends run a successful underground service taking womens’ toxic exes on humiliating dates, but their friendship is put to the ultimate test when an old mark plots his revenge.

Thoughts: I feel like I’ve heard this one before. Either someone on the site pitched it to me or we’re all drawing ideas from the same popular culture pot and none of us is as original as we think we are.

8 votes
I Love You Now And Forever by Robert Machoian
After exhausting all financial options to save their dying daughter, Frank and Abby are forced into a final act of desperation: rob a local bank.

Thoughts: What would you do to save someone you love? Always an interesting question and, therefore, potent fuel for a movie. However, robbing a bank seems pretty standard. Didn’t John Boyega just make a movie with this exact same setup. Denzel has also made one before. John Q I think it was called? Not original enough for my taste.

8 votes
Jerry! By Greg Roque
One man ran what was declared to be the worst TV show of all-time. Responsible for the degradation of American society. All while topping Oprah in the ratings. This is the over the top, insane true story of how Jerry Springer went from ambitious young attorney, to the Mayor of Cincinnati, to the undisputed King of Trash TV. And along the way, accidentally helping to create the world we live in today.

Thoughts: You know how I feel about biopics. But Jerry Springer was a pretty funny footnote in American TV history. They would literally just let people fight each other on stage, lol. Imagine if they tried to air that show now.

8 votes
Pop by James Morosini
A kid blackmails his favorite pop star into being his best friend.

Thoughts: Shortest logline on the list. It also covers familiar territory. The last few years we’ve had movies about people blackmailing or stalking social media personalities. A pop star feels like a 2003 movie. But, it all comes down to execution. If the script’s good, it will make up for it.

8 votes
The Demolition Expert by Colin Bannon
Blasting out of prison after being double crossed by the Mastermind of a heist, a Demolition Expert uses his genius with explosives to enact revenge on the Caper Crew who set him up while simultaneously picking up the pieces of his personal life.

Thoughts: Why do I get the feeling that Michael Bay is going to take a serious look at this one?

8 votes
The Homestead by Bradley Kaaya Jr.
A troubled bi-racial, inner-city teen is sent to live with his white, conservative grandfather on his ranch for the summer. Things take a turn when the two are forced to overcome their generational and racial differences while defending the ranch from a ruthless, backcountry gang.

Thoughts: I had no idea they were making a real life adaptation of Webster.

8 votes
The Twelve Dancing Princesses by Becca Gleason
A horror thriller spin on the Brothers Grimm fairytale in which 12 female college students fight against a group of dude bros trying to take over their female-only space.

Thoughts: Whoa, these last couple entries are like taking a time machine back to the 2019 Black List! Down with the dude bros! Actually, “Down with the Dude Bros” is a better title.

8 votes
Undo by Will Simmons
A down-on-his-luck former getaway driver comes into possession of a mysterious watch that allows the user to go back in time by one minute. As he starts to uncover its uses and gets pulled into one last heist by his former crew, a dangerous group after the technology gets on his tail and will stop at nothing to get the watch back.

Thoughts: I’ve always been intrigued by mini time travel stories. My worry with them has always been that, not surprisingly, they feel too small. There *is* something to this idea, though. I think he needs to be a race car driver though, not a getaway driver. This is the year of sports scripts, right? It’d be cool if you could keep rewinding on the race course to correct your mistakes.

8 votes
Weary Ride The Belmonts by Josh Corbin
After staging his death many years ago, an aging gunslinger is forced to reunite with his outlaw daughter during the dying days of the west.

Thoughts: I could complain about the lack of a hook here. But Westerns rarely have hooks to them. So it’s one of those delios where you’re going to have to read the script to see if it’s good. Who’s going to take care of that?  Oh yeah, that’s me.  I am literally the only person who reads screenplays in Hollywood.

7 votes
42.6 years by Seth Reiss
After waking up from a failed experimental lifesaving procedure in which he was cryogenically frozen for 42.6 years, a young man realizes he wants his ex-girlfriend back. He’ll have to overcome the fact that while he hasn’t aged a day, she’s lived an entire life without him

Thoughts: Seth Reiss is one half of the writing team who wrote The Menu. And you guys know how much I liked that script. I’m trying to get a grip on the genre here. But “42.6” tells me that it’s probably a comedy. It’s certainly a unique idea, an update on Harold and Maude. Could be good!

7 votes
Break Point by Zachary Joel Johnson
Courted by colleges and sponsors alike, a burnt-out tennis prodigy fights to maintain dominance against her Academy rival as she hurtles toward the existential decision of turning Pro–a choice that will force her to double down on her dream or walk away from the future she’s fought for.

Thoughts: Tennis scripts are everywhere! And yet they still haven’t made a good tennis movie. Go figure. I’m looking for the unique attractor in this one. I’m slightly confused in that the main character seems young but they’re also a burnt out veteran? One thing I’m learning, though, is that women rule when it comes to tennis scripts. Sorry dudes!

