Are we getting a black Superman? What’s going on with Kinetic? Are there any updates? What the heck is a “programmer” and why is it now my least favorite word? A trip down memory lane on the eve of David Fincher and Andrew Kevin Walker re-teaming. What is the hardest character for a reader to remember? I review the SINGLE HOTTEST PROJECT IN HOLLYWOOD right now. Did I like it? And what is it like breaking up with Gerard Butler just 14 short days after Valentine’s Day? All of that and more in this month’s newsletter!

If you want to read my newsletter, you have to sign up. So if you’re not on the mailing list, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com with the subject line, “NEWSLETTER!” and I’ll send it to you.

p.s. For those of you who keep signing up but don’t receive the newsletter, try sending me another e-mail address. E-mailing programs are notoriously quirky and there may be several reasons why your e-mail address/server is rejecting the newsletter. One of which is your server is bad and needs to be spanked.

You know there’s not a lot to talk about in Hollywood when you’re thinking, “Maybe I should cover Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s divorce today. Maybe there’s some screenwriting tip we can draw from Kanye’s tweets.” I thought I had a juicy nugget to build today’s article around when someone sent me a link to “JJ Abrams’ Episode 8 Treatment.” The presentation was somewhat convincing. The treatment is a series of pictures (as opposed to a PDF) on red paper, the color that makes them hard to photocopy, and therefore preferred by writers trying to keep something from leaking. But I barely got to the second page before my b.s. meter started chirping.

It always amuses me when people say things like, “JJ Abrams doesn’t know what he’s doing! He only knows fan service.” Go ahead and read this treatment. This is what true fan service looks like. Within seconds of Rey handing Luke the lightsaber on the mountain, the two start dueling, Luke immediately jumping into exposition mode. “Did you ever ask yourself how an untrained pilot like you could suddenly fly the Falcon & outmaneuver those Tie Fighters? Then, somehow rendezvous with Han & Chewie shortly after? You know how to pilot the Falcon, because I know how to pilot th eFalcon. You beat Kylo on Starkiller because I was with you… aiding your untrained mind. It’s an old trick Jedi masters used to help their padawans.” You gotta love the ampersands, incorrectly capitalized words, and randomly placed commas, lol.

I was bummed it was fake cause I wanted something to talk about today. But then I realized I hadn’t updated everyone on my producing endeavors in a while. So guess what? I’m going to do that right now!

PRIORITY NUMBER 1 – KINETIC

For those of you who visit the site less frequently, Kinetic is the script that won my contest. The logline is: “Following a harrowing phone call while out on the road, a long haul trucker with a tormented past must deliver a tank of liquid crystal meth before sundown in order to save his pregnant wife.” If you remember, I told you that our number one priority was attaching Gerard Butler. So we first went to Millennium, a production company he does a lot of movies with, and they passed. As soon as that happened, I was able to get the script to Butler’s gatekeeper through a mutual friend. And that’s where it is now.

All I can do at this point is wait until she reads it. One of the most frustrating things about this business is the waiting game. Especially when you’re low on the priority list. Until I’ve got movies under my belt, it’s going to be a grind. And I know that. I’m not afraid of that. If Butler doesn’t work out, I’ve got the next three steps ready for Kinetic. Cause here’s the thing with Kinetic. And it’s something I’ve never really had with a project before: THIS IS GOING TO BE A MOVIE. It’s too perfectly suited to become movie for it not to become a movie. It’s too guaranteed to make money for whoever produces it. It has all the elements that result in a profitable fun film. And not only that. If the execution of the film is as good as this script, it has the potential to become a franchise. So all I have to do is keep getting it to people. There’s no question, in my mind, that, sooner or later, one of those reads is going to lead to the project getting greenlit.

PRIORITY NUMBER 2 – MOTHER REDEEMER

Here’s the logline for Mother Redeemer for those who don’t remember: “After a devout member of a small religious sect receives a sign from their God that she will be the mother of Earth’s messiah, she must find a way to protect her divine child from the cult’s corrupt leader.” Mother Redeemer is an interesting project because I’ve been sending it out and getting lukewarm responses. Now, here’s the thing. I know this is a good script. I read scripts like it all the time. And this is a cut above all of them. But the script is undeniably a slow burn. And what I’m realizing is that the hardest kind of spec script to get people excited about is a slow burn. The spec scripts that work best on the market are scripts like Bullet Train or Kinetic. Stuff that moves quickly on the page. Mother Redeemer is all about ‘build’ and tension and suspense, all of which it does beautifully.

