An excerpt from my script review for No One Lives (2012) which will be available 03/05/24:
3.) Quality of Characters
Emma and Driver.
We’re presented with this really weird dynamic, which is good, but it’s never fully fleshed out.
Should you fully develop your main characters and their relationships? Yes.
Will you be forgiven, particularly in this genre, if you don’t? Probably.
First and foremost, don’t give me the whole “we’re not meant to know” bullshit about their “love”. That’s fucking lazy.
Driver was “in love” with Emma and was trying to make her like him, or some shit, that I got.
Okay…that’s interesting as it’s not normal and this is a horror…
But!
It doesn’t really work.
For instance, we’re given this flashback where she’s locked in a basement and he tells her there’s no escape.
If he dies, she’ll eventually die because she can’t get out and no one will ever find her.
Then he cuts his own throat daring her to save him.
Problem there…if she can’t escape, realistically she won’t have the tools or means to save him.
Or if she does have the means, then chances are she has whatever she needs to get free of him, being that, y’know, he’s bleeding out.
See this is the issue I had with their relationship…
That flashback is certainly a strange, cool scene meant to entertain us, but when you think about it for even a second you realize it’s improbable.
But we need her to save him because it’s obviously a flashback and it creates their weird dynamic.
And I’m completely fine not knowing their entire back story or how they met, just give me proper motivation for why the two are the way they are.
It just felt underwhelming like the writer didn’t do his job.
And that’s the main point to take away from this section, if you’re going to give us this weird sort of twist in character relationships, fully develop it.
The difference between doing so and not boils down to box office numbers, and if you’re reading this review chances are you’re interested in writing scripts to make money.
(Or get a script produced, which is essentially the same thing since the parties producing it are going to want to make money.)
Then there’s a bunch of other little issues…
Driver’s introduction:
The DRIVER, 38, handsome with piercing eyes, an inner
strength to match his muscular prowess,…
Now I know Reals hates when characters are introduced as “handsome” or “beautiful” because it is kind of lazy, but what the fuck does “an inner strength to match his muscular prowess” really mean?
It sounds like something people say to sound smart, but is really just a hollow statement that means nothing.
What would have been better? Simply state that something’s off about him.
We already kind of know that being that he’s never named like other characters, but string us along a bit.
Along those lines…our “ruthless highway gang” are introduced around page 13 in a way that says, “Holy Fuck! This is how NOT to introduce your cast!”
I’m not going to copy/paste it all out, but it’s completely overwhelming how I was slammed over the head with character after character being described with meaningless phrases like “an inner strength to match his muscular prowess”.
Yes, a slasher is going to need “meat” for the grinder, but as you do that, figure out a way that isn’t going to overwhelm your reader’s brain.
Think about the analogy form the previous section on “limited reader brain space”.
Same goes here.
Last complaint…were Ethan and The Giant the same person?
If so, standardize that in the script so as not to confuse the reader. If Ethan is a giant among men, just say that when you introduce him.
He’s a big fucker, and we’ll get that if you’re doing your job right based on his interactions with other characters.
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