7 votes
Caravan by Lindsay Michel
During the Tang Dynasty, a young Persian woman joins a Silk Road caravan to solve the mystery of her father’s disappearance‚ but must fight for survival when her fellow travelers realize there is a shapeshifting demon hiding in their midst.

Thoughts: Tennis and demons are the theme of Black List 2022. A tennis demon script anyone? If you’ve got a good idea, pitch it to me. I like the setting here. I don’t know much about it and that’s one of the things I like when I open a script. I like to learn about new things. Be taken to new places. So I’m willing to give this one a try.

7 votes
Gather the Ashes by Vikash Shankar
Two brothers, Dev and Siddharth, hope to break free of London’s foster care system when they inherit their estranged family’s old farmhouse in India, but they find something sinister lies in the roots of their family tree as they attempt to discover their past.

Thoughts: Another sinister thing hiding in the shadows. Secrets, demons, sinister things, too many double faults, dude-bros. I’m trying to keep up with the madness that is Black List 2022!

7 votes
Himbo by Jason Hellerman
A naive male stripper attempting to start his life over finds himself in the crosshairs of his boss’ increasingly violent divorce.

Thoughts: This one should give all of you hope because the writer doesn’t have a manager, an agent, or a producer. It made the Black List entirely on its own merit. How bout that!

7 votes
It’s Britney, B—ch by Cerina Aragones
A dramatic and musical character study of global pop icon Britney Spears, leading up to her very public unraveling at a Tarzana hair salon, and her recent courtroom victory to win her freedom back.

Thoughts: If someone didn’t write it, ChatGPT was going to. We finally got our Britney Spears biopic everyone. Stab me in the face baby one more time.

7 votes
Life of the Party by Julie Mandel Folly & Hannah Murphy
In this contemporary reimagining of Frankenstein, two teenage feminists struggle to create the perfect boyfriend, only to watch their experiment deteriorate as he succumbs to the ultimate perpetrator of casual high school misogyny: the football team.

Thoughts: This one sounds like it could be fun. A reimagining of Weird Science.

7 votes
Ripple by Max Taxe
When a time traveler starts meddling with the past just as Miles finally meets the love of his life, he must battle ever shifting timelines to find her again.

Thoughts: I’ll read anything with time travel but this logline is confusing. It doesn’t say in the first part of the logline that she disappears. So why does he need to find her again?

7 votes
Wildfire by Chaya Doswell
After accidentally starting a wildfire, 7-year-old Lu, mute and from an abusive home, slyly tricks Merribelle, a hardworking trans woman, into kidnapping her – sparking a beautifully unexpected bond with a devastating expiration date.

Thoughts: This one covers some huge topics. Muteness, abusiveness, a trans woman. And yet the thing I’m most hooked by is the wildfire.

6 votes
Below by Geoff Tock & Greg Weidman
Fresh out of a spell in prison a man attempts to set his life right by working a mysterious job that requires him to seek out life forms hidden amongst us.

Thoughts: Okay, I kinda dig this one. We’ve seen a lot of movies where people come out of prison and get blue collar jobs that they hate because they pay nothing. This throws a twist into that. A guy gets a job looking for hidden life forms. That’s up my alley.

6 votes
Black Dogs by Kieran Turner
Based on the novel by Jason Burhmester. In 1973, Led Zeppelin was robbed of nearly a quarter million dollars in cash while playing a series of concerts in New York City. The case was never solved. We follow four young friends from the streets of Baltimore as they attempt to pull off what is possibly the most brazen heist in Rock & Roll history.

Thoughts: I still think that script a Scriptshadow reader wrote about a heist of Jim Morrison’s grave was the best rock and roll heist script I’ve read. But this sounds pretty cool too. Although I wonder how people are going to sympathize with characters robbing beloved legends.

6 votes
Black Kite by Dan Bulla
After a devastating wildfire wipes out a small California town, a teenage girl is missing and presumed dead. A year later, an obsessive mother and cynical arson investigator begin to suspect that she’s still alive…and in the clutches of a predator.

Thoughts: Lot going on in this idea. I’m not sure if the variables all come together harmoniously. But it does feel like it’s going for it. As long as you’re going for it with your idea, you’re better off than writing something safe and neutral.

6 votes
Chatter by Chris Grillot
Stranded in a small Cajun town, a young mother battling a painkiller relapse must fight to save her daughter from a demonic Tooth Fairy.

Thoughts: I’m noticing with some of these lower ranked scripts, the loglines have buzzwords but they don’t come together nicely. But! “Chatter” does bring us another demon. I think we can safely say, at this point, it’s the year of the demon!

6 votes
Craigshaven by Nicole Ramberg
A troubled teen must confront a local legend when the reappearance of a missing classmate and a fabled ghost ship unravel clues to her own mother’s disappearance.

Thoughts: I would rebuild this logline to focus exclusively around the ghost ship if possible. I don’t think you can bring up a ghost ship casually in a logline (“there’s a missing person…. Oh and then there’s a ghost ship by the way…”)… It’s got to be the central focus.

6 votes
Eternity by Pat Cunnane
After death, everybody gets one week to choose where to spend eternity. For Joan, Larry, and Luke, it’s really a question of who to spend it with.

