Jake Kerr

Jake K.

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JakeKerr
Jake Kerr 3 years ago

completed a review for

Land of Fear feature
Genre: Horror,Thriller,Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Rating: 27%
Page 1: Scene headings shouldn’t really have adjectives like “chic.” The blocking of the first scene is going to have the director hate you. We are looking at three screens, and a conversation on one of the screens, and yet we also are being introduced to the main character, who probably should feature prominently in the shot. Page 3: Highlighting the word “untreatable” seems a bit of unrealistic overkill. Lizzie sounds a bit of a caricature. Keep an eye on her reactions. She’s right out of fifties central casting at this point. Page 5: I’m not really loving the shady “cowboy hired gun to get a pet hamster” route. I mean, he could have a friend run to the pet store. He could do any number of things. Hiring a cowboy to gather up a pet seems outlandish to the point of pushing my suspension of disbelief. Page 5/6: The pacing and rhythm of the Eve/Carol conversation is too sudden. It doesn’t quite flow naturally. This is the second time you’ve dropped us mid-conversation (The first was the Carol/John argument) and in both cases, the conversation feels forced. It can work, but you really need to make us feel that this is “picking up where we left off.” You don’t quite pull it off here. Page 7: Gotta admit. I absolutely love the dead rat unveiling. That was awesome. Page 7/8: So I’m having a tough time with your dialogue. I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt because Frank has memory issues, but the volume of “out of left field” comments is really starting to just sound off. The “die before your kids” thing is just odd in the context of the scary rat and distraught child. Page 8/9: Bloodstream thing is unnecessary. With all the genetic lab stuff and the rat from near the lab, the audience is going to pretty much assume that each rat bit is a VERY BAD THING. Page 9/10: I’m having a hard time figuring out Eve/Carol’s relationship. The dialogue is consistently angry and combative, and often pointed when additional context would be more authentic. For example, Eve blurts out “I might go to Paris with Lewis.” Why would she say that? And at church? If the goal is to have Carol take care of Frank, she should be savvy enough to set that up with appropriate timing. Here it just feels odd. So I’m really struggling to understand the motivations behind some of these conversations at the scene level. I should also note that we have a “Lewis mentioned a few times and the viewers have no idea who he is. Page 10: Again… don’t need to virus SFX. It doesn’t really do anything. Page 11: I’m not marking them, but there are a number of typos. “Life President Trump has said that—” Instead of “Like President Trump has said…” Page 11/12: We again are in the Paris conversation. This replicates a good chunk of the Church conversation, so you could conceivably cut that scene entirely. A big problem that I’m seeing is that Eve is on the cover of magazines. She’s a very important person. Yet she is SO whiny and weak in all her dealings with Carol. It just seems so jarring. Now you can make that work (“She’s a softy when it comes to her dad”), and you touch on that early on, but you don’t really follow through on that. She never tells Carol: “I’m trying to balance my love of dad with my need to do this groundbreaking work.” I mean, you talk about the latter, but she never says she loves Frank or outlines that she is having a tough time balancing the two. So the characters we have here feel incomplete and poorly formed, and the dialogue consistently displays that. John’s a dick. Well, that’s easy enough. Frank is sorta kinda facing dementia. Kind of one note, but I get it. Lizzie is a generic bubblegum kid from central casting. Carol is angry sister and angrier wife. Not really sure what her motivation beyond being annoyed all the time is. Eve is… I don’t even know what Eve is. Page 13/14: Well that escalated quickly. I don’t really buy this whole scene. What kind of meeting is this? It’s a municipal hall with world-leading scientists? Why are they THERE? And the conversation is a caricature of a climate scientist/denialist conversation. It has no sense of authenticity to it. And then the death of Frank. Well, I guess that solves Eve’s problem with Paris. My problem here is it that the climate focus and municipal hall feel so random and disconnected from any kind of narrative context. It’s like a big excuse to kill Frank and illustrate that the virus is on the loose. Those are not bad goals for a scene, but you want to handle them with more sophistication than a municipal meeting. Page 16: I really like your action scene descriptions and action lines. Very very well done. Page 16/17: See my earlier comments about Eve/Carol. This is another conversation that is doing its best to carry some relationship exposition forward, but the relationship doesn’t quite make sense, especially as we enter the conversation midway through. Again… it’s fine to enter conversations mid-conversation, but the flow of the conversation has to make sense. Here, I’m struggling to understand how they got here and went before. They just always seem so angry and although we get some context here with Carol, the Eve part is still confusing. She’s taking care of dad, but she wants to go to Paris with Lewis and this is right after Frank dies, and they’re talking about how she cant’ go to Paris, but Frank is now dead. I mean, is it the funeral? Why can’t she go? Page 19: Your best scene so far. The explanation of what’s happening is clear. The dialogue interaction makes sense. It provides important context to the story. The doctor talking to the cop is logical. Well done. Page 21: Would the detective be making CDC calls? Not sure I’m bought into the logic of this scene. Page 21-30: You do a good job transitioning from pre- to post-apocalypse. We see the doctor and detective in the thick of it, and then we’re in the “maybe ADAM can save us” moment. Using the news to deliver the scope of the disaster is a bit tired but still works. Page 29-30: I love the conversation with