An excerpt from my script review for Elevator Game which will be available 06/02/25:
2.) Plot Stability
First and foremost, the beauty of the script is we’re presented the “rules” clearly and early.
The legend goes…
Enter the elevator going to the floors in the following order:
4, 2, 6, 10, then 5.
(I repeated them in my mind with a Lost style recorded voice as I read.)
At the fifth floor you close your eyes and keep them shut. If you sense someone (a woman presumably) enter the elevator, you don’t turn around, look at her, or speak.
Once the door closes, hit the button for the first floor and the elevator rises instead of descends if you played the game correctly.
Break any of these rules and bad shit happens.
What happens if you play it right? You’ll see!
This is what makes for a good horror story…
Clear rules that the “monster” must adhere to and consequences for our characters if they break them.
Thinking back to the previous section, is the urban legend or ghost story you’re adapting taking advantage of any rules?
If not, can you implement some?
Remember, these rules are what get our characters into and out of trouble, which makes for excellent tension.
Once the rules are in place for your story, writing becomes a whole lot easier for you putting characters into various situations because you know what’s supposed to happen.
Like the “keep your eyes closed” rule.
Remember from my Smile script review, what freaks me out about horror is the idea that when closing my eyes for a task (washing my face) my mind always freaks out like something or someone will be behind/next to me when I open them.
This rule toys with that because we know something is there with us, but we can’t look.
For too many of us curiosity would win out, and like the characters, we’d look, knowing we shouldn’t and we’d pay for it.
That’s fun storytelling.
For this story though, it’s relatively simple…
Right from the beginning, we’re given a teenage girl playing the game by herself.
It’s drawn out just enough that we’re not quite sure anything will happen, but when it does, and Becki breaks the rules, we’re given a taste of what lies in store for later in the story.
Enter a group of ghost hunting teens who run a YouTube-esque channel where they play these sorts of games and video the results.
A new member, Ryan, is added who suggests the Elevator Game, and being that they’re in a bind with the sponsor, they need a quick and easy episode to shoot and reluctant go along with it.
Was this story the most original?
No, but again it did a lot of things really well for a horror.
First, it introduced the game early on (rules and consequences) then didn’t waste time getting us to the main story, our group of characters actually playing the game and opening a door for a ghost to stalk them.
The second thing that I liked was exposition was delivered quickly as the characters get ready to shoot the episode.
It’s not exactly “pope in the pool” levels of exciting stuff, but they’re not just sitting around talking.
There’s a simple little twist of why Ryan joined the team that works, and the Fifth Floor Woman (FFW) hunting them down is nice and creepy.
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