Dark Soul Valley by Stephen Wells (steveuk) - Horror - On a covert mission deep in the jungles of Vietnam, a squad of American soldiers must fight for their lives when they encounter an enemy far more terrifying than anything they could have imagined. 92 pages - pdf, format

EDIT: New draft uploaded Mar 2010 - thanks Don!

Many thanks for putting this up Don.

This is the first full length script that I've managed to finish, and any comments, criticisms or suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Hi Steven,

Have made start on this - great opening, really well written and powerful.

Unfortunately, this is then dissipated by the long and dialogue heavy scene at the camp. You introduce too many characters and there is too much talk. It would be better to let us get to know the characters organically, as the story progresses, and in short bursts of dialogue, rather than great chunks like this.

If I were watching this, I would be fidgeting, wondering when the excellent start was going to be built on. The rule is Bang Bang Bang - don't give us a chance to think about what is going on!

It's page 20 - theoretically 20 minutes into the film - before they are even on the helicopter! Ideally this would be better immediately after the opening scene - and then let us meet the characters here and in the scenes in the jungle - the camp scenes just hold up the action!

So basically, cut down the dialogue and up the action - maybe you can intercut flashbacks within flashbacks, as they go through the jungle, which would allow you to give us a bit of background colour if you want.

I'd also point out that you don't need to tell us things about the characters - this should come through the dialogue or action. So telling us that a character is Irish-American is pointless - let it be mentioned in dialogue (as you do with the "luck of the Irish" line) or some visual pointer (a shamrock painted on his helmet for example!).

I'm about a third into the script, and will return when I have read more.

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A bit later...

I have reached page 70 now.

The basic problem still remains. There is a lot of good stuff here - the action scenes are well described, the structure is solid - you move us along nicely towards the revelations of the camp.

But there is just too much talking! Characters sit around in a NVA infested (so they think) jungle talking about themselves! We have chunks of dialogue, a massive VO that is laid over a flashback and tells us what we are seeing!

And none of this makes anyone stand out - I could not tell you who was who, as they all sound much the same.

Holden is a strange Sgt - he turns on his superior officer at the drop of a hat, which would get him executed, and acts as if he has never seen a dead soldier before - this is Vietnam, he would have seen plenty of dead teenagers by now! His actions are just unbelievable and seriously undermines the script.

I would also suggest that a better way to deal with the papers and journal that are found would be for the group to have a South Vietnamese soldier with them on secondment, acting as a guide. He could translate the papers, and this would be more believable. And the whole "secret mission you weren't aware of" would be best dropped - it's an old idea that has been done to death. If this mission was that important, it would have been done by red berets or special ops, not a bunch of rebellious kids!

The flashback scene is a real problem for me. As I say, you show us something happeneing, and then have a VO telling us what we are seeing. Why? Drop the entire VO, have the Vietnamese characters speak (with subtitles), and develop this better as a sequence within the script.

I am not sure if having two of the soldiers turning into zombies at the same time is the best idea - it seems a bit strange to split our attention between the pair. We know that they are both heading that way once they are bitten, but why not just concentrate on the one? Maybe it would be best to kill the one pretty quickly, and then have them discover he is gone after they realise what has happened at the camp, and then having the second one take longer as it is a minor wound?

Again, when you get into the action scenes, this is your strength. The attack of the zombies would make a great sequence on screen. There is indeed plenty of good points within the script - structurally it is fine. It is the over preponderance of talk that marrs it.

I hope to finish it off shortly and will post the final part of this read asap.

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Have finished it. Will say this for it - it was a quick and easy read, by and large, which is never a bad thing in a script.

It ended quite well - in fact, the final scene was very good.

But again it was marred by too much dialogue, a lack of clear characterisation in some of the soldiers, so that they basically became zombie fodder, and some slip ups that dented the believability of the story.

Reggie loses his glasses and cannot see. If his eyesight was that bad, what was he doing in the Army? They'd 4f him surely? better perhaps just for him to have got mud in his eyes, or even better, be blinded by a muzzle flash or something along these lines during the gunfight.

