Script Coverage

I love doing script coverage. I've learned so much from these young screenwriters. The majority, while not always film ready, are fresh, raw and inspired. However - there comes instances where a script is so bad I cannot refrain from my east coast sarcasm. I think this is the meanest coverage I've written so I decided to share it with the internet. And no - the writer has no idea that this blog exists and names/titles have been changed to protect the innocent.

THE ROOMMATE's mundane and unimaginative take on the 1990’s film SINGLE WHITE FEMALE fails to convey any suspense or drama. The chills and thrills are non existent and the premise is ridiculous.

Jenny Weston could not be a more squeaky clean, orange juice drinking, dimwitted or annoyingly unperceptive protagonist. Not every heroine has to be two steps ahead but 3 miles behind leaves an audience rolling their eyes and actually rooting for the twisted roommate. Jenny’s seeming disregard for basic red flags of “your boyfriend is cheating on you and he wants ME!” as well as the numerous late evenings where Leanne carries strange “body-part like forms” in plastic bags out to the dumpster literally encourages the film audience to throw their popcorn in the air and walk out of the theatre.

Leanne, with her paintings covered with blood red slashes and gory depictions of flayed body parts, only needs to start eating flies and talking with a Renfield (Dracula’s servant) Transylvanian dialect to complete the over the top, crazy eyed psycho roommie. How a character ends up at the scene of each and every murder and no one makes the connection is beyond me and beyond any thinking audience member over the age of 7. Although very colorful there is not one realistic characteristic to Leanne.

Mark Connor, football hunk and seemingly out of the blue arson victim/vicious killer fills the screen with a lot of good face time but it’s a shame he has no internal heartbeat. And by making him a “psycho” at the end of the script that wraps up everything in a tight package feels forced and insulting to one’s intelligence.

The pacing of this script is slow and laborious. The ACT I incident of Natalie’s death is too sudden and formulaic. A prelude to the real story is always a fun trick in horror films. For example: Drew Barrymore’s immediate death in Scream or Janet Leigh’s shower scene in Psycho. A prelude can work if it’s scary but in The Roommate Natalie’s death feels self consciously thrust into the beginning of the film in an attempt to manipulate and solidify that –YES - THIS A SCARY MOVIE.

It’s not.

ACT II shifts erratically from the crazy roommate painting fervently to Jenny crying in the campus coffee shop (which she does often – oh, so often) about someone or something with the action then suddenly switching to non thrilling death scenes.

The ACT III showdown/rundown/hoedown of over explanations for unsubstantiated story and character through lines is nothing more than a headache inducing mess. Mark Connors in his Obi-Wan Kenobi hood revealing the complete and total truth is laughable.

The dialogue, although capturing a tiny taste of adolescent teen speak, only solidifies the script's adolescent flaws. Each character is interchangeable – there is no style to the dialogue. We are not looking for Shakespeare in a horror flick but where is the humor? The punchy young teen banter? The sexual repression? The dialogue is as inspired as a computerized voice message system.

In horror flicks one must be willing to suspend their disbelief and allow a werewolf or a zombie to appear realistic, however, in The Roommate there is obviously no concern for creating any sort of believability as the characters motivations do not add up, the drama is not scary thus went don’t want to go along for the spooky ride, and finally, the screen writer fails to provide any escape route into the unknown. That said, anyone sitting in the audience watching this film would be desperately searching for an escape route to their car thus getting away from this movie.

Horror films, when done well, shed light on the hypocrisy within society. By using extreme situations a writer and filmmaker can explore the unbelievable and make it terrifyingly believable. They lead us outside of our reality and once returned we may reflect on how little difference there is between the dark side and light/accepted side of our world. The Zombies in George Romero’s film NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD are not much different from those hypnotized shoppers sleepwalking through the mall going from The Gap to Old Navy to Cinnabun. Great horror films allow us to experience our own deaths, our own fears and our own psychology/sanity.

It’s such a shame when I come across a script like The Roommate. It is 101 pages of non thrills and unrealistic one dimensional characters that go absolutely nowhere and accomplish absolutely nothing.