Tag: elements of storytelling

The Rite: From A Writer’s Perspective

On By C. L. BlackeIn Motion Pictures From a Writer's PerspectiveLeave a comment

It’s four months in Rome. What could go wrong? Oh, you’d be surprised.

They say reality doesn’t need to make sense but fiction does, which makes me wonder what exactly happened in the real lives of the real Frs. Michael Kovak and Lucas because I had a hard time believing (and accepting) the storyline of The Rite. I could be biased; anytime I hear a movie is based on or inspired by true events, I tend to think they’re making it up just to increase sales. I mean, did we learn nothing from The Blair Witch Project?

Not that there is anything wrong with the actual elements of The Rite–most of them seem to be there: catalyst, internal need, external goal, opposition, darkest moment–it’s just that they are all squished into the last 2o (or 30 if we’re lucky) minutes of the film.

Enter Michael Kovak: a priest-in-training with no faith. Father Superior gets the brilliant idea to send him to exorcism school in Rome cuz, ya, that will help him. Maybe lectures aren’t Michael’s thing, so his teacher sends him to a little village in Florence to witness a real live exorcism. I’m fairly gullible, but even I don’t believe Rosaria is possessed. I think Michael hits the nail on the head (pun intended) when he states she was internalizing her guilt over being raped by her father and carrying his demon seed.

(One thing I would like to know is why doesn’t this happen more often? The possession part, I mean.  The other, I’m sure, happens more often than we know, and it does seem like the work of the devil, but not all victims go around speaking in foreign tongues. I guess I want to know why Satan/Beelzebub/Baal chose to inhabit a 16 year-old Italian girl. What exactly did he get out of it? She and the baby died, so…it seems rather anticlimactic and not really worth the trouble.)

We witness a few more possessions, a few more exorcisms, some of which are hoaxes, none of which are believable enough to force Michael to believe in God and take a stand.  What exactly pushes him over the edge? Is it realizing he just talked to his already-dead father on the phone? (I think I might have reacted a bit differently than sobbing on the bed if that happened to me. Just saying.) Is it the random voices in his hotel room or el mulo with the red eyes in the courtyard? Maybe it’s hearing Fr. Lucas himself tell us he’s possessed. (Again, I have to wonder why the devil chose him. Aside from the fact that Anthony Hopkins is a brilliant actor with a bit of crazy in him.)

Regardless, we finally hit our first plot point. Michael now has a goal, we know he’s searching for his own faith, why he has none, and that he’s recruited his friend, Angelsomething, to help him out.

The screenwriter shoots off the rest of the elements in rapid fire, wasting no time because he’s already over budget. Michael performs an exorcism on Fr. Lucas, it doesn’t work, his faith is tested, Angelsomething has to convince him to get back in there–he can do it, he’s not alone. (Usually, the opposition has much greater resources and is much stronger than the protagonist; however, Michael has the power of God on his side. Seems a lot like cheating, doesn’t it?) Michael tries again, this time he gets the devil to give up his name. (Baal’s screwed now.) Oh, it worked! Story’s over.

I’m not really buying that Michael suddenly finds his faith in God either. I don’t know if it’s just bad acting or not, but I tend to think it’s because we don’t get to see him really search for it, to really want it. The majority of Act Two should be the protagonist fighting against all odds to achieve his goal. Instead, Michael pretty much complains and denies his faith throughout the whole storyline until the very end, and actions speak louder than words. One can’t go from having no faith, to realizing you have no faith, to suddenly achieving faith. You kind of have to work at finding it. (In contrast, I totally believe Anthony Hopkins is possessed. The way he smacked that girl–freaking brilliant writing.)

I’m thinking the screenwriter could have gone back for a few more rewrites, weeded out some of the inconsequential details, worked on pacing, and found more creative ways to handle the amazing amount of backstory we had to watch for the first 82 minutes of the film.

The good news, though, is that Michael doesn’t have to pay back his student loans.

Insidious: From a Writer’s Perspective

On By C. L. BlackeIn Motion Pictures From a Writer's Perspective6 Comments

I’d heard from several reliable unrelated sources that Insidious was the scariest movie they’d ever seen, so I had to watch it. At midnight. In the dark.

