Hi all.
Happy Halloween!!!
It’s the last day of the month that our beloved Cap’n looks forward to all year long…which also means it’s time for another Halloween Double Feature!!!
1.) Marketability of the Idea
The goriest (and perhaps greatest) teen slasher you have never seen.
That’s how this was pitched to me.
As I started reading, and then researching as I did, this was described as a “dark comedy” horror project.
Let’s talk about that for a second, and a reason why you shouldn’t pitch your project as such.
Being at this over ten years now, when I hear “dark comedy” in reference to a script I’m about to read, the hairs on the back of my neck start to bristle.
Usually this means…
- Instead of just entertaining me with your story you’re going to try and force a point into my brain a la that drunk uncle talking politics at Thanksgiving, and…
- There will be little to no “funny” in this “comedy”.
Now is this the case for all projects deemed as such? No.
However, this category has become a bit of a catch all for projects that don’t seem to fit anything else or are loved by a smaller demographic and calling it a “dark comedy” is akin to telling someone, “You just don’t get it,” when that person doesn’t see the brilliance in your cinema darling.
My point is, do yourself a favor and just write an entertaining story.
No one likes to be lectured.
Now, if you’re clever enough to deliver a fun story that just happens to make a viewer/reader think philosophically, all the better…just remember the analogy of your drunk Uncle as you write…especially with the holidays approaching…
Back to this story though, was the idea marketable?
I’d say absolutely, given it came out during the whole Scream craze where producers were gobbling any and all teen horror up.
My one criticism for this section though is calling the location Cherry Falls, and picking that as your title…when the killer is stalking virgins?
That’s a bit on the nose, isn’t it?
Cherry Falls Box Office Reception
2.) Plot Stability
If I’m being completely honest, this came off as the horror version of The Room.
(The 2003 Tommy Wiseau “film”. Which also has a dedicated cult like following!)
Cherry Falls premise is simple, a small town has a serial killer who stalks the local teenage virgins.
That’s well enough, but a lot of the reviews I read stated how this was so revolutionary, stalking virgins instead of promiscuous teens…from old 80s franchises perhaps.
Wasn’t the whole premise of the original Scream that Sidney Prescott didn’t have sex, and her boyfriend pressured her, but her virtue didn’t exclude her from being hunted.
That’s not to say that this premise still can’t work, but if it’s the main pole holding up your tent of creativity, you might be in trouble on a breezy day.
Aside from that, let’s look at our first kill…
First and foremost, it’s gory, which I know is something the Cap’n and Reals like in a slasher. That’s not my particular thing, but I’m well aware that dedicated horror audiences exist and that they have certain needs they expect to be filled.
So that’s fine.
What isn’t is the manner in which Stacey and Rod (another too “on-the-nose” pun by the way) die…
Starts off well enough, the killer has a one-handed sledge hammer and a long rusty nail (presumably more than one).
Stacey’s hit in the head with the hammer and then each hand is nailed to a tree, crucifixion style.
Again, this is fine. It gives the killer a certain style than constructs the “rules” of your horror. And every good monster is only as good as the “rules” they’re forced to play within.
But then Rod shows up to help Stacey, sees her nailed to the trees, turns and…
…gets stabbed through the heart with a butcher knife?
What happened to the hammer and nails? Killer couldn’t have driven a nail through Rod’s heart like he was vampire hunting?
Anyway, Rod falls down dead…Stacey’s losing her shit…and the killer comes back to Stacey…to finish her off with…?
Not the hammer…not the knife that just did Rod in either…but a razor blade…that just happens to be attached to the end of a pencil?
What that actual fuck?
And this is your opening scene! Have some fucking consistency for fuck’s sake.
Not every kill needs to be the exact same, but your killer can follow a pattern, deviating only when and where they need to.
(I mean at least the killer didn’t drop the kitchen sink on either of them.)
And things just unravel from there…with the next kill the killer tries to go the crucifixion route, but then abandons it choosing to just slice people’s throats and in one case sever a guy’s appendages and then attempts to feed it to him?
It was too all over the place.
Good horror sticks to a pattern.
Giving your bad guys rules to follow gives your characters hope. Hope feeds a lot of meat into the grinder that is your story.
Sure horror audiences are forgiving, but why wouldn’t you want to value the time and trust they’ve bestowed upon you?
Some of the smaller stuff…
The twist was good, if not telegraphed from the first meeting.
The second twist of why the killer did what they did was also pretty easy to spot and come the big reveal, when Jody finds out, it wasn’t much of a surprise.
Oh…If you’ve always wanted to see a high school orgy, this is your chance. Apparently when a killer is only murdering virgins (because somehow that’s easy to spot) most parents send their kids to a local fuckfest.
