Scott Boehm
Forum Replies Created
-
What I learned: I had already fleshed out much of the story in the previous assignment, but this one helped with that process even more by having all these genre-specific plot points to work with in this order. It also helped me tie the mother’s death (Moral One) at the midpoint to her husband’s death (Rebel turned Sacrificial Lamb) at the end of the film.
Scott’s Horror Plot
ACT I – SET UP FOR HORROR
Atmosphere of Evil established: Monster Bait opening sequence – a white college kid stumbling home drunk after he leaves a frat party late at night is followed and viciously killed by a rage monster (who we don’t see) lurking in the woods; he’s reported as a missing person (and his remains are not found until later in the film).
Connect with the characters: The Family of Four is packing up their car and saying their last goodbyes to their house and friends in Austin.
Characters warned not to do it: As the Family of Four is saying goodbye, a close family friend tells them it’s not too late to change their mind, insisting that they’re better off staying in Austin and that they don’t have to move to a small town of Vikings. Loner’s best friend privately pleads with her not to go and sends a text message as the car pulls away: “get out.”
Denial of horror: Upon their arrival, the Family of Four notice a string of signs that something is wrong in this town. First, there are literally signs plastered everywhere around town regarding the Monster Bait that went missing the week before. Second, many of their social interactions shift from hospitable to slightly hostile on a dime. Third, they notice that a few people seem to have odd wolf-like physical characteristics. Fourth, they find a lot of small animals lying around that have had their hearts and entrails ripped out, a type of roadkill they’ve never seen before that is appears just about everywhere. While their collective suspicion steadily increases, cognitive dissonance jumps in to explain away their bizarre encounters, minimizing their perception of threat as they observe the drama of the missing college kid and the Red Herring from a distance. (Although Loner clearly doesn’t buy the police explanation.)
Safety taken away: While riding her bike to school, Loner finds Red Herring’s damaged corpse with his heart ripped out lying on his porch, much to the alarm of the authorities who try to hide the evidence of such inexplicable foul play. At a town hall in the high school gym, the police blame his death on wolves, as the population has started to come back in the region in recent years. A band of hunters go searching for them.
Nature of monster revealed: The Family of Four witness their Obnoxious Neighbor get killed by the Mexican manager of the town’s sole Mexican restaurant after complaining about their Spanish-speaking server, getting splattered with blood during the attack. Both the manager and Obnoxious Neighbor had already transformed into werewolf-human hybrids and were hyperaggressive during the conflict with the manager unable to contain his rage, stabbing Obnoxious Neighbor with a sharp knife in the heart and then trying to rip it out before being stopped— with much difficulty—by a police officer dining at the restaurant. Loner captures some of this on her phone’s camera, posting video footage on Instagram, which runs counters the official police report, as it indicates that the manager was both solely responsible for the hyperaggressive nature of the conflict, as well as the deaths of Monster Bait and Red Herring (not wolves), while completely disavowing the transformation and behavior of Obnoxious Neighbor). The fact that the manager was Mexican
ACT II – THE POINT OF NO RETURN
One of us killed: Moral One is pursued by a police car driven by a white werewolf-human hybrid cop until she’s chased into on-coming traffic while she’s riding her bike home from the university one evening; the “accident” puts her in a coma in hospital. (She dies the next evening as the sun sets and the Harvest Moon Festival at the local high school begins. Rebel is by her side when she dies, having sent the kids away from the hospital and off to the festival, not under the impression that she—or they—were in danger of dying that night.)
MIDPOINT – THE MONSTER IS WORSE THAN WE THOUGHT
Full pursuit by the killer: During a performance of the Harvest Moon Festival featuring Innocent and joining his third-grade class on stage, a fully transformed white male “Lone Wolf” Rage Monster (16) enters the gym of the high school and unleashes his wrath upon the townspeople in attendance—including children—quickly killing multiple people and lesser-transformed hybrids as chaos erupts.
Terrorized: People frantically try to flee the building—including Loner & Innocent who get separated during the chaos (Loner is pulled to safety by her Love Interest while Innocent wanders the school hallways alone)—only to be met by more rage monsters outside who’ve been attracted by the smell of fresh blood, something that accelerates the transformation processes of many of the townspeople trapped inside into rage monsters as well. Normal people and hybrids try to hide, flee or fight the rage monsters lurking everywhere, creating the atmosphere and body count of a zombie film. However, when people or hybrids are killed, they stay dead.
ACT 3 – FULL OUT HORROR
Fight to the death: Love Interest is tracked down inside the school by a pack of racist white teenagers who have fully transformed into Rage Monsters. Protecting Loner, he faces them with a metal pole, while Loner hides and is forced to witness his gruesome death before she manages to escape during the feeding frenzy on his body.