I suspect that the people reading it aren’t sticking with it long enough to lose themselves in it. The reason I suspect that is because the same thing happened to me when I first read it. The main reason the script made it through the “First Ten Pages” round was not because I was enamored with the story. I simply recognized that the writing was strong. Then, when I started reading the script in the second round, I remember being on the fence about it 25 pages in. I specifically remember being tired and wanting to go to sleep. Then I thought, “Ehhh, I’ll finish it up so I have more time to myself tomorrow.” And, from there, every 10 pages, the script got better. And better. And better. And by the third act, my face was two inches from the screen, I was so into it. The dirty little secret about script reads is that nobody owes you a full script read. If they’re bored on page 20, they may decide to not read the rest and tell you they did. It’s not like they’re going to be quizzed about it. I suspect that might be what’s happening here. People aren’t making it past that same threshold in the script that I made it past where the script got infinitely better. So, the writer, Brian, and I, are trying to address this issue and make those first 20 pages read quicker. I still have a ton of confidence in the project. It could literally be made for 3-5 million dollars and it’s got two AWESOME roles for actors: the young pregnant woman (think Margaret Qualley) and the cult leader (think Michael Shannon or Adam Driver). I would love to get a Jennifer Kent (Babadook) to direct this. Ultimately, it’s going to be about finding people who, like Brian and I, are fascinated by the cult world.

PRIORITY NUMBER 3 – MANIACAL

You guys might not know about this horror project yet. Here’s the logline: “A teenager is forced to protect her half-siblings when mysterious masks begin appearing around the world that compel people to put them on, turning them into homicidal psychopaths.” It comes from co-writers Andy Marx and William McArdle. The two made the finals of my contest with their script, Crescent City (“A woman with the ability to control ghosts is forced to protect a witness being hunted by supernatural assassins.”). So why am I focusing on Maniacal instead of Crescent City? Simple. It will cost 1/10th as much money to produce. This is a 3-5 million dollar movie. Crescent City is a 30-50 million dollar movie. It’s John Wick with a female lead in the voodoo world. And it’s a movie I want to make badly. But Maniacal feels like the clearer path to victory, right now. And then, once we get that movie made and the writers have some heat on them, we’ll pitch Crescent City. Because I think Crescent City has the most upside of all of these projects. It could become a HUGE franchise.

The writers and I are currently fixing a few issues with the script. One of the main problems was that the mythology was a little thin. This crazy stuff starts happening all around the world and I wasn’t convinced that the reader understood what was happening. So we’re adding more scenes that give us insight into what’s going on. The thing I love about Maniacal is that it harkens back to those fun horror movies they made in the 80s. Simple but scary. And I love this hook of, what if you woke up one day and everyone was Michael Meyers? It wasn’t just one guy. What do you do? As soon as we get the script right, we’ll start targeting the horror production companies.

REST OF PROJECTS

What else am I working on? Contest finalist, That Wind Come Down (“After taking the fall for a horrific crime and spending twenty five years in prison, a neurologically disabled ex-con must confront his troubled past as he desperately tries to find a kidnapped young woman who’s disappearance may be connected to his past transgressions”) is still in the development stage. The script made the finals mainly on the talent of its writer, Chris Rodgers. But the story needs to go through a maturation process before it’s ready for the market.

I still have to re-read Tighter (“When a Japanese rope bondage workshop is taken hostage by masked intruders, a couple must find a way to escape their captors while tied together at the wrists”) and give Arun Croll notes. I’ve been slammed wall-to-wall with work so I haven’t been able to find the time yet. I found this amazing writer who wrote this great NASCAR pilot about a race car driver who finally gets a chance to shine after the retirement of his famous father but then his father wants back in. It’s basically NASCAR meets SUCCESSION. This might be the best-written thing of all the scripts I have but I’m struggling to understand the TV world. It’s something I don’t know as well as the movie world. So this might take a little longer to get through the system as I educate myself (feel free to e-mail me if you have advice cause this pilot is better than 95% of the stuff on TV right now. It deserves to be made).

I’m also working on a unique tennis project called, “Loser.” Let’s just say it’s unlike any sports movie you’ve seen before and is built around the premise of a professional tennis player who loses… a lot. There’s a script from long-time Scriptshadow reader, Alexander Bashkirov (who’s had tons of scripts reviewed on the site) called “Scorcher,” which is an action thriller with a REALLY fun premise that we’re working on. And there’s a thriller set in India that I hope to share more about in the coming months.