Having the two soldiers infected really backfires her, where they both turn within minutes of each other and the second scene in the hut thus loses it's impact. I'd drop the scene with Duke - he can still turn up later with the zombies - and just concentrate on Hollywood.

There is far too much dialogue in this last scene in the hut, and having them hug is just silly. There are zombies smashing there way in!

I should say, as someone else will no doubt point out, that it has some formatting errors (putting the weather in the sluglines, that sort of thing), but these are relatively minor - you have a tendency in places to tell us stuff that the audience couldn't know when you need to have it stated in dialogue, or better still, shown to us through actions and visuals.

The main thing you need to sort out is the dialogue. The basic structure of the script, the story itself - they are ok. But there is too much yammering!

By and large I enjoyed this though - and I don't like zombie movies much. But at least you made an effort to be a bit different from the run of the mill. Congrats on that.

Good effort anyway. Iron out some of the problems and you might have a very good little script here.

Hi Niles, I hope you're feeling better.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and thanks for all of your suggestions - they're really helpful.

Having read your feedback, I've had a quick flick through the script and I agree that the dialogue needs the most work. I think at least four or five pages could probably be trimmed from the script just by editing the dialogue.

You've made some great points, and I really like the idea of having a Vietnamese guide with the squad - I don't know why I didn't think of it myself! I think this character will make a lot more sense than what I currently have - great suggestion!

Hey Steve.  Sorry for the delay in my review, works been hectic at the moment.

First thing I noticed is the bad quality of the pdf, did you use finaldraft pdf?  I’ve noticed myself that it converts to a poor quality, I now use Primopdf cos it’s free and the qualities much better.

Right I’ll start my review now...

Pellagrini’s first dialogue is ‘I’m too short for this s***’.  Isn’t this line in Platoon?  Maybe I’m making this up lol.  Actually, the whole filling the sandbags and the conversation with Holden and Hollywood seemed familiar too.  That could be a good thing, it means the dialogue read well for starters.

Page 7 is a full page of dialogue.  You might want to break it up with a few short lines of action.  Just mundane things will do like, ‘Holden fidgets with the lighter’ or ‘Jersey thuds his spade into the dirt’.

Typo on page 15, Holden’s dialogue, ‘the whle place was lit up with gun fire’.  You’re missing a ‘o’.

I like the farmers demise, nicely described.

There’s quite a few characters introduced but so far I’ve had no problems distinguishing between them.  They’re well described and seem quite individual.  There’s a lot of dialogue, most enforcing the plight of the characters but there’s some nice conversations which give us a bit of background on the characters.

I like the way you start some of the scene’s with the natural habitat being disturbed by the foreign soldiers.  This gives a good visual.

When Hollywood asks where Red got hit, it sounds a bit odd.  Is Hollywood not close enough to see the wound?  If he is, then he would not have to ask.  It’s a bit unclear as to his closeness to the situation.  He reaction to been hit and his subsequent demise is nicely done though.

Again, I see a lot of comparisons with ‘Platoon’ here.  Red dies in the first fire-fight, ala Gardner and this is followed by a night scene in the rain with covering poncho, similar to Chris’ experience of being on watch.

Page 30, Farm Boy says he’s been married for almost over a year.  This sounds odd, would it not sound better if you put that he’s been married for nearly a year?

Page 31, Farm Boy says ‘They couldn’t believe it when I bagged one my very first time’.  This is a bit awkward, don’t know if this sounds better...’when I bagged one on my very first time’?  Or maybe put in a comma after ‘one’.

There are few occasions when you write stuff that could be thrown away, like this; ‘A picture of tranquillity. For the first time since he arrived in ‘Nam, he looks at peace with the world’.
It’s a nice description but can’t be filmed so it’s pretty much redundant here.

Holden says ‘something’s wrong with this picture’, to which farm boy replies ‘what do you mean “it’s empty”.  I don’t get this line.  Why does farm boy say this, he can’t see the camps empty and Holden never mentioned anything of the sort.  Also does farm boy finger quote “it’s empty”, if so why?  He’s off screen.