Thoughts: This choice is easy. Baby Yoda and ChatTPG.

6 votes
Marriage Bracket by Liv Auerbach & Daisygreen Stenhouse
Ten years after a group of girlfriends bet on which of them would be the last to get married, their adult lives and relationships are completely upended when they discover the $80 they drunkenly invested in Bitcoin is now worth $5.2 million.

Thoughts: A fun idea with a couple of problems. Bitcoin is no longer a positive word. But it is a cool way to create a ‘windfall’ storyline. Second problem is, what does a bet about who will be the last to get married have to do with investing money?

6 votes
The Seeker by Camrus Johnson
A childhood folktale comes to life when children of the neighborhood start to go missing after playing hide and seek. A group of friends known as “The Finder Four” set out to get answers, but instead, find themselves sucked into a fantasy fear-factor world with only one way out… Based on Daka Hermon’s Scholastic YA Novel, HIDE & SEEKER.

Thoughts: Concept gets a little too complicated as the logline goes on but kids going missing during hide and seek is a good idea.

6 votes
The Trap by Julie Lipson
Twin-sister trapeze artists wrestle their own inner demons amid the push-pull of career, stardom, and family, all while performing in the most harrowing production of their lives.

Thoughts: We’ve got our second set of twins on the list. This is the first trapeze concept on the Black List in over five years, if my memory serves me correctly. If this story explores the reality of being a trapeze artist, I’ll be into it. But if I read this and I know more about trapeze artists than the writer, we’ve got a problem on our hands. This is something that happens often, by the way. A writer will write about a topic and the reader will end up knowing more about it than they do. This can NEVER happen. You must be the extreme expert on your subject matter.

6 votes
You’re My Best Friend by Mary Beth Barone & Erin Woods
Lily is mature, thoughtful, artistic, and… awkward. Rosie is sweet, caring, and popular with dreams of being a star. When Lily breaks down in tears on her 15th birthday because she has no friends, her Aunt Beth (a hot shot at a big movie studio) devises a plan. Aunt Beth agrees to jump start Rosie’s acting career as long as she can convincingly play the role of a lifetime: Lily’s best friend. Aunt Beth has the scheme and Rosie has the talent. All they have to do is get away with it.

Thoughts: This feels a bit first-scripty. I’m not sure I understand the logline, to be honest. Which is a good lesson, by the way. A lot of people think that the more you write, the more clear your idea will be. When, in actuality, the opposite is true. The more you distill it down, the clearer it will be to the potential reader.

The scripts I’m most looking forward to are Pure, Beachwood, Baby Boom, Jambusters, White Mountains, Goat, Clementine, Let’s Go Again, Vitus, The Americano, Semper Maternus, Subversion, and Undo. I’m too close to Court 17 to be able to judge it objectively. What about you guys? What do you want to read???

If you’re interested in getting a logline consultation from me, they’re $25 and they include a 150-200 word analysis, a 1-10 rating for both concept and logline construction, and a logline rewrite. If you want a full screenplay consult, I offer that as well. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and we’ll get started right away!

Genre: Action/Thriller
Premise: When a violent, North Pacific storm traps two turbine techs on an offshore windmill, they must weather the storm overnight in order to survive.
Why You Should Read: Disaster films are tried-and-true blockbusters which always allure an international crowd. Now, let’s contain the threats of that disaster around a monstrous, yet claustrophobic structure that’s never been featured in a studio film. This location is susceptible to fires, explosions, destruction, and other electrifying outbursts that will make any action director salivate at the opportunity to get behind the camera. With a main cast of two, trapped in a battle between human nature versus mother nature, including hints of acrophobia, the most common fear, this movie will have any audience on the edge of their seats. GALE is an action-packed screenplay pitched as “Gravity on an offshore windmill”.
Writer: Taylor Hamilton
Details: 94 pages

If I’m being completely transparent, I knew this script would win the second I saw the logline. It was the only high concept idea where it felt like the writer truly understood what he was writing and how to convey it in logline form.

As much as writers hate them, I do think there’s value in learning how to write a logline. I’m not even talking about coming up with a concept. I’m talking about the physical construction of a logline, which boils down to introducing an interesting character, a special attractor, telling us what the big goal is, and what’s in the way of that goal.

Cause, to be clear, a movie idea and the construction of the logline are two different things. A movie idea is, “A dinosaur theme park.” A logline is, “A group of scientists get stuck inside a dinosaur theme park during a heavy storm and must escape before they’re mauled to death by the park’s relentless inhabitants.”

A logline helps you distill your idea down to its essence so you can tell if it’s a good idea or not. Typically, if there’s a hiccup in the logline, there’s a problem with the script itself. For example, if you have a cool main character, a cool strange attractor, a strong goal, but there doesn’t seem to be any conflict in your logline? Well, that probably means your script is going to be devoid of conflict.

If you’re someone who struggles with loglines, take half an hour a week and write up loglines for five movies you’re familiar with. Just to keep that muscle growing. It took me a good 300 reviews on this site before I became truly comfortable with writing loglines. It’s definitely something you have to practice. You can’t just wait until you write a script every year and that’s the only time you practice writing a logline. You’re going to be way out of your depth.

