An excerpt from my script review for Heretic which will be available 11/18/24:
2.) Plot Stability
Having run long in my complaints in the first section, I’m going to try and be more focused going forward.
Anticipating your audience.
This horror script did this on multiple occasions, and that’s good.
One common complaint audiences have in the horror genre is characters always seem to act impractically foolish when faced with danger.
This script not only addressed that danger, but seemed to reference the fact as we were thinking of it.
Page 13:
MR. REED
The walls and ceiling have metal in
them, hope that’s okay?
BARNES
We don’t mind.
As I read, I thought it must have been a typo to say that, as the characters skipped right past this strange little admission.
Reed leaves the girls alone on the next page, and that phrase rattles around our (and presumably the girls’) subconscious.
“WTF did he just say?”
Page 25:
MR. REED (cont’d)
… I promise
you, the last thing I wanted to
do… was discover the one True
Religion.
(beat)
But unfortunately I did.
Now this depends on delivery, but it’s here the gravity of the situation hits the girls, and in turn us.
Up to now Reed comes off a bit kooky and eccentric, but a few minutes before there’s a glimmer of hope that this has all been a misunderstanding.
We knew it wasn’t, and so did the girls, but this clearly cements it.
And from here on out Barnes becomes the voice of reason…Reed is going to kill them and she isn’t going down without a fight.
She snatches a letter opener when he isn’t looking, and as the story progresses she gives it to Paxton, agreeing on the password “magic underwear” to stab Reed in the throat.
Barnes goads Reed into saying it and suddenly…
SLASH!
But it’s Barnes whose throat’s been cut!
Most of us (except for maybe the Cap’n and Reals) did not see that coming!
The rest of the plot hits a lot of the points in ways that it should.
Inescapable rooms.
Ticking clock of people looking for the girls, forcing Reed to adapt.
It all works.
What doesn’t?
*SPOILERS*
The over elaborate ending.
Now, this is a movie, and we have to “allow” certain things to seem plausible, but c’mon!
First…
How did Reed know Elder Kennedy would be ringing the doorbell at the exact moment the dead Prophet would need to be switched out?
And how could the other frail women have done it without being detected?
Second…
And for me this is where the story falls apart.
Once Barnes is dead and doesn’t come back, Reed digs an “implant” out of her arm saying that they’re living in a Matrix of sorts created by God.
By “dying” Paxton will be able to discover the one True Religion as she’s pulled from this fake reality.
Her answer of, “Yeah…naw,” and then going on to describe exactly what went down was almost as fantastic as Joseph Smith translating golden plates, only here she’s right.
Her explanation though seemed just as implausible as Reed’s Matrix one.
As much of a mind fuck as it was, how was she supposed to solve all that merely on the evidence she was given?
Answer? She wouldn’t have.
In closing this section, it’s a great technique to implement thoughts and reactions that anticipate what your reader is going through.
It’s probably relatively simple to do as well…simply ask yourself what did you think or feel when reading or watching a horror project?
Can you anticipate readers sharing similar thoughts in your own writing?
This leads us to the next section…
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