Hysteria: Rebel shows up at the high school to inform the kids their mother has died, only to see the madness that has been unleashed. Desperate not to lose another loved one, he rushes inside.
The thrilling escape from death: Rebel finds Loner, who is looking for Innocent and the two are trapped by a Rage Monster but survive the confrontation, with Rebel finding a way to kill it that scares others away, calming down the situation at the school as police cars arrive on the scene.
Death returns to take one or more: Rebel and Loner find Innocent, who had found a safe place to hide and the three are reunited. The happy moment is spoiled when Innocent asks about their mother and Rebel shares the bad news, which results in a group hug in an empty classroom. The trio leave the room carefully and are walking down the hallway when Innocent remembers that he dropped something important in the classroom and turns around to head back. Before he can get there, a Rage Monster comes charging down another hallway, attacking him before Rebel and Loner can intervene. Rebel instinctively rushes toward it, but Loner sees the rest of the pack racing down the hallway to join in the feast and she grabs her stepdad before he runs into danger, and the two run out of the building as fast as they can.
Resolution: Rebel and Loner hop on Rebel’s motorcycle parked outside the high school as they are being chased by Rage Monsters who are able to keep up with them on foot until they get off the school grounds and can accelerate down a main road. However, they’re followed by a bike gang of Rage Monsters that Rebel manages to outwit before he and Innocent decide to ride out of town and all the way to Canada, two hours away. When they get to the empty bridge at the border in the dead of night, they are questioned by an immigration officer who doesn’t want to let them through since they’re not carrying passports and doesn’t believe their story. While the officer makes a consultation, a police car appears in the distance behind them with its lights on, siren blaring. It pulls up right behind them and a pair of werewolf-human hybrid police officers—the same ones responsible for Moral One’s death—get out of the car as they walk steadily toward Rebel and Loner, with Rebel standing ready to defend them as they both shout for help. Rebel (and Sacrificial Lamb) is gruesomely attacked by the officers before they turn their attention to Loner, who starts running across the bridge. Just as she’s about to be caught, a Canadian border agent fires her gun, stunning (but not killing) the hybrid police officers. Guards rush to surround and handcuff them, whisking at traumatized Loner away to safety.
-
What I learned: First, it’s hard to keep up with the assignments over the weekend with little kids and other work to do! Second, Tying the concept to the group(s) naturally makes the story richer and opens up plot points with symbolic layers of meaning.
Concept
A small college town in central Michigan is being taken over by aggressive werewolf-like rage monsters that are slowly transforming before everyone’s eyes until a lone wolf unleashes an outburst of mass violence during a festival held at the local high school, turning this idyllic—and very white monoculture—town into a bloody nightmare overnight.
Groups
a) Outsiders: A blended family of mixed-race newcomers who move to town a week before the festival
b) Social Event: Members of the town attending the Harvest Moon Festival, including the family of outsiders
Dying Pattern
a) Outsiders: The four family members experience the terror together, but two of them die
b) Social Event: A trickle of townspeople die before the festival, during which people are killed in large numbers that escalate as more and more rage monsters go on the hunt
Character Identities
a) Outsiders – Family of Four
Rebel: Unemployed white guy (early forties) originally from Canada, he quit his bullshit job in Austin to follow his wife’s new career opportunity; he’s an organic farming fanatic, despises social media and is a hands-on father/stepdad; he rides a motorcycle and possesses basic survival skills that he’s picked up during a lifetime of backpacking and camping in the outdoors, having once survived an encounter with wolves. He survives.
Moral One: A black woman (late-thirties) from Brazil, she recently defended her dissertation on slavery in the northern United States at the University of Texas at Austin, which landed her a job as an assistant professor of Black Studies at Central College, which is why the family ended up in this small college town; she’s smart, suspicious and conflicted about having taken this job and moving to a place that scares the shit out of her. She’s killed when a police car driven by a white werewolf-human hybrid cop chases her into on-coming traffic while she’s riding her bike home from the university one evening. She survives the “accident,” but dies in the hospital the night of the Harvest Moon Festival, just before the mass violence explodes.
Loner: A highly intelligent and introverted biracial girl (14) who is bilingual and reads fantasy literature, loves horror films, and listens to a lot of emo music on her wireless earbuds that always seem to be in her ears; she has a love/hate relationship with her much younger half-brother and is furious at her mom and stepdad for uprooting her from the city she grew up in and misses desperately, along with her best friend, whom she keeps in touch with via her Instagram account. She survives with her stepdad’s help.