Anyway, I was right about Gale winning. But now the real work begins. Is the script itself good? Let’s find out!

25 year old Kamryn is a tomboy wind tech. She’s going to be the first female high ranking wind tech in all of America if she can pass the standard turbine climb test. 48 year old grizzled vet, Blake, is conducting the test, and even though Kamryn finishes on time, Blake doesn’t like the manner in which she did it and therefore fails her.

But that’s okay because back at headquarters in Portland, Oregon, the company CEO awards her the position anyway. Excited, Kamryn has a quick lunch with her fiancé to tell him the news. They both celebrate and discuss their upcoming wedding, which is happening in 48 hours!

Except that Kamryn is quickly shuttled back to headquarters where she’s told that her and Blake need to go out to an ocean turbine that’s locked up and fix it before a big storm arrives. The Department of Energy chair is visiting the site tomorrow and if he likes what he sees, he’s going to give the company a ton of funding.

Kamryn grumbles the whole way there. She just wants to get married. And it gets worse when they’re actually in the turbine and learn that a major part in the turbine’s construction is the wrong size. Which means this thing is a ticking time bomb. Oh, and it’s not helping that the huge storm outside is getting worse by the second.

So the two start the process of fixing the turbine only to realize that the storm is a lot heavier than they were told. Fixing soon transitions into surviving. And that’s looking less and less likely by the hour. Will they make it through the night? Or will the gale storm send them to a violent death in the sea?

The best thing about Gale is the specificity. The writer did a ton of research on this world and it feels highly authentic. Here’s a small clip from the script.

As I’ve already established, I like the concept a lot. It’s got movie poster written all over it and that gets me hotter than a fresh In and Out double-double.

Ironically, this becomes the script’s main problem. The description of the inside of the turbine is so technical and the conversations themselves are so technical, that we are often struggling to keep up with what’s going on.

I’ve found that, in these situations, you gotta use two tools. One is analogies. And two is clarity. Analogies help in situations that require difficult to visualize locations. I don’t know what a Nacelle is. So you gotta give me an analogy that clears it up for me.

On top of that, don’t be afraid to be straight up CLEAR AS F—K. Don’t be afraid to be overly on the nose. Don’t be afraid to write asides to the writer. “We’re in section 3 of the turbine. It looks like [this] and [that].” Go overboard with your clarity. Because let’s say that, best case scenario, someone is clear about what’s going in this story 75% of the time. That’s still a quarter of your movie they don’t understand.

And I would put my understanding closer to about 50. I understood what I was looking at 50 percent of the time. I didn’t understand what I was looking at the other 50.

There were numerous reasons for this, one of which was the use of mini-slugs. Mini-slugs are miniature slug lines that look like this: “LADDER – MOMENTS LATER.” Notice that they don’t have EXT or INT next to them. And, sometimes, scenes would last 10 pages long in this script. I would be so unclear about where we were that I wasn’t even sure if we were inside or outside. And because it had been so long since the last regular slug line, it wasn’t easy to find out without totally disrupting my read and going on a duck hunt for it.

I honestly don’t feel like I can accurately judge this script because unless it was ultra clear what was going on, I was struggling with all my might to picture what I was looking at. I loved the moments like the turbines detaching and falling into the ocean. Cause I could envision that. But when we’re in a nacelle near a holding room situated on a blast platform, I didn’t know what the heck I was looking at.

Which is unfortunate because the scenes had a lot of energy to them and I could tell, if I were watching this movie on the big screen, I would probably love it.

But this is one of the skills required for writing these types of movies. You have to be able to write visually and clearly. Even if you do that for 80% of the script, it’s still a failure. Cause you can’t have the reader not understand what’s going on 20% of the time. And I would put this script’s visual clarity at way lower than 80%.

Also, this doesn’t feel to me like a script where you do a traditional cold open (an action scene) then go back home and carefully set up your characters, plot, stakes, and life situations, before going to the main movie location (the turbine) and starting the movie we came for.

This feels more like a “Gravity” movie to me. Where we start at the location where we’re going to spend the entire movie. So I think they should already be on the turbine. They came here to fix something. They realize they don’t have the necessary tools to fix it. They recommend to base that they bring in the “A-Team,” the guys who fix the truly big problems.

But then something happens with the pick-up crew, who get stuck on shore, and then, when the storm rolls in, Blake and Kamryn are told they can’t be picked up tonight and they’ll have to stay there through the storm. Blake and Kamryn then realize the problem is worse than they thought. And if they don’t fix it, the whole turbine is going to fall apart in the storm (it might be fun to create a bigger storyline where this “wrong part” was installed in all the company’s offshore turbines in order to cut corners and meet budgets. So they’re all going go down). Something to that effect. We start in the heat of it and we never stop.