A couple of final thoughts that can double as today’s “What I learned.” Think hard about writing slow-burn spec scripts. They aren’t naturally suited for the spec market, which favors faster moving stories. Don’t get me wrong. If they’re great, they can get you noticed. But there’s no question you’ll have to send your script out to more people than you would if you wrote a more spec-friendly genre. Also, one of the things about sending your scripts out there is that everyone is going to tell you why your movie *can’t* be made. Back to the Future, one of the greatest movies ever, was famously rejected by everyone. The Anchorman creators were famously told by one studio to never EVER send them a script like that again, lol. It took John Lee Hancock, who has a successful career in the business, 30 years for someone to finally let him make The Little Things. The point is, there is no script that automatically goes to the front of the line. It’s always “Here’s why this doesn’t work.” Your job as a producer, or as a writer promoting their own script, is to not take these critiques personally and understand that they’re part of the process of getting a movie made. No movie has ever been made without people persevering through a lot of adversity. If you believe in a script, keep going until the cameras start rolling.

Have a wonderful week, guys. And if you’re a production company or director or financier or actor who wants to be involved in one of these films, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com. Get in before it’s too late! :)

One of the interesting things about reading all those scripts in a row for my contest was seeing so many scripts fall apart in real time. Which was frustrating. You want every script to be good. And with all these scripts passing the “First 10 Pages Test,” your expectations are already high.

So why is it, then, that so many scripts start off strong, then fall apart?

I remember reading semi-finalist script, Wish List. In case you forgot, here’s the logline: “An Amazon delivery man is ambushed in Mexico by a group of gangsters who mistake him for a drug mule, and must survive using only the packages inside his van.” The opening teaser followed an Amazon delivery guy (not the main character) who’s attacked by a crooked Mexican cop. He doesn’t get out alive, establishing the stakes for when we meet *our* Amazon delivery driver.

It didn’t take long for me to lose some of that early confidence in the script. The main character was a bit too goofy for my taste. He reminded me of someone Kevin James might play. Which is fine if you’re writing a comedy. But this wasn’t a comedy. The driver is soon trapped by a Mexican cartel and his situation is anything comedic.

A great concept is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it gets you more reads. It’s a curse because you now have to live up to that great concept. That means you have to be as clever as your logline implies. And this is where the edges of Wish List started to fray.

Let me be clear about something first, though. Wish List doesn’t make any big mistakes. The mistakes it makes are actually quite average. Unfortunately, that’s all it takes for a reader to lose interest. You guys know this. You read scripts from the site all the time. The second an even mildly questionable writing choice is made, you raise an eyebrow, and by the time a second one arrives, you’re out.

Wish List already had one strike against it because I didn’t feel the tone of the hero matched the tone of his predicament. Then, once the driver started using his packages, that’s where my interest dropped for good. When you have an idea like this, you’re looking for interesting packages the driver uses in clever ways.

The first package we open is an iPad, which the driver uses to translate what the bad guys are saying outside, which was okay. But the only reason he had to do that was because he didn’t have his phone. A phone could’ve done that as well. So we’re not using things in a clever way yet.

Now the driver has to find a phone to call for help. So he starts opening packages until he finds one. However, the only phone he finds turns out to be a kid’s phone, which doesn’t have all the adult features. Which is sort of clever. You always want to make things hard for you hero. Not giving him a fully-featured phone does make things harder than if he had an iPhone. But that’s two packages so far where I’m not seeing much ingenuity. I’m not seeing anything clever. And that’s the whole reason I picked this script.

So even though I would continue to read, my heart wasn’t in it anymore. And that’s how quickly a script can fall apart.

In the case of Wish List, I don’t think the writer made any giant mistakes. I just think he underestimated what the bar is for a good script. Scripts like this are all about the choices you make. It’s how imaginative you can be with those items. If I were the writer, one of the first things I would’ve done was google, “Top 100 things ordered on Amazon” and obsessively combed through the list. You’d probably come up with 50 fun ideas to play with.

But the bigger lesson here is: Don’t assume the movies you see made are the bar you must hurdle. The bar is actually a lot higher than that for any spec screenwriter. You have to write something great to get people interested. It’s only later that over-development and bad notes from studios execs and maybe a director who doesn’t know how to write will ruin your script. But to get to that place, it first has to be great.

