hey guys

This isn't really a logline, but more of a broad premise/plot outline for something I'm writing, for which I'm not sure the overall plot structure works.

Broadly, the premise is inspired by the Golden State Killer, a serial killer in California in the 70s/80s who terrorised the Sacramento area, committed a series of terrifying home invasions and assaults upon women, and several couples before disappearing into the night. He went unapprehended until 2018.

I'm about halfway through writing a draft, but the idea of the script is that it's a feature that follows a young couple who relocates to California in the year 198p from Savannah, Georgia, and the first 45 or so minutes of the script follows their relocation, relationship issues, marital conflict, and the wife's homesickness and loneliness in their new city. That's the central conflict initially, interspersed with momentary suggestions of impending attack - a few scenes show the couple coming home to find some of their belongings have been moved or lost, suggested someone was in the home, windows and doors unlocked, getting unsettling crank calls - but all of this only a few minutes of screen time for the first half.

The second half follows the actual home invasion by the serial killer. My idea is that, after half a movie's worth of character development of the main couple, they are both killed by the intruder in a horror movie-like sequence, hopefully capturing the readers off guard. The second half of the script follows the perpetrator exclusively, and not in a detective movie style - just exploring his escalating violence. He is not apprehended by the end of the movie.

Is there a way to make this work? I'm very attached to the idea of slowly developing the characters for 45/50 pages only to kill them off and then force the audience to be in the perp's head for the rest of the movie, but I know it's also likely the be narratively disjointed.

Ben, you already know what you're proposing is not standard structure - 40- 45 minutes on character development is a long time.If you were to weave enough of the unsettling stuff throughout, perhaps include a history of paranoia with one character (the other disbelieving - maybe a gaslighting history etc) it could be very effective.

You do risk it being two movies though and your audience having a WTF moment in the second half if we don't see the protagonist at all or enough.

Weaving domestic with horror though can be great.

It all depends how well you execute this. I personally love the idea as long as there's enough impending dread mixed in. Rosemary's Baby comes to mind. As does Andi McDowell in Crush. Starts as a Romcom then reverts to something completely different. My Mum was particularly annoyed at where that movie ended up. Same thing with Japanese Story with Toni Collette. You just want to make sure your audience is invested enough with the genre mix.

More examples:

https://collider.com/movies-change-genres-halfway-through/#39-death-proof-39-2007

Thanks L (I love Japanese Story and Rosemary's Baby, so maybe I'm onto something).

I've only written up to the midpoint so far, but I'll post something once I'm finished a draft - I'm struggling the connect the two plotlines less disappointingly.

Hell. Why not:

This is the first "half" of this weirdly structured thing (I've actually written almost all of it, but these parts are more presentable).

This is the initial "domestic drama" half of the script, which culminates in the violent home invasion. It's after this point that the perspective and genre will switch.

Happy to hear anyone's thoughts if there's enough here to justify 45/50 pages before introducing the murder parts.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/uge56rsex3enxuf/ThrillerMay.pdf?dl=0

Might post s WIP if I'm feeling confident enough about the viability of this.