I didn’t think the relationship between Kamryn and Blake was very good. It’s appropriate that one of the main characters is named Blake because their relationship feels like it came out of a Blake Snyder AI generated beat sheet. These two only seem to dislike each other because they’re supposed to. They don’t feel like real people. And they don’t feel like they have a real problem with one another.

With Gravity the main issue was internal and it felt genuine. Sandra Bullock’s character has given up on life since her daughter died. So the movie is about will she find the strength to keep fighting to survive despite the fact that, before today, she wanted to give up on life? We keep watching to see her strength in those moments where she has a choice to either keep fighting or give up.

Meanwhile Blake and Kamryn yell at each other because that’s what Blake Snyder learned way back when he watched Lethal Weapon. I will say that I liked the choice (spoiler) to kill off Blake. But probably for the wrong reasons. I liked that it spiced up the story and made it less predictable. But when a character dies, the reader should feel emotion. And I didn’t feel any. So that’s obviously a problem.

Something I’ve learned recently is that readers can feel your intention. They know when you’re making choices for something other than organic story reasons. In other words, if you create a strained relationship between Blake and Kamryn because screenwriting books tell you to instead of these really being two people who would have this conflict with one another, readers suss that out. Readers are way more intuitive than you think they are.

It’s with a heavy heart that I can’t endorse this script because, as a movie, I can see a director creating some great set pieces regardless of the script. So I still feel like this would work as a movie. But the script is just not there. It needs better characters. And it needs to be way easier to visualize. I hope Taylor takes that feedback to heart. What’d you guys think?

Screenplay Link: Gale

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: It is very hard for readers to visualize something that they have no reference point for. A wind turbine is not a basketball court. Pretty much every single thing inside of it is going to be something we’ve never seen before. Therefore, when you’re a writer on one of these scripts, you have to be Mr. Clarity. You have to hold our hand so hard that you’re practically breaking it. We need you to help us visualize this world because it is beyond foreign to us. And, by the way, you’re talking to someone who once wrote about a turbine wind farm. So I even have some basic knowledge of this world and I was still struggling to visualize where we were most of the time in this script.

Today’s post comes with a fun twist. One of the loglines is AI generated. See if you can guess which one!

Okay, it’s time for one of my favorite segments here at Scriptshadow – “Why Didn’t My Script Get Picked?”

Ever wonder why your script didn’t make the cut? You’re going to find out exactly why, as I provide you with 11 scripts that didn’t make this past Friday’s High Concept Showdown, as well as why they didn’t make it.

Just a reminder that, in the new year, I’ll be pitting five loglines against each other every month. You will decide which one wins, and, in the process, which script I review the following week. Therefore, just because you didn’t make High Concept Showdown, that doesn’t mean your submission is dead in the water. You can re-submit your high concept script, or any script for that matter, and will have a dozen shots next year to get that spotlight review.

Oh, and there’s a little TWIST to today’s post.  I’m including an AI-generated logline.  So here’s what I want you to do.  I want everyone in the comments to vote for their FAVORITE logline here as well as the logline they think is AI generated.  That’s fine if they’re one and the same.  I’m going to be highly worried if an AI logline wins today’s post because that, of course, means, Skynet is coming.  (P.S. – the AI script link is a dummy script.  So make your votes and guesses BEFORE you download any the screenplays).

Enjoy!

Title: The Fire Inside
Genre: Sci-fi/Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Horror, Drama
Logline: After dead Confederate soldiers come back to life and attack during a Civil War battle, a Union soldier returns to his Georgia home looking for answers – and finding more questions.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: Whenever I see more than two genres under the genre designation, I get really worried. Because all of the scripts I read that do this are bad. And this entry has four, one of which is a dual-genre (sci-fi/fantasy). So actually, five. A movie just can’t hold five genres. So I already know it’s going be all over the place. As for the idea, it does have some ‘high concept’ DNA in it. Confederate soldiers coming back to life is good. But another logline-killer is the tapered-off vague ending that doesn’t really tell us anything. “…home looking for answers. – and finding more questions.” You need to tell us what actually happens. Not hint at questions and answers. There are going to be questions and answers in every script, hopefully.

Title: Southsiders
Genre: Adventure
Logline: After his treasure hunting father is arrested for a crime he says he didn’t commit, his twelve-year-old son and his friends search the South Side of Chicago to find Al Capone’s hidden fortune and clear his name… It’s in the vein of GOONIES, DOPE and NATIONAL TREASURE.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: This one almost made the cut. As a Chicagoan, I’ve always been convinced that Capone hid a bunch of his money in the suburban houses where all his cronies lived. The issue with this logline is that the first half doesn’t organically connect with the second half. A father is arrested for a crime. So, to clear his name, you have to find Al Capone’s treasure? How does that work? Does the Chicago DA give away free get-out-of-jail-free cards for anyone who finds Capone’s treasure? With the Goonies, the connection was more organic. The need to find the treasure was to stave off the foreclosures of their family homes so a country club can’t buy them out. Still, this one finished Top 10-15 for me. I’d be curious to hear what all of you think of it.

