The horror, the horror?

There is very little new under the sun, it is often what you do with familiar elements, how you employ them in unconventional ways that is most impressive. Often, for many writers, the first instinct is to go with the obvious plot element, the idea that pops into your mind first, which is usually something that you have seen in another movie, probably more than once. So, it can be a really good discipline to recognize that first instinct and then look for something else.

A few nights ago, I delivered the screenplay for what I call a non-scary horror movie. I like horror movies and I like slasher films but I feel that it has all been done before, we all know what is going to happen: much of the time, a group of kids is going to find themselves in a situation where they are getting killed off one by one, end of story.

For me, the "horror" elements, the stalking and killing scenes have been so over-done that it's become monotonous, not very scary and, too much of the time, just an excuse for the f//x guys to go wild with gore -- who cares about the killing anymore?

Let me digress and talk about sex for awhile. Sex, yes, that got your attention. I usually fast forward through sex scenes. Why? Because I know what happens when people have sex. No matter how many variations we can come up with, it usually comes down to some version of Insert “Flap A into Slot B.” Yes, characters having sex is often an important plot element but actually seeing them have sex is usually superfluous and, when you get right down to it, gratuitous. Put it this way, I haven’t seen many sex scenes that further my understanding of the characters. They had sex, fine. They did it this way and that way --- probably unimportant.

I do not watch porn. I really have no need to watch people doing it. Bill Cosby once said “When I am hungry, I don’t watch a film of two people eating.” However, when I worked in a video store, one of my responsibilities was fixing broken VHS tapes. I would cut out the damaged section of the movie, splice the tape back together and test it out to see if it would play.


Sometimes I had to work on porn tapes and I would have to watch them in order to gauge the success of my repair work. So, here I was, for the first time, with a pile of porn tapes that I had to look at and what did I do? I fast-forwarded through the sex scenes and watched the “dramatic” material in between the sex, looking for acting and good dialogue. Needless to say, I found very little of either -- acting or good dialogue.


So, it is sort of the same thing with me and horror films. What I like to see in horror films are the non-horror moments, character development, who these people are and how they are dealing with the situation ---- something that I rarely see. So that is sort of what I set out to do in this horror screenplay.

Bear with me: It is about a group of bitchy, popular high school girls who bully an outcast, a lonely, awkward, artsy "weird" girl and who commits suicide.

The story zips ahead four or five years and the girls are now "adults", not really friends with each other anymore, largely out of touch until one of them dies mysteriously. They all reunite at the funeral and hang out for awhile afterward.

Old feelings are stirred when they discover that there might be a connection to the their friends murder and the suicide of the girl in high school or that it could just be a coincidence. They all start becoming acutely aware of this event from their past --- stories about teen suicide, internet bullying etc. everywhere they go. One of them even stumbles upon a tribute video to the girl on You Tube.

Then another girl dies. Then another. One girl really believes that there is a connection and that, if they go to the police they might be able to figure out who the killer is and get protection but the other girl(s) don't want anyone to know their story etc., etc.

Eventually, it comes down to the "good" girl, the one who wants to come clean about their involvement in the girl's suicide, and the "bad" girl, who is now an up-and-coming actress who doesn't want to jeopardize her career. They argue, the bad girl is really mean to the good girl, who storms off, distraught.

SPOILER ALERT -- If you really think that you might actually watch this film and you do not want the end to be ruined, skip the next paragraph.

The killer shows up, the bad girl runs to get the good girl only to find that she has committed suicide just like the first girl. The killer gets the bad girl, The End.

I left out big chunks and important details of the story but my point is that this is almost an anti-horror horror film, there are some scary moments but, mostly, it is about the girls sitting around, talking about feeling guilty or denying their guilt about what they did. Definitely not been-there-done-that --- whether or not it will translate into a successful film is another question.

Years ago, when I was writing film reviews for a national magazine, I got a “fan” letter from the director of a horror film that I liked and wrote a good review of. The director thanked me profusely and expressed appreciation for me because I really “got” what he was trying to do with the film. We stayed in touch, became really friendly, when this project emerged, he asked me to take a crack at the screenplay and I jumped at the chance. He is under no obligation to me to use my screenplay, he just asked if I wanted to do something with his premise and I took the challenge. With great trepidation, I sent the screenplay to the director, knowing that he wanted to make a horror film but that, what I wrote was more of a talky, indie art film with sporadic horror elements. He wrote to me halfway through reading the screenplay and told me that he plans to shoot it. I believe “shadow.man” will be produced in Houston early next year. Be afraid? Be very afraid?