Another script whose first ten pages I loved was Honey Mustard. We meet this woman, Stella, who’s married to this utterly awful excuse for a human being. A guy who’s pure evil. The first ten pages is all about her reaching her breaking point and killing him. It’s a really intense first ten pages so I had high hopes for this one.

We then meet this other character, Buford, who’s having a really tough time of it. He’s out of a job. He’s got a family to support. We see him get coldly rejected after an interview. So he’s having a lousy day too.

What happens next is we follow Stella to her workplace. She’s a waitress at a diner. And her first customer is, guess who? Buford. Clearly, neither of these two are in a good place and we can feel that undercurrent of tension in their interaction. Which is credit to the writer who did a wonderful job of setting up the immediate backstory of these two characters to create this charged moment.

Buford gets annoyed when Stella keeps forgetting to bring him honey-mustard sauce for his order. He keeps reminding her and reminding her and reminding her. But she’s dealing with her sexually harassing boss and a handful of other impatient customers and she just killed her husband, so yeah, she’s a little distracted.

So Buford does something really mean. In order to get her back, he doesn’t tip her (he puts “Honey Mustard” on the tip line, lol). And off he goes.

We then follow Buford home where he gets some good financial news. And maybe, just maybe, his family is going to be okay. Meanwhile, we cut back to the diner…. AND EVERYONE IN IT IS DEAD. They’ve all been shot and killed. The cops are trying to figure this out. Stella is not there so she’s their first suspect.

We then cut back to nighttime at Buford’s house. Buford starts seeing a car drive past his place repeatedly. He gets worried. Then he sees the words “HONEY MUSTARD” finger-written through fog on the window. And he realizes that the waitress is here to kill him and his family.

So where did everything go so wrong so fast? Simple. There should not have been a mass-killing at the diner. Literally, the second that happened, I said to myself, “This script is done.” And every subsequent page further supported that. The reason this script was so strong early on was because everything was character-based. It was all about setting up the characters’ lives and then watching what happens when those lives collide.

The second you turn it into a mass-killing, it becomes a whole other movie. And not the movie that you set up, by they way. This isn’t “Unhinged.” However, a part of me understands why the writer, Michael, made these choices. He’s been told time and time again, by people like myself, that THINGS NEED TO KEEP HAPPENING in a screenplay or else the reader will get bored.

Fearing that his script was TOO character-driven, he went all in on taking things to Mach 10. But here’s the thing. When you write good characters, you don’t need a bunch of fireworks. This script could’ve survived as a slow-building character piece. You could even add 3-4 other characters, whose lives we follow, and then have all of them collide in the ending. But turning Stella into this (potentially) mass-killing house-invader was the least interesting choice you could’ve made after that setup, in my opinion. You started with believable and switched to unbelievable in a heartbeat.

So what can we learn from these two scripts? First, deliver on the promise of your premise. And start to do so early. You have to prove to your reader that you’re going to give him what he paid for. Jurassic Park does a great job of this with the whole mosquito-blood scene. I remember watching that and thinking, “Wow, that totally makes sense for how they’d be able to create dinosaurs in modern day.” It was clever and it hooked me.

Next, don’t feel like you’re serving a stadium full of ADD-riddled idiots when you write a script. The problem with that mindset is you think you have to have a car-chase (or a “car chase equivalent”) every scene. So you end up writing these great big plot developments when the script doesn’t need them. It’s hard to be patient as a writer. But just remember that, if you write great characters who are involved in interesting situations, readers are going to want to keep turning the pages.

Finally, have a plan for your second act. This is where most scripts fall apart because it’s the moment where the writer has to actually write the story. The first act is just setting up the concept you came up with. But the second act is where we need to feel like there’s a plan in place. We need to feel like the characters have goals or a clear direction. If it helps, break your second act into four sequences of, between, 12-15 pages. Doing so is automatically going to give your act more structure.

If you go into the second act with only a vague sense of what you’re going to do? It’s going to show on the page. You can’t hide it. A reader senses when the person telling the story isn’t quite sure where he’s going. If you hate outlines, that’s fine. But it means you’re going to have to do a lot more rewriting on your second act to get it to a place where it feels purposeful. If you do these three things, you should be good to go!

By the way, I’m curious what your thoughts are on Honey Mustard and Wish List. I still think both these scripts have potential. So, what are your fixes?