Title:  ACTION REPLAY
Genre:  Sci-fi/Action/Comedy
Logline:  When the world’s Most Wanted Criminal hijacks a TIME MACHINE a lowly technician keeps sending himself back to save the day – but more and more of his past, present and future selves just keep adding to the chaos…

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: This is a good example of the importance of getting feedback on your loglines. Cause, if you glance through this quickly, it feels high concept. It feels like a movie. But when you read through the logline with a detailed eye, it’s harder to understand. Before we get to that, though. Stop with the unnecessary capitalization. I don’t understand why writers do this. “Most Wanted Criminal” should not be capitalized. If I see unnecessary capitalization? That’s pretty much a guarantee I’m not reading the script. But, anyway, we’ve got a criminal who hijacks a time machine. And we’ve got a technician who wants to stop him. So he goes back in time to stop him, I guess. But… how can he go back in time to stop him if the criminal already took the time machine? It doesn’t quite make sense.

Title: Vampire in Silicon Valley
Genre: Comedy
Logline: In the high-tech world of Silicon Valley, a young and successful entrepreneur discovers that he is a vampire. As he struggles to maintain his humanity while navigating the cutthroat world of tech startups, he must keep his true identity hidden while dealing with the challenges of being a vampire in the modern age. With the help of his quirky and eccentric team, he must find a way to use his vampire powers to succeed in the competitive world of tech while also staying true to himself.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: I loved this title but there’s something about the way the logline is presented that tells me the screenplay is going to be extremely generic.  The phrase, “quirky and eccentric team,” in particular, was a logline killer in my opinion.  Writing loglines is a balance between getting the basic idea across, yet still peppering it with just the right amount of detail so it feels like the script is going to be unique in some way.

Title: Hollywood Ending
Genre: Horror-comedy
Logline: After a zombie outbreak at a swanky Hollywood party the lowly Caterers realize the biggest stars in the world are suddenly trying to eat them.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: This is what I’d refer to as an “almost idea.” It certainly has components of a high concept idea. But there’s something not clever enough about it. It just feels kind of surface-level. I don’t even think the right people are turning into zombies. It would probably be better if the stars were getting attacked. I think audiences would enjoy that more. Even still, I tend to resist movie ideas with giant stars playing themselves only because it’s so insanely hard to get huge actors to do this. And to get multiple movie stars to agree to it is even harder. Also, another unnecessary capitalization (Caterers)!

Title: LANDED
Genre: R rated Comedy
Logline: A freshman makes a promise not to use any cellphone during her first day at college, but when she must make a phone call, the result is a wild and unexpected adventure following a map to the campus’s few landlines.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: The reason I didn’t pick this one is pretty simple. I just didn’t see any stakes in the story. A big reason why that comedy, “Tag,” from several years back, was DOA at the box office, was because nobody cared if these guys kept tagging each other. There were no stakes. Same issue here. Who cares if someone needs to make a phone call or not? You might *stress on might* be able to make a short of that. But it’s not even like somebody stops her. This is a promise she made to herself. Okay, then, break your promise. Problem solved. I’m just not understanding this premise. Also, the title doesn’t match the plot.

Title: ‘Zero at the Bone’
Genre: Mystery Thriller
Logline: A troubled detective on leave is thrust into a secret Anarchist community seeking help to investigate the first ever murders behind their gate.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: We’ve got yet another unnecessary capitalization. This is becoming an epidemic. We’ve also got single quotes around the title. I don’t know why anybody does that. People, you have to understand that managers and agents and producers don’t have time. You give them an easy reason to say no, they’re going to take it. These are small things that you can fix with a little feedback. So many writers are shooting themselves in the foot, here. It’s frustrating to watch. As for the concept, there isn’t enough irony in it. Anarchists bring about anarchy. Therefore, it makes total sense that someone within that community would kill someone. Why not set the murder in an Orthodox Jewish community, where the murder rate is 1/1000th the rest of the country? Now you’ve got irony in your idea.

Title: Don’t Let The Fire Die
Genre: High Concept Horror
Logline: On a wilderness, glamping adventure, a dysfunctional man and his dysfunctional friends must fight to keep their fires lit as they are hunted by primeval predators that are afraid of fire.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: First of all, props to Morgan for ZERO unnecessary capitalization in his logline. Thank goodness. Couple of reasons this one didn’t make the cut. One, I didn’t know what glamping was. I had to look it up. That’s usually not a good thing since readers don’t want to do your work for you. They just want to know what they’re reading. So most won’t look that word up like I did. I don’t like the use of “dysfunctional” twice. That tells me the writer didn’t do a ton of work on the logline. Just say, “a dysfunctional group of friends.” But the biggest issue here is that there’s no cleverness or irony to the setup. They’re supposedly hunted by these special predators that are afraid of fire. Every predator is afraid of fire. The “strange attractor” in this idea isn’t strange enough, in my opinion.

