Because without a rule-set, there is no logic to the horror. But, as a reader, or an audience member, these scripts feel like one gigantic slop-fest. It’s like an endless playground of options to choose from. Writers, especially younger writers, love this because it allows them to basically introduce any horror scare they can think of. The second type of horror setup is when the writer comes up with a blanket provocation for horror that has no rules, and therefore anything and everything is allowed. A little more complex but still easy to understand. You get bit you turn into a vampire, you live forever, you crave blood. It’s one of the reasons the genre is so successful. There’s the horror movie where a clear rule-set is introduced that the audience understands and, therefore, they can participate in and enjoy.įor example, zombies. There are typically two types of horror movies. Let me try to explain my frustrations with it, though. “Bad” would be an unfair adjective to describe the script. As soon as if feels like work to the reader, you’re a crashed meteor. It felt like you had to work to get through the pages. There should be virtually zero effort on the reader’s part to make it through pages. Horror needs to be one of the easiest genres to read. Horror pages with this much text on them? Another big red flag. I’m always seeing meteor showers in scripts. So when you see these red flags, an internal groan echoes within you because you know that the next 100 pages probably aren’t going to be very good.ġ26 pages for a horror script? That’s a gigantic red flag.Ī protagonist who melodramatically lost BOTH her parents, one to cancer and one to suicide? Huge red flag.Ī meteor shower as your blanket “reason things start going crazy” device? That’s become one of the most cliched provocations for “crazy things start happening” I’ve come across over the last five years. Those patterns almost always result in certain outcomes. When you read a lot of scripts, you start to see patterns. But will they make it there before Crazy Greg catches up to them and arrows them all to death? Oh, and is Greg even their biggest problem out here? Might there be something bigger they must worry about? Once they get far enough away, Jay takes charge, convinced he can get them to a fire tower about a day’s walk away. Everybody runs into the forest, which, by the way, is freezing. Once back outside, everyone huddles together, trying to figure out what happened until, FWIT, an arrow pierces through Hunter’s face. After taking a quick walk to cool down, Rachel comes back to see that the house is on fire! She rushes upstairs to save Margot but Margot’s throat is slit. Rachel is veryyyyyyyy suspicious of this and lets everyone know it. But then after he takes the woman into a private room, she ends up dying. Late that first night, a decrepit woman in a broken ankle chain shows up at their door looking for help. Unofficially, Margot is looking for Rachel’s approval on Greg. Everyone’s drinking and getting ready for a meteor shower.įinally, we meet Greg, Margot’s current boyfriend and the man she’s probably going to marry. We also meet Margot’s sorority sisters, Nicki and Brooke. This is where we meet financial bros Jimmy (fat) and Hunter (country club). Margot and Jay drive Rachel up to a cabin in the mountains. The two have some sexual chemistry but Rachel’s still mad at Jay for ditching her when her mom got sick. Her former best friend, Margot, is waiting for her at the bus station with Jay, Margot’s brother and an almost-once-flame of Rachel’s. Therefore, she’s reconnecting with some old friends in the Catskills to get back into the world. Is it possible for a script like that to work? Read on to find out, my hombres!Ģ0-something Philly resident, Rachel, has had an unfortunate year. Today’s script started off like Friday the 13th and ended like 2001: A Space Odyssey. So at about the same place where it was officially ranked. For those of you wondering where the script would finish on my 2021 Black List re-ranking, I’d probably say around 48th, right behind Carriage Hill. Premise: A group of friends get together in a remote cabin but their weekend of partying comes to an abrupt halt when a crazed woman wearing a broken ankle chain shows up at their door.Ībout: Today’s script comes from a new writer who made last year’s Black List with this script.
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