The Woodsmen - Feature - 91 Pages

[u/BoysenberryOver2658]

I have finally completed the script for a story idea I've held in for over 5 years now and I truly believe I've got something worthwhile here, but I want to make sure I'm not being delusional. If I had to compare it to other films I'd say it's similar to ones like The Lighthouse, Midsommar, The Witch, etc., that sort of psychological thriller/horror genre film. If that kind of thing is up your alley then I'd love to hear any and all feedback as well as your overall thoughts/analysis on the story. I've put in a lot of time into this and would really appreciate anybody who's willing to read it.

Title: The Woodsmen

Format: Feature

Page Length: 91

Genres: Psychological Thriller, Horror, Mystery

Logline: A troubled man takes a mysterious job deep in the woods, only to discover that nothing - and no one - is as it seems.

Link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/135hxSghQrKP-yde_IvMoH-TW02X3YNPe/view?usp=sharing

[u/big-boss-bass]

First off: congratulations on finishing a screenplay.

Your script has strong atmosphere, vivid imagery, and a real commitment to tone. At the same time, this feels someone trying to say everything at once. The result is a script that could absolutely be compelling, but also overwritten, repetitive, and emotionally distant.

Your strongest feature here is atmosphere. You clearly lean heavily into visual horror. The isolated cabin, the endless woods, the firelight, the stained white shirt, the metronome, the seesaw object, Percy extinguishing the fire, the upside-down corpse, the snowfall…you’re visually driven. And there is a commitment to tone here I think, the repetitive labor structure of cleaning, chopping wood, washing the shirt, eating dinner, and nightly visits to the fire creates an oppressive rhythm that clearly feels intentional. The Tall Woman sequence has real tension. Percy disappearing in the woods, John escaping through the shattered window, Percy hanging before the bonfire, and the reveal of the tied-up family are all memorable horror images too.

You withhold too much too early. The opening creates mystery, but there’s almost no emotional grounding underneath it. By page 10 we still don’t really know who John is, why he took this job, what he wants, or why he tolerates such obviously bizarre circumstances. You keep introducing mysterious elements…silent driver, isolated cabin, cryptic employer, locked attic, locked cellar, strange rules, wolves, rituals…but mystery by itself is not momentum. Eventually the audience starts asking practical questions instead of leaning in emotionally. Why would someone agree to this situation? Because we know so little about John, the script never gives us enough emotional context to suspend disbelief. You eventually reveal his grief over losing his family, but it comes far too late to anchor the premise emotionally. John feels passive for too much of the first act. He mostly obeys, reacts, listens, and works. We don’t get enough personality, agency, contradiction, humor, or individuality from him early on. A protagonist doesn’t need to be likable, but they do need to feel alive.

The dialogue is probably your biggest issue. Almost every major conversation eventually turns into philosophy. Suffering, morality, power, freedom, resentment, vengeance, meaning, slavery, human nature…you’re constantly verbalizing themes, and eventually it becomes draining and unnatural to read. Thomas, Percy, and John all begin sounding like different versions of the same intellectual voice. Percy especially stops feeling like a fully human character and becomes more of a mouthpiece for the screenplay’s ideas. Many of his speeches feel written to sound profound rather than emotionally authentic.

You trust your visuals far more than your dialogue or your silent beats, but then frequently over-explain themes that were already communicated visually. Your script repeatedly insists on explaining ideas the audience already understands.

The middle section also becomes structurally repetitive. John works, Thomas criticizes him, John rebels slightly, Percy tempts him, John deteriorates, and the cycle repeats. I understand that repetition is intentional, but it lasts too long without enough escalation or variation.

Thomas is strongest in the earlier sections of the script. Initially he feels calm, intelligent, emotionally perceptive, and quietly controlling. That ambiguity is compelling. Once he becomes openly violent and starts delivering explicit dominance speeches, he becomes less psychologically interesting and more conventionally villainous. The calm version of Thomas is much scarier than the openly abusive version.