Title: Time’s Past
Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline:A special agent is brought on to a top secret programme where they use a device to turn back time in order to stop crime before it happens, but finds herself in a predicament when one criminal they are chasing seems to know about the device and a dark secret behind it

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: If you’re keen, you’re starting to see what I see, just on a smaller scale. Which is that I get all these submissions that feel like they SHOULD be big, and yet they don’t have that clarity or that special attractor, or that irony, or that well-thought-out plot direction that truly elevates them into high concept territory. Turning back time to stop crime is a big fun sci-fi idea. But then the logline limps towards the finish line with this vagary regarding a criminal who knows a dark secret behind the device. Nobody cares about that. They care about the fun part. Not the much smaller detail of a ‘dark secret.’ And, if the dark secret is really cool, it needs to be in the logline. You’re trying to get people to read your script here. Tell them what your movie is about. Don’t be cryptic.

Title: Southern Belle
Genre: Action / Comedy
Logline: A government assassin uses her undercover identity as a beauty queen to travel the South until she bumps into a rival assassin… who turns out to be her mother.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: This idea just felt dated to me, that’s all. It felt like a script that could’ve been written in 1998. Does that mean you can’t draw inspiration from older movies, like Miss Congeniality? No. But the line between a fresh take on an old idea and just plain dated is blurry. So it’s a risk. Also, the addition of the mother feels like a slightly different movie. I’m not convinced it was needed.

Title: TIS THE SEASON
Genre: Christmas action thriller
Logline: An ex-CIA agent temporarily paralyzes Santa Claus after mistaking him for assassins breaking into his house. When the real assassins show up, the agent must get Santa to safety, evade the assassins . . . and deliver a f*ck ton of toys. It’s The Santa Clause meets My Spy meets Guardians of the Galaxy.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: I’m not a fan of violent Christmas movies. I say this to remind every writer here that there’s an element of subjectivity with every script you send out there. Obviously, Violent Night did really well this past weekend. So there’s a market out there for this kind of idea. But it’s just not for me. Which is why you never want to label your script good or bad based on a single opinion. Get a bunch of opinions. That’s where you find if you’ve got something good or not.

Title: Immaculate Nation
Genre: Sci-Fi/Action
Logline: In a nation of clones, where natural reproduction is punishable by death, a disgraced Enforcer from the Reproductive Crimes Bureau falls for a woman leading a free-breeding revolution.

Reason It Didn’t Get Picked: Something about this idea feels too familiar to me. It feels like a garden-variety Young Adult Sci-Fi Setup circa 2010. It feels too similar to Handmaid’s Tale. And cloning is a fairly dated sci-fi concept. From 1997-2005, every single spec had clones. So whenever I see that word, I feel immediate resistance. For me, at least, there isn’t that singular variable in this idea that really helps the concept stand out.

Look, movie ideas are hard. They’re like pop songs. They seem so easy when you hear them. But there’s real art and craftsmanship to constructing an exciting well-thought-out movie concept. It’s why I tell people, get logline reactions from your friends BEFORE you write your script, not after. I know screenwriters are all stubborn and are going to write what they wanna write at the end of the day. And I get that. I’m like that too. But, at the very least, you can identify if you’ve got a true stinker on your hands before it’s too late.

If you’re interested in getting a logline consultation from me, they’re $25 and they include a 150-200 word analysis, a 1-10 rating for both concept and logline construction, and a logline rewrite. If you want a more involved process where we discuss in depth what you’re trying to do with the logline and how to get the most out of it – I offer that as well. E-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and we’ll get started right away!

Genre: Comedy
Premise: A stoner comedy about one family trying to save Christmas from itself after Santa eats the wrong batch of cookies.
About: This script finished with 9 votes on the 2019 Black List. Writer Dreux Moreland is new to the game. Co-writer Hannah Mescon was a producer on the Adam Driver movie, The Report.
Writers: Dreux Moreland & Hannah Mescon
Details: 108 pages

As tempting as it was to publish a “Why You Are Drinking Too Much Blue Milk” rebuttal article after yet another commenter incorrectly labeled Andor a good show, cooler heads prevailed and I decided to, as the great X-Wing pilot, Jek Porkins, once said, “Stay on target.”

And so a Christmas script it is!

Tom and Leah Mercer are a rich suburban couple. She’s a Type A lawyer. He grew up on a WACO like commune. Bit of a weird choice there since it has nothing to do with the story but, no worries, I’m going to roll with it.  They’ve got two daughters, one 7, the other 17. Leah also has a sister, Sasha, who frolics into town. Sasha is the family black sheep and cares more about 4:20 than 4 Calling Birds.

It’s Christmas Eve and Sasha bakes some pot cookies that Tom and Leah snarf down. Then, while they’re in the other room, Santa shows up and likewise stuffs some baked sugar yumminess into his gullet. He instantly becomes very high. After first encountering this assumed Santa imposter, Tom and Leah eventually realize that he really is Santa, and he’s way too high.  Which means if they don’t deliver presents in his stead, Christmas is canceled.

Just to be clear – and I’m doing this more for myself – talking through it.  Santa, the guy who’s been delivering presents for 600 years is very high.  Tom and Leah, who have never delivered a present in their lives, are equally high.  Yet Tom and Leah are the ones being counted on to save Christmas.  Okay, got it!

