Review: FORGOTTEN

Script review for triggerstreet.com

FORGOTTEN - by Jay Stanners

I’m so glad I read Forgotten first thing in the morning rather than last thing at night! It reads like a nightmare exorcised onto the page. I wanted to stop reading every ten pages, I wanted to wake up - but I had to see it through, had to know how it resolved. I’d like to congratulate you on a very fine, and very brave piece of work. It’s a mature and unrelenting horror.

Writing a story like this can often be a thankless task. There’s no feel-good factor to fuel positive word of mouth; instead it starts off grim and gets steadily grimmer. The end result is an agitated audience who resent the discomfort they’ve been forced to endure and are therefore unlikely to rush back and acclaim the writer’s achievement. This, in no means lessens the actual achievement. It’s a savage tale, a true descent into hell, and one I’m certain I’ll still remember five years from now. It sounds corny but Forgotten is unforgettable!

The concept and story is just superb. You’ve taken the ultimate get-out clause ending of ‘it was all just a dream’ but put a new spin on it, the dream is her re-living of the events that lead to the imprisonment where she’s been having the dream. This allows you to tell a brutal tale of kidnap, murder and torture through a dream state’s even darker reinterpretation and atmosphere. That’s a very Lovecraft-gothic device, but used in a new context of social issues and serial killers – I think it works perfectly.

Marnie is a strong and resourceful character but she’s got a dark side that makes it difficult to like her. The most difficult aspect of Marnie’s story is the flashbacks to her youth which ultimately make us forgive her that darkness.

The dialogue is most noticeable for its absence. Marnie’s an isolated character and never gets into long conversations. Even the forced interview is terse. This means we’re told very little and we’re shown a lot. It’s good visual writing.

The structure was very good. The three acts each move to a new location and move the story in a new direction at the right time. The arrival of the spider-baby, the first real moment of dream-horror happens bang-on the mid-point.

As for suggestions for improvements, I have just one as I think it works extremely well as it is.

I didn’t think Lee’s final speech worked. It’s a difficult speech because it’s the one you don’t really want to have to write, it’s the “explanation for anyone who’s not got it yet” speech. There’re no other ‘speech’ moments like that in the film and as such it jars. I had one idea – currently you’re delivering the point that she’s stuck in a dream, stuck looping this nightmare forever. It becomes across as a speech because there’s no come-back to it, it’s not part of a dialogue; it’s simply a statement of fact. I thought that if you had that speech delivered by Tammy, merging the flashbacks and the main thread you consolidate it as one dream state in a visual way, more in keeping with the visual style throughout. Rather than that speech being a statement of fact, it could be an invitation from Tammy. Yes, she is stuck in the grave. Yes, she has been looping her memories of the nightmare for the last ten months. But it doesn’t have to be this way; instead she could dream about flying with Tammy. Tammy could invite her to come and dream a different dream with her, but Marnie would rather face what’s happened to her again than face up to her feelings about Tammy so the nightmare loops again.
That’s just my suggestion, I’m sure you could come up with something more fitting but that’s the only area of the script I’d definitely recommend taking another look at. See if you can find another way to get that information over as a dialogue with Marnie, rather than a statement. Marnie deserves more participation in the climax of her story than that.

Congratulations on writing a breathtakingly bleak film. I can’t say I enjoyed Forgotten, because it’s not meant to be enjoyable, but I’m very glad I’ve read Forgotten and would definitely like to see Forgotten be produced.