ADAM. Page 30 is a bit of a hot mess: The time feels off. The entire city went south quickly but it had to take SOME time, and just now Eve is heading to Carol’s house. It seems forced. And the Kim diaologue of “You’ve touched my soul” is over-the-top. The whole conversation feels forced. Think about the cause-effect and how Eve would act/react. This is the first we see of her going after her sister, and it feels very late and sudden and so now we’re wondering why she didn’t do something faster. I mean, there is a whole inoculation program that’s been set up since this thing started. So this is, what? Days later? Why is she going to the house NOW? Page 32: I LOVE the “there are no meds. They just seal you in.” Great moment. But I am unclear how Kim and Eve got separated. Maybe you just need to block the hiding in the grass scene better. Page 34: Gasing the rabids feels a bit too much. It would be a lot easier to just shoot them, no? Page 32-40: You manage action really well. There are some moments of convenience and stretching disbelief, but this is Hollywood, and you pull the series of scenes building on each other off. Page 43: You killed the kid? That’s going to be tough to sell. If you kill off people we care about, you need to leave people we care about MORE remaining. And Eve isn’t a particularly well-rounded character, so I don’t think killing the people around her is particularly effective, especially the little girl. Page 44: What Eve is doing is idiotic and insane. No one, especially Kim, would go along with it. And why would Clark follow her? Is he insane, too? Page 45: See my earlier comment. “I searched weeks” but she just went to the house for the first time earlier that day? Page 48: Paige… too over-the-top. I mean I get using stock characters, but you lay this one on a little thick. So I’m going to pause here and say that the overall story isn’t really exciting me. You write fantastic action scenes, but I’m not really connecting with the characters, and the situations you put them in are not really “earned” because you failed to build character or context. Kim with the blood vial is a good example: We barely know her and yet we are supposed to care about her as she’s considering suicide by blood vial. Page 51-52: How did Eve get so “in” with the company. She went from no one to in with the CFO giving an update. Seems very unrealistic, even for a rabid zombie movie. Page 53-56: You’re pilling on the coincidences here with people meeting people and connections being forced. Zoe Kwim… a barely worth mentioning player from act 1 is now a ajor player here, and I’m not making the connection outside of she is suddenly important. Perhaps this goes back to the municipal meeting being poorly set up. I’m very confused on how Webster and Eve were able to create this whole scenario with Clark in mere hours. Or even if they had longer time, how it was coordinated. It seems way too unrealistic, even within the context of the rabies plague. You killed Clarke? Again with the killing people we are starting to care about (even vaguely). Not sure this plays well, to be honest. Page 59-60: A bit too preachy here. You can make the same points with more emotionally ladedn language and less “Capitalism keeps you free.” I mean, he’s dying. Is he going to say that or would he look for some desperate way to survive? You can do both… but it takes real precise dialogue. This entire conversation reads like an argument on Fox News. I like the twist that there is no vaccine. But this is a lot of story that you’re dropping in here. So the momentum is all in these “a ha!” twisting the evil mustache moments of exposition. We’ve seen this in previous scenes, as well. Part of the trouble is that I’m having a hard time figuring out what the story is: Is it about ADAM? Is it about the rabies infected people ravaging the land? Is it about an evil CEO and his company? Is it about religious fundamentalists killing us all? It can be all those things, but you really need to take such a complicated plot and layer the pieces in with greater or lesser degree of focus and only use them when they achieve multiple story goals. For example, the fundamentalist story line just feels like an afterthought. And then you add Native Americans, too. Page 66: This is where I’m wondering why ADAM wasn’t immediately embraced by the government as a possible lead for a cure. He discovered it in like 24 hours? Page 68-81: A lot of action here. Mostly very well written, although your on the nose dialogue does get in the way a bit. E.g. “The land grows weary of your kind” The thing is that not a whole lot of narrative movement is happening. So this one series of more than 10% of your screenplay is just action. So you may want to tighten it a bit. Page 85: Kim makes an appearance, and she bites off the dude’s dick. This is just way too much. It feels like you’re lampooning your own screenplay. Page 86: And Clarke is back! But I think he should have remained dead.  Page 87: Here is an example of your dialogue missing out on authenticity? “The vaccine doesn’t work.” “really? So it’s up to you to save us?” There should be a stunned incredulity behind the “really?” As in, “That can’t be. He guarded it with his life. What about those others that seemed fine after taking it? What do you mean?” There are so many unanswered questions. You obviously don’t need to answer them all (Eve can even shut them down), but you need to acknowledge them. At the end of the page, more forced drama… Throwing into arms. The rabids are in the perimeter! It feels almost staged. So I kind of whipped through to the end, as you rolled all the action and plot together, and a lot of the comments I would make would just mirror the above. I pretty much saw the ADAM climax from near the beginning, as there was no other reason to really include him otherwise.
JakeKerr
Jake Kerr 3 years ago

just claimed a review for a script.

Land of Fear feature
Genre: Horror,Thriller,Sci-Fi/Fantasy
An AI expert must use her lifetime's work to find a cure for a rabies outbreak, that threatens to push humanity to the edge of extinction. But can she save humanity from it's greatest threat - itself?
JakeKerr
Jake Kerr 3 years ago

just joined ScriptMother!