Innocent: A young boy (8) with thick glasses and even thicker curly hair; his happy-go-lucky attitude toward life stands in sharp contrast to the rest of his family members, all of whom he loves with gusto, despite a sibling rivalry with his half-sister. He is killed at the Harvest Moon Festival after being separated from her, dying before the eyes of his father, who can’t save him.
b) Social Event – Townspeople
BEFORE THE HARVEST MOON FESTIVAL
Monster Bait: A white college kid stumbling home drunk after he leaves a frat party late at night is followed and viciously killed by a rage monster (who we don’t see) lurking in the woods in the opening sequence; he’s reported as a missing person (and his remains are not found until later in the film), which puts the tight-knit community on alert.
Red Herring: A poor, white older hermit with a criminal record of minor offenses for marijuana possession and the like (before it was legalized) who is the prime suspect in the suspected murder of Monster Bait since he lives off the road between the frat house and Monster Bait’s house; just after being released from jail, he’s attacked (by a rage monster we don’t see) and his damaged corpse with his heart ripped out is found on lying on his porch the next morning by a young white girl riding her bike to school, much to the alarm of the authorities who try to hide the evidence of such inexplicable foul play, but the girl shares the truth on social media, causing hysteria to circulate around town. The police blame his death on wolves, as the population has started to come back in the region in recent years. A band of hunters go searching for them.
Obnoxious: The Family of Four’s nosy neighbor, a middle-aged “Karen” whose outward hospitality doubles as a thin veil for keeping a close eye on this new group of outsiders. As she starts to transform, the veil drops in her interactions with the family. She’s killed in public after asking for a manager when she becomes irate with a Mexican-speaking server in a Mexican restaurant. She’s killed by the manager, who is a Mexican man that has also started to transform into one of her hybrid kind when he stabs her in the heart with a sharp knife during a heated exchange. (After a struggle, he’s arrested by a black police officer who’s dining at the same restaurant and witnesses the murder; the police believe they’ve found their man and frame him for the other two deaths, calming the townspeople.)
DURING THE HARVEST MOON FESTIVAL
Innocents: Unprovoked, a “lone wolf” fully transformed rage monster unleashes his wrath during a performance inside the high school gym during the Harvest Moon Festival. He viciously attacks multiple innocent victims as chaos ensues and people try to flee the building, only to be met by more rage monsters outside who’ve been attracted by the smell of fresh blood, something that accelerates the transformation processes of many of the townspeople trapped inside into rage monsters as well. Normal people and hybrids try to hide, flee or fight the rage monsters lurking everywhere, creating the atmosphere and body count of a zombie film. However, when people or hybrids are killed, they stay dead.
Love Interest: The burgeoning love interest of Loner (16), the only black student at the town’s small high school who Loner is immediately attracted to despite herself. He’s torn to shreds by a gang of rage monsters who corner him after he flees the initial outburst of mass violence along with Loner, who witnesses his gruesome death before managing to escape during the feeding frenzy on his body.
-
What I learned: Taking the time to “flesh out” the monster before beginning to craft a horror story is crucial. I had been doing just that in my head over the past few days and this exercise made me slow down and think more deeply about the monster itself, causing different sequences and possibilities to pop into my head while doing this assignment that I might never have imagined otherwise. This experience will help keep the storyline open as we presumably continue building from what seems like the ground up with the next assignments.
My Monster
Rage monsters: bipedal werewolf-human hybrids that transform slowly (over a period of days or weeks), while they are sleeping at night—a painful process that causes them to have traumatic nightmares—retaining their monstrous physical features and characteristics during the day. This produces a lot of wrathful creatures in various stages of transformation over the course of the film, with the majority retaining mostly human traits until the end, a few exhibiting mostly werewolf traits early on, with several in a liminal stage of transformation as the film progresses.
Five Parts of the Monster
Terror: These rage monsters become increasingly aggressive throughout their transformation, first in more human ways (becoming more emotionally reactive, as well as more verbally and physically aggressive towards others), and then in more animal-like ways until they cross the threshold to being mostly werewolf, at which point they become vicious predators prone to hunt anything and anyone they dislike for any reason at any time. When one of these creatures singles out a victim (whether it’s human or animal or another hybrid creature like itself) it pursues it with a single-minded purpose, adeptly trapping its prey by isolating it from others who might be tempted to intervene, a hunting strategy that takes various forms in various natural settings and built environments, but that involves some sort of chase, often at night, when rage monsters are more active. They take pleasure in torturing their prey with their superhuman strength and rabid bursts of vitriol. Ultimately, they kill their victims by ripping their hearts out of their bodies with their long fangs and swallowing them whole, spewing blood everywhere in the process.
Mystery: How can these rage monsters—who are rapidly multiplying in numbers—be stopped before everyone turns into one? Especially when it’s almost impossible to know when someone has passed the threshold from being mostly human to mostly werewolf and it’s very difficult to kill rage monsters once the transformation is complete (i.e., bullets wound, but don’t kill them).
