FrankenScript :: Lee Gabel's Screenwriting Journal/Blog

This is a remake of the brilliant Norwegian film Let The Right One In (and based on the novel of the same name). I have no idea why this was remade, except maybe for those in North America who can’t or are too lazy to read subtitles. There’s a lot of that going around Hollywood [...]

Everything that made the first two chapters of this trilogy are missing from this weak, paint-by-numbers effort. Every attempt to destroy the Damien Thorne is thwarted effortlessly… but the movie has to end, right? That means the last attempt will succeed. But it’s not so much that he’s so powerful, it’s that I didn’t believe [...]

I was asking myself how can one possibly top John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing, which is a remake of the 1951 film The Thing from Another World? I loved Carpenter’s version. The filmmakers had a tall order to fill with this prequel and I’m pleased to say this film is filled with all the [...]

The logline sounded good: Unfortunately, this film fell into the same traps most wannabe horror films fall into. We get the same old setup of characters that we’re supposed to believe are the “stalker”, only to have them predictably knocked down one at a time. And startling the audience is not the same as scaring [...]

I have mentioned many times before that what you can’t see is often scarier than what you can see. However, I don’t mean a black screen, and that often what you get in this film. Give me something to get scared about, like characters scared as hell, instead of absolutely nothing. I had the “devil” [...]

Opening this film with a hat tip to Jaws is a bold statement. Having Richard Dreyfuss dressed like Matt Hooper as the first casualty, you know right away you’re in for some over the top entertainment. Or are you? Some may argue that this is not entertainment. But entertaining it is. Maybe the filmmakers “had [...]