I get what you're saying, George. There're a lot of things Jimmy could take away from this experience but most of them are negative and possibly life-scarring. I guess the one thing that could change Jimmy for the better would be that he learns not to betray his other instincts just to satisfy his need for appreciation (since I'm planning to tie this need into his reasons for returning to the monastery as it would give his friends more incentive to do so as well). Problem is I'm not sure how I could integrate this into the script without coming off as sappy.

This point of this "staple" is somewhat alien to me since I don't watch films expecting them to have a point. I can see the point of character arcs as it's interesting to watch characters change over the course of the story but characters learning a lesson or taking up some ideal doesn't seem important to me. Nevertheless, I'm always willing to learn. Perhaps I should look into this some concept some more.

Most people don't watch movies to have a point. they are there to entertain. But in order to be satisfied with the entertainment, the characters need to have done something. If that doesn't happen (*cough*most-modern-horror*cough*), then you leave the story feeling cheated. If it does happen, you don't take away the point; you take away that you just watched a good movie. No, oh God please don't do anything sappy. It should definitely be subtle, and yet complete.

I'll give some examples and hope they come across:

In American Beauty, the growth of the lead character is shown when he picks up the picture frame near the end; not a word is spoken, but you just know.

In The Godfather, Michael goes from Marine poster child to the new Don Corleone. Major growth and his not necessarily for the better.

In Lord of the Rings, Frodo wants an adventure, gets it, and learns to appreciate the simple life of the Shire while he's gone only to find it isn't enough after all when he comes back.

In none of these do you get the "moral of the story" but you feel the character's growth through the adventures. That's all you need. Just to know that some growth occurred. For Jimmy, this would likely come out during the climax against Renard somehow, or maybe during a conversation with Francois before they try to leave, or just before Vincent carries him off. Doing it during the denouement is too much.

Thanks George. I'll give it a shot.

Since my last post, I actually thought of a horror movie that had character development of this kind: Alien. At the begining of the film, Riply's character is completely by-the-book and follows all the rules but at the end, she's reckless and ends up blowing up the Nostromo in an attempt to destroy the alien. I know there're other horror movies that have done this as well. Is this the kind of thing you're talking about?

Another example (of character development in a genre film) would be River from the movie Serenity. At the beginning she's a semi-insane prophet with no control over her mind or her powers, and by the end she's confident, powerful, and in control.

Two absolutely perfect examples. Another prime one that I think is just perfect is Will Smith's character from I, Robot. Whatever you think of the movie, his development works admirably. At the beginning, he believes robots are mostly useless and cannot be trusted. During the climax, he is forced to trust a robot and rely on his own robotic implement in order to save the day. Not only that, but he needs to trust a robot to do the one thing that caused his to distrust robots to begin with. It was the development during the story that allowed him to turn around his beliefs and allow him to save the day.

Quoted from Redeemer Another example (of character development in a genre film) would be River from the movie Serenity. At the beginning she's a semi-insane prophet with no control over her mind or her powers, and by the end she's confident, powerful, and in control.

That works too except that's the kind of thing I'm trying to avoid. I'm much more interested in people's degeneration rather than positive evolution. The Hills Have Eyes did this well. I know pretty much every horror movie involves civilized people turning into psycho killers but THHE is one of the only ones that did it in a realistic manner.

Anyway, I think we're getting a little off topic (on a thread about my own script, no less). I'm only contributing because we're talking about some good stuff here.

You can degenerate as well. In War of the Roses, neither side gave in and they both lost. The difference here is the audience got something out of it. The Godfather is also a possible example of degenerative growth. I don't think going from a Marine to a crime boss can be called positive growth. It definitely works both ways. Depends on what you want to do.

Sorry we got off the topic of your script, BTW. Hope this was a useful discussion.

Here goes, I'm writing this as i read..

-Marty seems kind of cliched, as a character - comic relief guy who gets killed first...
lets see if you prove me wrong

-Page 9 - a grape falls directly into Marty's hand? Maybe I read the description wrong...

-Page 15 - Ren and Stimpy are always right...

-Page 28 - By "ectended amount of time" do you mean, a few mins, like three, or like ten minutes? If so, you've got to make this add to the page amount of the script.

-Page 30 ha ha. That would be pretty creepy to be subtely forced by creepy monks.

-Page 33- I'd be quite scared to swear in a monesry (or church or cathedral, or a priest's house, etc)

wow. Just wow. That was...great. Much more gory than I expected. I excepted gothic horror, and I got that, but the last thirty (?) pages really suurrised me.

Best of all, the character were unique, although Marty was kind of cliched.

Second best of all, the gore ACTUALLy made me cringe reading. That must be a good sign.

I kind of felt sorry for Dana when she died. Good sign,

Last of all, I thank you for increasing my fear of religion.

I can't say the stuff about the grapes, I honestly didn't know that.

Thanks for the read, Ben.