Genre: Dark Comedy
Premise: (from Black List) After discovering his secret songwriting partner dead, a country music star struggling to record new material makes a Faustian bargain with a family of possums who have taken up residency within his walls.
About: This script finished with 16 votes on last year’s Black List. Screenwriter Isaac Adamson is no stranger to scripts about animals and humans, or the Black List for that matter. His script, Bubbles, a biopic about Michael Jackson told through the point of view of MJ’s chimpanzee, topped a former Black List. That project, which was moving full steam ahead, was halted suddenly due to one of the unflattering Michael Jackson documentaries that came out. So Adamson went back to one of the surest formulas for getting back on the Black List – mix humans and animals together in some weird way. Adamson also has a Chippendale’s biopic project set up with the director of I Tonya, Craig Gillespie.
Writer: Isaac Adamson
Details: 96 pages

Oscar Isaac for Eddie?

Is there better catnip to the Black List than weird human-animal movies? Actually, human-to-animal transformation movies have been around long before The Black List. I remember when my dad took me to the old black and white version of The Fly. The words, ‘Help me, help me,’ still ring in my ears today.

There’s something about someone transforming into something else (in this case, an animal) you’re going to want to stick around to see. This is what good stories do, people. They come up with reasons for us to stick around. So when Eddie Vesco starts turning into a possum, I couldn’t help but wonder just how drastic the final transformation was going to be.

32 year old Eddie Vesco has it all. He’s a platinum selling country rock star with a model wife. Sure, she’s decided to become a “painter” in her post-modeling day, but you take the good with the bad, right?

Speaking of, Eddie’s in need of some good. It’s been forever since his last album and he’s already spent all the money he was advanced to record his next album. Which means it’s time for Eddie to get back to work. Eddie has a system for recording hit records. He’s got a cabin out in the middle of nowhere, complete with a recording studio. So he goes there, gets inspired, and comes back with 13 new songs.

But when Eddie shows up at the cabin, we immediately learn there’s more to the story. A beaten down 42 year old heroin addict named Otis is sitting in the corner of the living room, half-hidden in the shadows. You see, Eddie doesn’t know how to write songs. So this guy does it for him. Secretly of course. The whole reason it’s been so long since the last album is that Otis was in prison. He’s finally got out.

Eddie tosses him 5 grand and tells him to get to work. There’s only one problem. That night, Otis OD’s. Which means… you got it… Eddie, for the first time, has to write his own songs.

After Eddie throws Otis’s body in the woods, he notices that he has a possum problem. Possums are always coming in and out of the many holes in the walls. Eddie doesn’t realize just how bad his possum problem is, however, until one of the possums starts talking to him. In English.

Possum Jack explains that HE was the reason Otis could write those songs. And that he can do the same thing for Eddie. All Eddie has to do is bring food for him and his pregnant possum wife, Possum Jill. But when Eddie grabs some junk food from the local gas station, Possum Jack makes it clear that they need more nourishing food. Preferably, roadkill.

Eddie’s about had it with these pesky possums but after Possum Jack helps him record his first of thirteen songs and the song is amazing, Eddie’s willing to do whatever it takes to get the other 12. So he gets roadkill for the possums but they say the roadkill is too old. They need fresher meat. So Eddie gets a live cat from the animal shelter. But these picky possums want something better. Like, say, HUMAN meat.

During this time, poor Eddie starts growing big thick whiskers on his face. Possum Jack informs him that this is part of the deal and it will keep happening until their deal is over. Eddie asks if there’s any way to stop it. The only thing they’ve seen stave off the transformation is what Otis was doing. As in, heroin. Which means now Eddie will have to become a full-on heroin addict.

All of this comes to a head when Eddie’s manager and wife show up. But, by this point, Eddie is so far in it, so determined to get those 13 songs, that he can even rationalize sacrificing them. It’s at this point that we realize… maybe nobody survives these possums.

Let’s start with the structure here.

One of my rules is that if you’re going to write something wacky, you want the rest of your screenplay to be structured. This grounds your story. And Adamson did a good job here. He set up the parameters well. Goal – go record 13 songs. Stakes – if he fails he’ll owe the recording company the full advance they gave him, which he’s already spent. Urgency – he’s got two weeks.

In addition to this, the setting itself is contained (to this farm house). Which further structures the story. Every time you add a border or a time limit or anything that acts as a container around the story, the story is easier to tell. And it’s easier to follow as well. This just as easily could’ve been about some singer who spends a year doing a bunch of concerts and at night he has possums talking to him and they’re really funny and they won’t leave him alone and he records a great final record and… whatever else you wanted to throw in there.