Umm, not so much. Chock one up for creepy, discordant music, though, and some disturbing images of 1950s doll-like psychotic mannequins. But I’ve seen the fire face guy before in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, the old lady in my head while reading a book, and the little boy in the cap in my dance troupe. None of them are that scary. (Well, except for the old lady in my head.)

A few problems I had with the overall story:

1) The protagonist does not actually know he’s the main character until about two-thirds into the story. The entire first act and much of the second is based on Renai and her actions. She has a relationship with her children (well, ok, I don’t believe there was a need for Foster at all–the screenwriter could have easily had Josh “see” Dalton walking around in his astral body, which would have foreshadowed his whole childhood as an astral-projector), she sees the demons/ghosts/rip-off Buffy bad guys, she makes the family move houses, she contacts the priest, the mother-in-law, and Elise. She wants to be believed; she knows her son’s coma isn’t normal (if it’s possible) and she wants him out of it. (I think there could have been a nice scene where she actually talks to Dalton while he’s in it to reinforce her worry and her fears.)

2) Not one insinuation is made that Josh was having an affair. He was grading middle-school papers until 11:30 at night at school because they needed extra money for Dalton’s medical bills. Even I don’t believe it and it was the truth. First, teachers, correct me if I’m wrong, do not get paid overtime, and they aren’t forced to stay at school to grade papers when they can take them home and do it. Secondly, there is a completely missed opportunity to see Josh in his astral projection mode when he falls asleep at his desk. Yes, we see a black and white image of Dalton in his bed in a coma, but astral projection connotes movement–you travel to different realms. You do not just stand there. How is the audience supposed to know he wasn’t just daydreaming? (At the very least, we should have seen Josh in the scene at his son’s bedside.)

3) If I need to bring a character in (the mother-in-law) halfway through the story to explain something, then I haven’t done my job at creating my main characters or their backstory well. By the end of the first act, we should know who the main character is, what his external goal and internal need are, and whether or not he’s going to take up the challenge of achieving them. Unfortunately, Josh doesn’t even know what his goal is until Elise tells him he has to go into astral projection mode to find Dalton and bring him back. (This didn’t happen until I was completely bored and ready for the movie to be over.)

4) Nothing is explained. I’m so sick of watching scary movies that rely on flashing freaky images across the screen to divert our attention away from the real purpose of watching a movie–to be entertained with a story. I still want to know why the old lady chose to attach herself to Josh, why his mother could see her in the photographs (how could Renai see them for that matter?), what the point was of the demon/doll/mannequin blasting away the 1950s family, and who the antagonist was. If it was supposed to be fire face guy, I need to know a little more about him (like who he was before he died) besides that he sits in a pseudo toyshop/alchemist’s lab and listens to Tiny Tim‘s “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” (Incidently, antagonists have their own external goals and internal needs that motivate them just as protagonists do. The audience should be privy to this information as well–even better if you can make us sympathetic to the bad guy at the same time we want to see him defeated.)

I also need to know that Dalton can astral project and that he isn’t just scared to sleep in his room at night. Not to mention why they needed to move to the first house at all. Renai said she didn’t want things to be the same, she wanted to start over–start over from what? Was Josh having an affair? Did she just get released from a mental hospital? I need to know what happened before the story starts, so I can understand why I am coming in at this moment in time.

5) On the other hand, I do not need to know that Renai is an aspiring songwriter. While it’s a nice characteristic, it isn’t intrinsic to the storyline. She’s not even the main character. Isn’t there some detail the writer could have given Josh to actually make us sympathetic to him? As it is, he has no relationship with his wife or children and he doesn’t even take an active role in the plot until Elise tells him to.

6) And lastly, these malevolent beings supposedly want to inflict pain on the living, but I don’t see that really happening in the movie. There is that one dude who looks like The Crow/Joker, and he did try to attack Renai. But other than that, what is his purpose? I think this bit of action would have been better left to fire face guy. Oh, but wait, we’re not sure if he’s the antagonist or not.

There are some major elements of storytelling missing in Insidious, and it isn’t even scary enough to make up for it. Had the screenwriter just made Renai go in to get her son and had Josh lead her and Dalton out, some of the problems with this movie would have disappeared.  Renai would have achieved her external goal of rescuing her son and her internal need for being believed.

Like I said, “Some of the problems.”