So the three of them climb up on their roof, get in the sleigh, and proceed to fly to a single house, go inside to deliver the presents, only to get yelled at by one of comedy’s favorite knee-slappers, the swearing parrot, which says things like, “Little b**ch!” as loud as it can. Cause why wouldn’t the talking parrot swear? It’s a comedy. Wackiness rules!!

After this delivery failure, Santa gets the munchies and decides to take everyone to Miami because he wants a Cubano sandwich. When the Elf team back at North Pole 1 hear of this, they assume he’s been kidnapped by the Mercers and spring into action to locate Santa and get him back on track.

Luckily, with this version of Santa Claus, Santa doesn’t actually have to do anything. He has drones that fly down into houses and deliver the presents, as well as retrieve cookies for him. So it looks like, even though Santa is high as heck, that Christmas is going to end up okay. Hallelujah!

I don’t know what it is about screenwriting but when you first get into it, you always want to write a Christmas script. Every single screenwriter I know, me included, has a Christmas movie idea. So I don’t begrudge anyone who writes one. But just as we learn every year why eggnog is so terrible, we learn that writing a Christmas script is no smooth ride down the chimney.

Here’s the big issue with High on Christmas. And it’s a mistake a lot of comedy writers make. You think of this overall wacky idea and assume it’s going to do all the work for you. I mean, how can ‘wacky’ not result in laughs, right? They go together like Nutella and crepes.

But, in my experience, writers rely so heavily on that “wacky = comedy” premise that they don’t do the work necessary to come up with *actual* funny scenarios.

Let’s go back to one of the final great feature comedies in cinema – The Hangover. There is a “wacky” version of The Hangover that could’ve been written. It’s the version 99% of writers would’ve written. You’ve got a group of friends in Vegas for a bachelor party. You simply follow them around as they party all night.  There’s so much wackiness to draw from, right?

But the writers of The Hangover made a much more difficult choice. They focused on the day after the wackiness. All of the supposed “easy laughs” were left behind. So then why is that movie better than all the other comedies that have come out since 2000, including this one? Because now the writers actually have to think in order to craft a funny scenario. They can’t just throw Zach Galifianakis on a blackjack table and have him poop himself. They have to craft a plot with a clever series of goals that take our characters through a progression of funny scenarios.

High On Christmas didn’t have that. It had the swearing parrot. If you like swearing parrots, it’s got that.  But how many times have I told you this?  You want to include comedy THAT CAN ONLY HAPPEN IN YOUR MOVIE.  The swearing parrot can be in any movie, ya nutcrackers!

Now, to the writers’ credit, they did have one moment like this. I like that when Santa gets the munchies, he doesn’t just go to 7-11. It’s Santa. He has a device that can take him anywhere in the world. So, flying to buy a Cubano sandwich that you can only get in Miami – that’s much closer to what I expect in a comedy about a high Santa Claus.

But that was basically it on the creativity front.

Drugs, in general, hurt comedies more than help them. Cause all ‘getting high’ really does for comedy is give you one or two scenes where it’s funny watching your characters try to do something normal but they’re way too high to do it. Yeah, that scene is going to funny. And we do get that here. Tom and Leah trying to take selfies when they first see Santa’s sleigh but continually screw it up – it’s kind of funny.

But now what? You still have an hour and forty minutes of movie left to fill. You can’t just keep doing that joke over and over again.

I don’t mean to be the Grinch but… you gotta come correct here. The characters may be high. But that doesn’t mean you get to write the script high.

LEAH: Tom, I need you to get on my level. That degenerate licking the cookie jar is not Santa.

TOM: But what if he is? He coughed up glitter.

LEAH: So did I at that Bowie concert — and I’m not Santa.

What does this joke even mean?? Do David Bowie’s concerts have a lot of glitter in them? Even if for some reason they do – and I don’t think they do – but let’s say that’s the case. How many people have been to a David Bowie concert and therefore would know that? .0000000001% of the population? So you’re writing jokes for .0000000001% of the population now?

I’m shaking my head here. There’s nothing more frustrating than reading a comedy that doesn’t make you laugh. You get angrier and angrier as you go on. Which is silly, of course. But there’s a deal that’s made between the comedy writer and the reader and that is: you make us laugh. You renege on that deal and we will turn on you m**herf**er.  When we don’t laugh, each page feels like a minute of time being ripped out of our life.

The script is also another tonal mismatch. They’ve got the same SEAL-TEAM Elves from the movie, The Santa Clause, but the script also contains lines like, “What a dumb f**king name.” So, is this written for small children or grown adults? I’m confused.

I want to push out good holiday vibes as we move towards Christmas. But we need better Christmas scripts than this if I’m going to do that. This feels like two people got high, wrote a script in a week, and people giggled at the logline and therefore voted it onto the Black List.

[ ] What the hell did I just read?
[x] wasn’t for me
[ ] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius

What I learned: The Black List celebrates one or two Christmas scripts a year, regardless of how good they are. That’s because they’re voting on December 11th every year. So Christmas is hot on everyone’s mind. In other words, if you write a Christmas script, go out with it in the month of December.