I get what you're saying about Marty. He is kind of a typical comic relief archetype. He's also a departure from the kind of characters I tend to use. Most of my characters are artsy/misfit types with strange interests. Jimmy likes cartoons and Dana's got her Euro schtick. These are the kinds of people I'm interested in since I relate to them and most of them are based off people I know. Marty's the closest I've come to a typical college student. Still, I added some things to his personality that set him apart from the archetype. Unlike your typical party animal, Marty's a sharp guy who can get deep if a conversation calls for it and despite the drastic differences between him and Dana, they're friends deep down and I'm quite proud of their "bonding" scenes.

The grape does fall directly into Marty's hand. I did that on purpose. I thought it was an excellent but subtle forshadow. There's a term "windfall" that means an unexpected twist of good luck. The term originates from an apple falling from a tree into someone's hand. The irony, of course, is that the apple falls because it's dead. Unfortunately, I had to get rid of it due to the deal with wine grapes.

Glad the gore made you cringe. I always try to make things nasty.

Thanks for the read.

You could still keep the grape bit in, though. It is good foreshadowing. Like, Marty doesn't know they're different from regular grapes (although, say, Dana does, but let's him go at it anyway) and then gets all disgusted when he tries it. And there's a fine analogy, too: the grapes are all harmless looking on the outside, but quite nasty on the inside. Quite like our killer monk friends?

The grape falling isn't a "windfall" if Marty can't eat it. I think it's better just to leave it out.

Thanks for the suggestion, anyway.

Hey James, just finished reading this, and I have some comments for you. Warning: I’m going to be brutally honest.

*SPOILERS*

What worked:

-You’ve got a decent premise for an horror feature here: a brotherhood of monks who offer their hospitality, but then want you to join them at any cost.

-Nice arena as well; the torch lit chambers and hallways are a nice and creepy place to have your characters running around while playing Hack & Slash with the monks.

-You said you worked hard on your characters, and it shows. You can instantly tell one from another; you avoided having the usual bunch of teens who sound all the same.

-Dialogue between characters flowed naturally.

-It’s clear you took some time to learn proper screenplay format.


What didn’t work:

1)I wasn’t hooked by the opening scene. You tried to open with something creepy and that’s ok, but… What is the opening scene telling to the audience? That someone is screaming, nothing more; we’ve seen that thousands of times. If you’re going to keep this opening, show the audience what’s going on behind that door. Show some monks doing some nasty stuff, although you don’t have to explain why they’re doing that, and keep it a mystery. Give the audience a little more to feel intrigued; someone screaming is not a mystery anymore. Don’t worry about spoiling that your monks are bad boys right from the beginning; is this script is produced, that’s the first thing we’re going to know from trailers and the marketing campaign.


2)The first act is way too long. The first creepy thing that happens to your characters is reaching the forbidden door, and that happens by page 25. Way too late for a 93 page horror feature, IMO. You have to get them there much earlier. The Danas in the audience could enjoy the tour your characters take in the first 25 minutes… but what about the Martys? We should worry more about them because this is an horror movie and the theatre will be packed with Martys. Some suggestions:

.Cut the chit-chat. Friends in real life talk about movies for example, but in “reel” life they only talk about what moves the plot forward or reveal character.
.Nothing happens during their visit to the first winery. Cut that out. You can have someone mention that the winery they visited before was cool or something like that.
.Do we really need Mike in this script? Couldn’t  the car belong to Jimmy or Dana?
.Trim every scene to the bone, don’t show irrelevant stuff. I saw this problem not only in the first act, but in the whole script, and that leads me too…

3)Scene efficiency. I guess you’re familiar with the “Arrive late, leave early” rule. Scenes don’t begin when people arrive, they begin when things get interesting. And they don’t end when people politely said goodbye to each other, they end when there’s anything more to say that’s relevant to the story. I made some notes below in which I show you some examples of scenes that, IMO, could be shorter.

4)Not enough scary/creepy moments which are essential to this genre; they’re the heartbeats of these kind of movies. Once the torture begins, you’re alright, but before we get there your characters only have 2 creepy moments: the forbidden door scene (p.25) and the Jimmy gets locked scene (p.54). You need to come up with some creepy stuff to keep your target audience interested.

5)As I said earlier, format is good, but there are some minor details I think you can improve.

Here are some notes I made while reading the script.


P.1.
“FADE OUT
FADE IN”

This is directing and is frowned upon in spec scripts. You have many of these. I suggest removing all of them (except the first FADE IN and the last FADE OUT, of course). Anyways, if you decide to keep them, watch out the one in the middle of p.53; you wrote it the other way round (FADE IN/FADE OUT).

IMO, you don’t need to describe Jimmy’s exact clothes, just give us an idea of how your characters are dressed if that’s relevant to the plot (elegantly dressed, casually, etc) Trust the producer, he will hire very talented people to choose the right clothes for your characters.

“INSERT: SOMEWHERE IN THE FRENCH COUNTRYSIDE”

You meant SUPER? Anyways, your character’s dialogue in the next scenes give us that information, so maybe you don’t need this.