Typo on page 45.  ‘followed by, quickly by the rest of the squad’.

There are a few instances when you write things like ‘struggles to think of a believable lie’, I don’t think you need to include this, it can’t be shown and it just slows it down.

Typo page 55, ‘Hollywood is lay on one of the cots...’

I think the flashback scene works well, and the experiments are pretty gruesome.

Jackson’s V.O. ‘a dead POW came back to life and attacked one of the guards’ and his subsequent dialogue too.  Not sure this is needed too, you showed this and I think it would have more impact without the narration.

The whole diary has an eerie feel, kind of like the one you find in the Resident Evil game if you’ve experienced that lol.  Anyway, I liked it.

Holden tells the group to take an AK47 to use after they have used their bullets for their M16’s.  As soldiers, I don’t think he needs to explain why they would need to take the AK’s.

You’ve got some good panic going on when the undead advance on the perimeter.

I seem to be saying to you that I feel a lot of similarities with other movies.  I see a Gorman (Aliens) character in Powers.  He doesn’t tell the team the real truth about the mission and then shows his cowardice when the s*** hits the fan.

I mentioned it earlier but it is more apparent now, you over write too much, and when it’s in the middle of the action it really slows the pace.  An example;
‘The terrified soldier stands motionless, thinking over what to do.  It doesn’t take long to decide.  He turns and runs into the camp’.
You could simplify this so it reads much quicker, and in the context of the story, a frenzied assault, it would flow better.
‘He stands motionless, terrified.  He spins and runs into the camp.’
This of course, is only my opinion and at the end of the day, it’s what you’re happy with.

You have some nice gruesome deaths, Power’s springs to mind.

‘Holden fearlessly climbs deeper and deeper into the tunnel.’  Something doesn’t read right here, I think you should re-word this.  I don’t think ‘climb’ works, it gives the visual of him ascending followed by ‘deeper’ which suggest descending.

I wasn’t sure about Holden and Jackson’s last moments.

Jackson’s outcome was a surprise as I thought he would survive but I liked it.

OK I’m done.  The first hour of this is a pretty standard slow burning war movie then you’ve got an insane last half hour of zombie blasting.  I think there were only one or two small suggestions that there might be some darker enemies so I think a little more earlier on would be nice.  Not sure how you would do that without giving too much away though.  I thought the characters were ok, and seemed individual enough.  I did get the feeling you were influenced by some movies but aren’t we all lol.  Have you ever seen R-Point, it’s a foreign war/horror movie set in Vietnam.  Overall, I enjoyed this but it definitely got better as it went on.  There were a few instances when I thought the soldiers over explained things and in the situation they were in, would have simplified their responses.  Pretty good though Steve, hope this didn’t come across as over negative.

Hi Alffy,

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and many thanks for all of the comments you've made. I haven't had the chance to go through them thoroughly as I'm currently having a crack at the 7 week challenge, but as soon as that's out of the way I'll be back on to this. Once again, thanks for the read & the comments - I'm sure they'll be greatly helpful.

Hi Steve(cool name by the way). I've just read your script. Had only planeed to read a bit for now, but I got right inot it! Very fast paced;always a good sign.

I think you said this is your first feature? Top effort - i really enjoyed it. I'd read the previous commnets awhile back but hadn't looked at the script - glad i finally did.
Ok, all your characters are basically cliches from war films BUT you give it a different feel, even allowing for the horror element. I didn't have a problem with the opening scenes at all, and thought the dialogue was just right. I tend to let my dialogue take over but i reckon you setup the different personalities nicely.

There were some humorous lines in this, and you also covered the technical aspects of military logistics well too. The tension built up towards the inevitable swarming attack. There seemed to be a lull for me, for a couple of pages, when the actual mayhem started, I dunno, the flow seemed to stutter a bit for me. Anyway, when the gory stuff kicked in full on, it was a matter of guessing who would die(and in what way) and who would survive.
Nice ending too, though we could probably see that coming. I just had an image of an alternate ending...Jackson falls asleep. Then the next scene, the chopper lands at the base, piloted by the creatures who emerge to wrek more havoc. Sorry, just a silly thought. It's early in the morn here and I'm tired!

