Monday, January 26, 2009

The Strangers Script

Just read The Strangers script for the Script Club. And since the thread for this hasn’t started I thought I would share my impressions of the script here.

I had an immediate problem with this script because even though I  had seen the movie, the writing style did not evoke images for me.  I’m not sure why that is but some scripts seem to play the movie out in my head, other’s don’t.  This was of the latter variety for me.  Needless to say I found the read kind of slow.

I thought the overall story was ok.  Not really scary for me because I don’t live in a remote situation but for a horror film it wasn’t bad.  I also thought the characters had a bit more depth than usual in a horror film.  At least he tried to make them three dimensional, which is more than most people do.   Even the villains have a bit of depth in this one.

If there is a clear protagonist in the script then it would have to be Kristen.  However, she does a bit too much helplessness for my tastes, especially toward the end. 

Probably the biggest problem I have with this script is the same problem I had with the movie.  It is never clearly explained why Kristen said no to James’ marriage proposal.  Oh, they hint at it but it is never explained to my satisfaction.   Maybe I’m missing it or perhaps the author just wanted to drive me slowly crazy trying to figure it out.  Who knows?

As far as differences between the script and the movie go, there were a few.  Most notably the beginning and the ending were changed.  There’s a detective V.O. in the beginning of the script that isn’t present in the movie.   There are numerous small exchanges of dialogue that I don’t remember in the film but they could have just not been memorable.  The whole  business with James’ victim being a friend is different in the script, in the script his victim is a neighbour – otherwise it plays the same.

For me, the largest difference between the movie and script is the villains.    They come across differently in the script.  They seem to have more depth, more insecurity.  This is completely lost in the film where the villains come across as too professional.

All in all the script wasn’t a bad read.  It was about as enjoyable for me as the movie – without the pictures.

2 comments:

  1. "They seem to have more depth, more insecurity."

    Do you have any examples?

    ReplyDelete
  2. do you know where i can find the script?

    ReplyDelete