Fear Provoking Appearance: The transformation of people into rage monsters is accompanied by the acquisition of grotesque physical traits, which take place during sleep at night. While there is variation in the order of appearance and degree of grotesqueness, the first stages typically entail the exaggeration of people’s natural facial features, along with a darkening and narrowing of the eyes, more prominent eyebrows, the lengthening of canine teeth and a general scowl. In later stages, these characteristics become even more pronounced while furry hair and bigger muscles start to grow, which are especially noticeable on males. As they transform, their way of dressing themselves becomes increasingly bleak at the same time it’s slightly more revealing.
Rules: Once the transformation process from human to rage monster starts, the changes that take place at each stage remain (i.e., there’s no switching between human and rage monster forms and no reversal of the process). As the transformation process becomes more advanced and as more and more people transform into rage monsters, some start to group themselves into packs, having the effect of increasingly dividing up the population. However, there are lone wolf types as well that are particularly dangerous.
Mythology: The main water source of the small college town located in an isolated area of central Michigan where the film takes place has been recently switched, and chemicals contained in the new source that biochemically elevate already existing levels of aggression in humans have caused the isolated outbreak of rage monsters. People’s variable rates of exposure to the water, due to their geographical location, access to well water and consumption levels help explain why some people are more impacted than others. But while there will be several hints about this in the film, this origin story won’t be figured out by the survivors or revealed to viewers until the sequel!
-
What I learned: I’ve seen this film several times and realized how impressive it is that it still manages to scare me even though I know what’s coming. That’s evidence of how well this film is made and explains its commercial success both in and outside of Spain.
Title / Concept: Veronica / variation on the demonic possession subgenre: a demon is inadvertently summoned by Veronica, the film’s teenage protagonist, during a Ouija board séance to contact her dead father goes terribly wrong. Based on a true story that took place in 1991 (when the film is set) that includes the only Spanish police report that testifies to witnessing paranormal activity.
Terrorize The Characters: Veronica’s body convulses and collapses during the séance; Poltergeist activity in Veronica’s apartment immediately after the séance; strange markings appear on Veronica’s body; her young brother is inexplicably burned in the bathtub; her young sister is choked by the demon; Veronica’s dreams are haunted by a vision of her naked dead father and the demon that inserts something in her mouth; the demon appears each night while their mother is working
Isolation: Small apartment in a working-class neighborhood; in addition, Veronica is abandoned by her best friend who participated in the séance with her and her mother doesn’t believe her when she tells her what’s happened and is almost always out working in the bar below
Death: Veronica dies during the climax of the film, three days after the séance and after she realizes that she’s been possessed by the demon (via the thing it put in her mouth) and slashes her throat in order to protect her younger siblings
Monster/Villain: Faceless demon tall black demon with tentacle arms that haunts Veronica’s dreams, appears to her in the apartment at night and can control her actions, causing her to harm her younger siblings (which is revealed via a flashback entailing a POV change during the film’s climax)
High Tension: The Poltergeist activity, dream sequences and encounters with the demon increase in frequency and tension during the three days covered by the film; the sound effects, soundtrack, cinematography and direction help to build tension (many viewers have called this the scariest movie on Netflix)
Departure from Reality: Paranormal activity; the demon; demonic possession
Moral Statement: There are two levels that I see here: one is related to Veronica going through puberty and getting her period (which she gets for the first time on the morning she dies), the other is related to Spain coming of age after the death of Franco sixteen years earlier (i.e., the dead father) – it also cites a pair of important films made around the time of Franco’s death that engage with horror and featured the same actress that plays Veronica’s mother in this film
What makes it great: The film creates a tension-filled atmosphere that is enhanced by excellent choices in terms of the soundtrack, casting and decoration to produce a realistic world pierced by the supernatural in a way that is terrifying (and deadly) for the characters and is scary for audiences (even after multiple viewings). Very straightforward plot executed very well with a depth of emotion that comes through believable acting made plausible by a solid script.
-
Greetings. I’m Scott, just turned 45 last week. I’ve written one feature script and one tv pilot, both dramas. I’ve also made a pair of documentary short films and wrote original comedy scripts for a theater company in San Diego 15+ years ago. Now I’m a professor living in the Midwest writing a book on Spanish horror film. While this class overlaps with my academic work, I’m taking it to return to screenwriting after a 7 year break (and having 2 kids, aged 6 and 3) with a vision to leaving academia in the near future. Looking forward to working with you all and I’ll do my best to keep up with the assignments!
-
Scott Boehm
I agree to the terms of this release form.