I know that sounds ridiculous. Who would write that? you say. If you’re writing one of your first three screenplays, you’re probably writing stories just like that. They’re all over the place. Messy. Directionless. I know because I read them. So, yes, you do need to worry about structure when you write, especially with subject matter like this.

Where Possum Song loses its melody is in it world-building. And this is where a lot of writers get lost in the weeds if they’re not careful. Once you start developing your world and its rules (in this case, the possums and how they operate) you can become seduced by that world and expand it too far.

We have a guy who relies on another guy to write his songs. Who it turns out is relying on a magic possum to write those songs. And this possum only performs this magic act if you bring him food (possums can’t find their own food?). But processed food isn’t good enough. They need real meat. But then older meat isn’t good enough either. They need recent dead meat. And then recent dead meat isn’t good enough either. Now they need human meat? And part of the curse means you start turning into a possum. But you can stop your possum-turning by doing heroin?????

Sometimes, in the unlit shadows of a 3am writing session, you can talk yourself into these things. “Yeah, that all makes sense.” But when the harsh morning sun shines down, that’s when you have to be honest with yourself. Because writers can talk themselves into anything. So you need to have that ‘come to Jesus’ moment with yourself when dealing with rules, rules, and more rules.

Because the power of a script like this is in its simplicity. It’s a dude using possums to record songs. The more convoluted you make that, the quicker you’re going to run into trouble.

This wasn’t as good as Bubbles which had that “lightning in a bottle” effect going for it. And I would’ve liked to have seen more of a physical transformation in Eddie. I think people are coming to this movie for the Jeff Goldblum level “Fly” transformation. So that would’ve been more fun. But it’s still a good script. It’s an especially good script to read to understand what kind of zaniness the Black List responds to.

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

What I learned: The time constraint before the time constraint. The time constraint of this screenplay is two weeks (that’s how long he has to record the songs). But that two weeks isn’t up until the end of the movie. So what you can do is you can create a more immediate time constraint somewhere in the middle of your script, which acts as a way to keep tension up in the second act. Here, Eddie’s wife, who’s pregnant, is having the sonogram on Wednesday, where they’re going to find out if it’s a boy or a girl. She really wants Eddie to be there, which he promises to be. This is the time constraint before the time constraint. It’s something we know we’re leading up to, and therefore one more way to add a little tension and direction to the script.

Genre: Drama/Thriller
Premise: After a real estate agent in the richest suburb in America is brutally murdered in a home she was showing, a Boston detective zeroes in on her dangerous ex-boyfriend.
About: This will be Grant Singer’s official feature directing debut. Singer is best known for directing Super Bowl singer, The Weekend’s, videos. You can see one of those videos here. Singer co-wrote the script with Ben Brewer. The film will star Benicio Del Toro.
Writer: Grant Singer & Ben Brewer
Details: 127 pages

Guys, before we get started, SEND ME THE SCRIPT TO BULLET TRAIN (carsonreeves1@gmail.com). I have to find out what’s attracting all these actors to this movie. Most scripts have 1 or 2 juicy parts. Outliers have 3 or 4. But for a script to have this many interesting characters that they’ve nabbed this many big actors?? I have to know what’s going on. So send it to me! I will buy an animal style double-double from In and Out in your honor.

Okay, on to today’s screenplay.

I went into this script not knowing much about it. When I began to realize it was a murder investigation story, I tensed up. These are incredibly difficult stories to do anything new with. You’re not only competing with similar movies that came before it. But a good 70 years of television has been covering this genre as well. I mean, how are you going to come up with any murder scenario that’s unique at this point?

For this reason, these scripts tend to depend on the strength of their characters. The characters have to be above and beyond your average movie characters if the script is even going to sniff ‘decent’ territory. Let’s find out if Reptile was able to achieve this.

30-something Will Grady is the kind of rich you only become if you were born into money. And Will was definitely that. His mother, Camille, is richer than anybody in town. She’s also attached to Will at the hip. If you marry Will, you marry his mother.

Which is probably why Will’s wife, Summer, is so bummed out. It seems like every occasion she and her husband attend includes Mommy Dearest. Well, that’s not going to happen much longer. Cause when Summer (who’s a real estate agent) goes to show a new house, she’s brutally murdered inside of it.

