Wolfmen (Feature Screenplay - 22/08/21 Draft)
140 pages. Thriller/Horror. The script.
A Brief Synopsis
After a friend goes missing during a night spent camping in the British countryside, a young man finds himself ensnared within the investigation, social alienation and violence that ensues - a violence that threatens to bring ruin to his home and his family’s quiet existence.
Draft Notes
Given that this is the first time I’ve released this script online, it’s in a form that I’m happy enough with. Obviously, there are still issues with it, some I have identified (the length of it being a primary concern) and am unable to solve as of this moment and some I haven’t been able to spot.
As such, I’d really appreciate any critical feedback readers would be kind enough to provide. I do hope you enjoy the piece as it’s taken me a considerable amount of time to work into a form resembling readable, but if you don’t, I’d love to know what it is you’re not a fan of!
I’d also like to thank all those who are embarking on the odyssey of reading this thing and all those who have already done so in earlier forms and drafts.
The Background
So, as a lot of you will probably know from my updates, this year I’ve been writing a feature-length screenplay in order to prove to myself that I could but also to just learn more about the craft I’m so interested in.
Up to this point, I’ve really only written shorts, having attempted a feature only once before and not getting particularly far with it, so this project was going to be a bit of a marathon for me. A marathon I probably wasn’t mentally or physically (my wrists were not ready for this amount of writing and rewriting) prepared for when I started.
The idea for the film came to me back in my second year at university, and was a completely different beast back then. Originally, it was to be a tale of three individuals, rather than one, in which a killer - driven by forces far greater than himself - was being hunted by a detective with deep issues of his own, whilst being counselled by the local vicar. It was a narrative with some similar themes, but ultimately felt like it was one that had been done before, a tale that had been told very often. I also didn’t think the themes or ideas were massively original and that bothered me.
I tried to start that script several times back then, but never found a way into the story that satisfied me, so it was put on the backburner whilst I worked on other projects and, for the reasons above, sort of metamorphosed into another kind of film.
The biggest catalyst for this change came from my exposure to the films of Joanna Hogg, and to a lesser extent Martin Scorsese. I found in Hogg’s work a kind of familiar Britishness, not one that I was proud of, but one that I at least somewhat recognised. In Scorsese’s, I found his bravery to just write about the place in which he lived and the people that inhabited that world. Obviously, then, the script became more personal, closer to home, and I decided to focus more directly on who is what about and where it was about.
This revelation brought along with it a new heap of potential research and I attempted to submerge myself in it as best I could. Inspiration came from everywhere, really. Obviously, the filmographies of Scorsese and Hogg were scoured; Dostoevsky came up a lot; the book Middle England by Jonathan Coe; Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf, which you’ll find referenced within the script itself for its importance; and as per usual, there’s a little of many of my favourite films in there, most-likely sprinkled in unconsciously.
Extra Bits
The Spotify playlist I used to conjure the right mood whilst writing can be accessed here. (It’s not in any real order, so don’t pay much attention to the one it’s in.
The artwork featured is called Head I by Francis Bacon.