Lastly, the script ends on a nightmare sequence. It was lame because it was one more thing that was easy to see from a mile away.
It didn’t have the feel of say…
3.) Quality of Characters
There really wasn’t much to say here.
It’s your standard “woe is me” group of high school teens where the boys are all trying to get laid and the girls are complaining their parent’s just don’t understand them.
The teenage angst is strong in this one, so much so that I got pretty annoyed with most of it halfway through.
If you watch similar films from the late 90s, early 2000s, you know what I’m talking about.
It worked for what it was, though.
One issue I had a hard time swallowing was the back story for the killer…apparently she was raped way back when by a group of students who are now the victims’ parents.
The reason “why” she was raped is a bit stupid, and I hope the film came up with something better.
Here she called those football players “queer” so they raped her to show they weren’t…
So let me get this straight…a group of four men proved they weren’t gay by all taking turns having sex with a single girl?
Set aside the horrific fact that it was rape…
Four guys…one girl.
What did the other three do when it wasn’t their turn?
Doesn’t exactly scream “heterosexual” now does it?
And two of the people responsible aren’t even in this story, so why not just make it one?
The whole thing seemed pretty contrived, especially how “okay” other parents were with it.
(“Oh, it was a different time, and the guys feel pretty bad about it.”)
Lastly the one character I did enjoy? When Brent goes to visit the abandoned house and there’s a Caretaker there. This woman was pretty funny with her zingers and dry one liners.
BRENT
She was murdered?
CARETAKER
No. She ate a pistol for lunch
one day.
4.) Dialogue and Description
This and the next section are going to blend together.
The formatting on this script was so atrocious that I KNOW it’s not a valid script and more a poor fan generated transcript of the film.
It was bad, like really bad.
Nevertheless!…
This is one of those examples you definitely don’t want to read and then emulate.
One thing you should never take away from a produced script is that any mistakes made there is an excuse for you to be sloppy.
This is more the next section, but any script you present to a professional should be as clean and error free as possible.
Never assume someone will look past simple mistakes and see your genius, because chances are you aren’t one.
(That’s not to say you can’t be a good writer, but remember none of us are as clever as we think we are.)
Now that my lecture’s over, what am I talking about?
Page 4:
ROD(cont.)
I don’t wanna take that chance.
I want my first time to be with you.
She kisses him back. He slides his hand under her skirt
again.
What’s wrong in those 3 lines?
(It may be hard to see because it’s not in the same margins as in the script.)
If you caught it, that second line isn’t description, it’s still Rod’s line.
And this happened a lot throughout this script. Too many times to count and not only did it become aggravating having to second guess whether something was happening or a character was still talking, but then, out of blue we get to…
Page 93:
Leonard heads up the stairs, still looking for Kenny and Jody. A couple of
KIDS
on the staircase notice him. He
almost trips on one. They start
whispering to each other, freaked
out that a teacher is there. More
and more kids start looking up
The party has definitely been
disturbed.
What the fuck? Description in a dialogue entry? How do you miss this?
We’re going to completely set aside all the run of the mill teenage complaining and the “Hi so-and-so,” type shit, not to mention all the “we see” nonsense, because realistically all of that that takes a backseat to this issue.
Format your fucking script properly.
Let me be perfectly clear here…
If you’re honored enough to get past a Hollywood gatekeeper, delivering your script into the hands of a professional reader, and you having something this ridiculously simple and easy to fix in the first few pages of your story?! Not only did you just burn a bridge, you’ll probably be ghosted when you try to follow up.
And why?
Because you couldn’t be bothered to proofread something that’s fucking standard in basic screenwriting software?
Don’t be foolish.
5.) Format
Because it deserves to be said again…
Never assume someone will look past simple mistakes and see your genius, because chances are you aren’t one.
Learn proper formatting guidelines for a screenplay.
Sure there’s no specific rules, but I think if you’ve read two or more scripts you’d understand how silly this script looked with its glaring mistakes from the previous section.
After that, I made a note on page 11 that there were too many typos.
Sure eleven pages in is more than five, but if I made a note about typos this early, you better bet a professional reader is making a mental note wondering if your project is really worth their limited time.
6.) What I liked…
That my tradition with the Cap’n continues another year!
7.) What needs work…
Fixing the formatting first, and then ditching the “dark comedy” aspect and just delivering a story worth reading/watching.
Rating: I’d say pass on this one. If it holds a special place in your heart then I apologize for the giant dump I just took, but if you’re an aspiring screenwriter wanting to craft a spec horror…first, congratulations on picking a highly marketable genre, and second there are much better examples to learn from.
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