Local detective and all-around good guy, Nichols, comes onto the case, and the immediate suspect is Summer’s ex-boyfriend. Word around town was that he always used to beat her up. Feels like an open-and-shut case. But the further Nichols digs, the more complicated things get.

For example, every one of the houses Summer has sold this year is currently empty. She may have been involved in a scam whereby she helped wealthy criminals launder money. And, if that’s the case, it means the ex-boyfriend is the least of Nichols’ worries. In fact, the more Nichols keeps pushing, the more he realizes no one wants to help him – even his own police department. Could they be involved in this?

Just when things can’t get any worse, Nichols learns that some podcaster is out there chronicling the case in real time, giving the potential bad guys important information that can help them win their case, should it go to trial.

But Nichols pushes on and eventually learns that the companies who have been buying all these houses from Summer are connected to Will’s mom herself! Is she the one who murdered Summer? Or could it be someone close to her?

Reptile suffers from the problem I noted at the outset. It’s not giving us anything new. There was one tiny moment where Nichols confronts the podcaster where I thought, “Okay, I’ve never seen this before.” But, in the end, it was no different from detectives having to fend off traditional media. It was just that the form of the media was new.

With that said, the script is pretty good. It’s certainly better than the last movie that came out in this genre – The Little Things – because, ironically, it does a lot of the little things differently. For example, we spend a lot of time inside the crime scene throughout the first three-quarters of the screenplay, and the writers deliberately don’t show us the body. They keep hinting at how horrific the murder is, which does a wonderful job of keeping the reader turning the pages. The longer you don’t show the crash, the more we’re going to want to see the crash! So that was smart.

Also, the relationship between Will and his mother felt different. I’m sure one of these crime procedural shows have done a mommy-son suspect thing before. But there was something fresh about this emasculated husband that made him interesting. We find out, at some point, that Summer was still sleeping with her ex-boyfriend, the guy who used to beat her. So the fact that this woman was resisting a “perfect” life to be with this abusive terrible person made the characters a bit more complex.

I found myself wondering what I was supposed to feel. I didn’t like the husband, Will. And, of course, I didn’t like the ex-boyfriend. But, in a way, I didn’t like Summer either. Because she was cheating on her husband to willingly be with this man who abused her. It didn’t exactly endear me to her. Yet when you were in a room with Will and his mom, you could see how someone would perceive that as a living hell. So you kind of sympathized with her choice as well.

I give the script credit for that. It makes you think. And it makes you think about uncomfortable things.

But the script was plagued with a lingering messiness that, like a groundhog, kept peeking its way above the surface. Important information wasn’t always presented clearly. For example, the first thing we’re told when Summer is showing this house is that all the houses on the block are empty. So what does that tell you? That this is a poor neighborhood, right? Everybody went bankrupt and left town. The suburb is dead.

However, 70-some pages later, another detective casually mentions that this is the richest suburb in the entire nation. Uh, what? How was I supposed to know that? Little blips like that would show up every 20 pages or so that kept me from really being able to invest in the story.

I also think this is an example of having a certain vision of what you want to do in a script and not changing that vision when it’s clear that certain things aren’t working. The podcaster guy had some interesting moments. But he had no broader connection to the story. In other words, if you got rid of him, nothing else in the story changes. This is all about Nichols. It’s his investigation to win or lose. The podcaster is an annoyance. And with the script being 127 pages, you can probably excise 15 of those just by getting rid of him.

Remember. You only want to include things in your story that push it forward. If characters aren’t pushing the story forward, you have to decide whether to keep them or not. Good writers are able to make that difficult call. They don’t want to get rid of characters they like and that they’ve spent so much time developing. But they know it’s best for the story.

If you’re into slow dark murder investigation movies, you’ll probably like this. Despite its occasional messiness and familiarity, the plot has been well thought-out and, therefore, results in a satisfying climax. It ain’t going to break any streaming records. But it’ll be worth watching.

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

What I learned: Extremes help a logline. If you can say that something in your idea is the “biggest,” “the most dangerous,” “the richest,” “the most decorated,” “the CEO of the most successful company in the United States.” Extremes like that add weight to your idea. Cause you’re not just talking about any old thing. This is the biggest, the best, the most important! That’s why people pay attention. “After a real estate agent in the richest suburb in America is brutally murdered in a home she was showing, a Boston detective zeroes in on her dangerous ex-boyfriend.”