Again, nice script for your first feature. Cheers stevie

Hi Stevie,

Thanks a lot for reading my script - I'm glad you liked it.  I'm actually in the middle of reading your 7WC script 'Headlong' at the moment, and should have my feedback up for you tomorrow.

Steve,

I had no idea what I was going to be reading when I downloaded this one. I didn't read the logline…  I know some people decide if they are going to read something or not by reading them, but I don't.  In other words I was clueless. On the other hand maybe that helped me out in seeing one problem with this script. As I started reading this, I thought to myself, cool, a war movie. Haven't really read any of those since Inglorious Basterds. I honestly thought you did a really really great job with this. I believed everything. The characters might have been a bit typical, but their dialogue and your description seemed pretty real to me. This also leads to the biggest problem I had with this script. My mind and mood was set for a war movie. When much much later I found out this was going to be a zombie movie, I got sort of confused. I think you can fix this by introducing the problem (zombies) much earlier. In other words, we need to get an idea of what type of film this is early. It's a horror, not a war drama or thriller. That was my main beef with this script. It set the wrong tone in the beginning.

I read the other comments and I guess this must be a rewrite because a lot of the problems they mention, I never even saw. They mention it being too talky and such. I didn't feel that at all. I thought it was just about right mixture of action and dialogue and it sounded pretty authentic to me.

The characters were fine, but I do agree with Niles that there maybe not too many, but they were hard to keep up with who was who sometimes. There were some that stood out more than others. Duke, Powers and Jersey. I liked Duke for his go getter "I love this s***" kinda guy. Powers was not likable, but he was also a tad different. Different enough to remember. Jersey might have been my favorite. I would suggest however to read ONLY Jersey's dialogue out loud once and I thick you'll see that he's way of speaking changes from the beginning to end. The other characters were not so defined. As, I'm sure you know, the more you know about a character the more you are invested in their fate whether it's the hero or villain. I also had sort of a problem with the last two remaining characters being Holden and Jackson. You need to let us "know" the characters that will be the last ones standing. In this case, I was surprised Holden all of a sudden became the hero/protagonist and the second guy being Jackson.  I didn't see that coming at all and as a result I didn't care about themas much as I wanted too.

The story itself was pretty standard, however, you did put it in a different setting. I thought that was very successful. I also applaud you for writing a zombie script where that word is never even mentioned. Not even once! You even managed to write what in my mind is a PG-13 script. I'm not very sensitive though,  but seriously if it had to be R rated it would be a very soft one…Maybe I'm just weird….

I see some of the other comments compared this to Platoon. I can't say anything about that since I've only seen that one once and it was a million years ago. Funny thing Alffy mentioned Aliens though. I actually had that thought myself as I was reading.  Not sure exactly why, but it had the same sort of flow and the way Holden/Ripley steps up and takes charge. The way they break up in twos and they go down. Honestly though. I wouldn't worry too much about that. I'm not kidding you when I say that you did a really really great job on this. You should be very proud of yourself. You had me hooked right away. You had great action scenes. You had some nice yuckiness. Trust me, it was a job really well done.

Pia    

PS. They emptied latrines? Interesting. I thought they would just fill them over with dirt then dig a new one.

Hi Pia,

Thanks for giving this a read and leaving such constructive feedback & encouragement.

With regards to the genre not being clear enough, I thought I'd set the tone with the opening scene in the jungle, but it's something that I'll have a look at and see if I can improve it and make it a little more obvious.

The characters were a bit of a problem, as there are a lot of them, but I didn't want to take any out as I thought they all served a purpose in the story.  I think I need to tweak them a little and make them a little more easy to differentiate from each other.