P.2.
“MIKE (O.S.)”
This would be V.O. Mike is not in the scene. Use O.S. only when the character speaking is present but off camera.

“MIKE (O.S.)
Cool, see you then.”

IMO, this is the last line you need in the exchange between Mike and Jimmy. Right after this, cut to Jimmy reaching the car. The audience will assume that both friends said goodbye and that Jimmy put the cell back in his pocket; no need to show this.


P.8 The first exchange between Jimmy, Marty and Diana had some witty dialogue which had me chucking. But it’s too long; more than 3 pages! Sorry, but you’ve got one of those infamous “talking heads” scene here. Try to trim it down.

P.18
“JIMMY
You speak English?”
Cut it. It’s obvious he does by now.

The Monastery tour: Sorry, but it’s too long. They show them nearly the whole place! If your characters (or the audience) don’t see anything creepy here (besides the forbidden door) you have to trim this scene a lot.


P.23
Vincent tells Renard they have visitors. You don’t need this scene; the audience can assume someone told Renard about the visitors.

P.27
“RENARD
Well?”
Right after that, cut to everyone eating in the dinning room. By seeing the whole bunch there, it’s obvious they said “yes”. Leave early.

Dinning Scene
Another 3 and a half pages of talking heads. Try to shorten it.

P.33
“(both laugh)”
This kind of stuff belongs to action lines, not parenthicals. You’ve got many of these.

P.40
“CUT TO:”
This is not the way to use a transition. Anyways, they’re not used anymore. Instead of CUT TO, you can write: INT. JIMMY´S QUARTERS – LATER
You’ve got many of these.


Jacque´s scene:

Lots of problems here. Many relevant information thrown to the audience in a non-visual/expository dialogue scene. I would consider writing the baptize scene as a Renard´s flashback, if you’re very subtle about the baby’s death it could work. And it would be something very creepy to watch, much more interesting that hearing it from a total stranger. Heck, you could even open the script with that scene, it’s creepy and it reveals a very important moment of one of your main characters.

Whatever you choose to do, don’t make the audience hear all this information from a total stranger who just happens to pass by; they won’t buy it.

After hearing Jacque’s story, they decide to go back to the monastery. Sorry but I don’t buy this. I wouldn’t go back there, and you wouldn’t either! You have to come up with a good excuse for them to return. If you can’t, don’t let them leave. Make one of the monks to sabotage Jimmy’s car, or bring earlier the lockdown scene in p.54

P.49
Anyways, once they decided to go back to the monastery, cut directly to the dinning room. It’s implied that they started the car, drove, etc. I found a couple more of these, but I’ll stop. You get the idea by now.

P.59 “INT. TORTURE CHAMBER – JIMMY”

Very odd slug, try to avoid this. If I get it right, your characters are in different torture chambers. You could number them: INT. TORTURE CHAMBER Nº1, etc.

P.89
“JIMMY
They didn’t accept it! You tortured them! They were afraid! They couldn’t leave!”

It’s hard to buy that Renard alone could enslave all the others. I think you need more Renards to make this believable. There could be 10 or 20 evil monks like Renard. Of course, you would focus on only one of them, but the existence of the others will help the audience believe the whole picture.

P.92
“VINCENT
Vincent... I’m dying”

Maybe it’s Renard talking here?


Well, nothing more to add. Overall, while I belive this script needs some work, I think it´s got potential and you can be proud of this. I hope some of these comments were useful for further rewrites. Good luck.

Thanks for the read, Mr. Z. I appreciate you being "brutally honest." That's what I'm here for. My friends aren't going to be.

Thanks for pointing out the minor formatting errors. That's all going to change. Even the additional FADE IN/FADE OUT's. It is directing, I suppose.

I've already rewritten the scene with Jacque considerably and the opening scene has been scrapped for a new one. However I agree that the story of Renard's past could use some more visuals. I'll try to splice in a few flashback scenes (however not an entire flashback scene; it's supposed to be subtle after all).

The first act is very slow (as is the second IMO) but that's completely diliberate. This is supposed to start off feeling like a gothic thriller before I switch gears to something a little more gutsy (no pun intended). I think the first two acts moving slower than usual strengthens the impact of the third. I agree about a few scenes being trimmed but I don't think I'll be cutting anything out. Yes, there's a lot of "talking head" scenes in this. Again, this is deliberate. Personally, I don't mind characters taking a break from progressing the story to talk about trivial things. It makes them seem more like real people and not just, well, characters. Nevertheless, I'm not one to disgard advice before taking it into consideration so I'll give the script another once over and see if I can trim a few of the scenes down so they're somewhat more manageable.

Thanks again for the read.

I've just submitted a new draft. Amongst the changes are:

1. A new opening.

2. A new ending.

3. A character arc.

4. Re-written 'God discussion.'

5. Re-written 'Jacque scene.'

6. Re-written 'porridge scene.'

7. A few other changes I can't think of off the top of my head. Mostly line and formatting changes.

For those interested: the new draft is up.