Thanks for the tip on Jersey's dialogue - I'll have a look at that.  Also, you're right about Holden and Jackson.  I think I probably need to flesh them out more and make them more central to the story early on.

As for the latrines, I think they had a barrel underneath them that was removed and then had diesel poured in to burn the waste.  I imagine that smelled delightful!

I know it's a little late, but as promised, I got around to finishing Dark Soul Valley.  Thanks for your patience.

First off, your formatting is solid.  Now, some people might come down on you for putting too much into your descriptions (that can't visibly be seen on film), but that actually helped me with your script.  For reading purposes, having a quick unfilmable after each character's introduction, helped me remember them for later; especially when you're introducing so many characters at once.  I know, when reading, this can be a bit daunting, but once you film it, it'll be no big deal.  I actually got my hands on the unproduced John Hughes script a couple of days ago, and I couldn't believe how many characters he introduced in just one paragraph.  It was sheer insanity.

Speaking of characters, good job on writing their dialogue.  I actually read about 20 pages of this a long time back and then picked it up and started over just today.  I was surprised at how quickly I was able to re-breeze through those 20 pages, and I attribute a lot of that to the dialogue.  That being said, I have to voice my dislike for Jersey.  While technically well written, I can't help but shudder every time I see such a stereotypical black character in a film.  I know you balance it out well by adding another, less stereotypical character, but it doesn't make it any less wince-inducing.

Which brings me to my next critique: the characters.  A few weeks ago I rented a film called Dead Presidents, which half takes place in Vietnam.  And all of the characters introduced were basically just a parade of stereotypes, in my opinion.  The religious one, the psycho, the down-home country boy, the vulgar, stereotypical black man, etc.  It bothered me with that movie and it kind of bothered me with yours.  If you're going to introduce so many characters, maybe you could give them a few traits you wouldn't normally see in films like this.  I mean, how many scenes have we seen in films where the religious character rambles off Bible quotes while he dies?  It just felt like we've been there before.  And the tough military guy (complete with scar) only made me think of the bad guy from Avatar.

As far as the story goes, I never really felt surprised when reading it.  The story seemed to stick to a pretty basic path.  So if you can, maybe throw in a few more twists and things the reader wouldn't see coming.  For example, you waste a prime opportunity when Duke is killed.  Did you ever see Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2?  Well, at the end, Shredder gets covered in ooze and turns into the Super Shredder.  Awesome, right?  Wrong.  Super Shredder is under a dock, starts going ape-s***, and causes his own death by collapsing the dock.  My point is: we never get to see Super Shredder in action, much like we never get to see Super Duke in action.  It's surprises and high-powered stuff like that that I want to see!  You go to the trouble of establishing Duke as the ultimate badass (and jackass), separating him from the guys, having him get bit, and then showing up as a zombie...only to be shot immediately.  Why?    Like I said, my point is that I want more stuff like that.

Overall, good work.  I got through the script in no-time, so that's saying something.  But like I said, I really wish you'd amp it up a bit.  Really give the horror fans their fill.  

Hi Matt

Thanks a lot for taking the time to give this a read.  Sorry it's taken so long for me to get back to you - i've been mega busy lately.

I'm glad you found it easy to breeze through & thanks for the compliment on the dialogue - it's probably the single aspect of the script that i spent the most time working on when i rewrote this.

With regards to the unfilmables, i'm in agreement with you.  Although they're generally frowned upon I think they help greatly in distinguishing characters, especially when there are so many.  I once read an interview with an established writer (and I can't for the life of me remember his name) who said he almost always includes unfilmables when introducing a character, as it helps give the reader a clearer picture in their head and makes them more memorable.

As for the characters being stereotypical, i completely agree.  Having seen so many war films with the usual stereotypes it was hard not to fall into the same trap, and this is something I definitely want to work on if I ever get round to writing another draft.  I also think you're spot on with Duke.  Looking back, it was definitely a missed opportunity having him killed so easily - he really needs to play a bigger part in the finale.

Again, thanks for giving this a read.  Your feedback and suggestions are greatly appreciated.