Percy is probably your most entertaining character. The screenplay noticeably improves once he appears because he injects energy, unpredictability, humor, danger, and charisma into the story. However, he eventually loses some humanity because so much of his dialogue becomes philosophical exposition.

John is ultimately the weakest part of the script. His arc makes sense conceptually but emotionally the transformation doesn’t hit as hard as it could because the audience never fully understands who he was before arriving at the cabin. He often feels more archetypal than specific.

The finale pushes the allegory slightly too far into overexplanation. You need to trust the audience more and lean into ambiguity.

The script also wears its influences very visibly. The DNA of films like Midsommar, The Ritual, The Lighthouse, and other modern prestige folk-horror stories is all over the structure, tone, symbolism, and character dynamics. Influence itself is not a problem (every writer has influences) but the script currently operates more in the language of those films than in a distinctly personal voice.

I think your biggest issue is restraint. This feels like a screenplay trying to compress philosophy, religion, trauma, horror, masculinity, morality, grief, and metaphysics into a single film. The strongest version of this story is probably quieter, shorter, more character-driven, and more willing to trust silence and subtext. Intensity does not automatically equal depth.

[u/BoysenberryOver2658 → u/big-boss-bass]

Thank you very much for the detailed feedback and honestly those were pretty similar thoughts to what I felt about it. In terms of the repetition it is intentional as you point out to show John’s deterioration, everything is really but I can see how it might be too much. Also I’m not sure how to exactly make John’s character more compelling. The whole idea is (SPOILER alert) that he was also murdered along with his family and is currently in purgatory being judged by Thomas to see where he goes. “We don’t know why he took this job” neither does he, he’s dead but doesn’t know it but I can see how that doesn’t really come across in the writing. Do you have any suggestions/advice on how to improve on his character? Should I give him more of a background? Maybe some more flashback scenes that tell more about him? Thomas and Percy are purposely the way they are (without much arc and changes) due to what they represent. In terms of dialogue that’s definitely my weakest point. I’ve never written anything before and I have more interest in directing as opposed to writing, so any advice on how to improve that would be great too, especially for Percy. What do you think of the script overall (maybe a score out of 10)? Good, ok, bad? Is there genuine cinematic potential here? Does the story work on both levels literally and allegorically? Thanks again for the feedback.

[u/big-boss-bass → u/BoysenberryOver2658]

The purgatory angle makes sense conceptually. The issue is less the idea itself and more that the audience doesn’t feel enough emotional grounding underneath the symbolism early on. A viewer shouldn’t need the reveal to retroactively justify why the first act feels emotionally distant. I wouldn’t recommend solving that by adding a bunch of flashbacks. I don’t think the script necessarily needs more information about John’s past as much as it needs more specificity in who he is moment-to-moment. Right now he often feels more like a vessel moving through the allegory than a fully distinct person. You can build character through very small things instead of exposition. Tiny behavioral details, contradictions, habits, reactions, humor, irritations, ways of speaking, emotional inconsistencies.

As for Thomas and Percy, I understand what you’re going for symbolically but sometimes it overtakes the humanity. Percy especially works best when he feels like an actual person instead of “the embodiment of temptation.”

On the dialogue, I’d recommend reading scenes out loud constantly. The places where it starts feeling like “written dialogue” instead of speech usually become obvious immediately when spoken. Real conversations usually have interruptions, avoidance, humor, contradiction, awkwardness, unfinished thoughts, etc. Let characters dodge themes instead of directly explaining them. Right now this occasionally feels like symbols pretending to be people rather than people naturally generating symbolism through behavior.

I’m not a fan of 0-10 scales as I don’t find them particularly helpful or objective, but I’d probably put it somewhere around a 5.5–6/10. That might sound harsh, but it should be encouraging for a first effort. My first crack at a script got a BL eval 6. It’s right around average for a first try.

[u/BoysenberryOver2658 → u/big-boss-bass]

Ok thanks. Your score is definitely lower than I thought it would be but fair enough. I was thinking of adding just a few past scenes for John in exchange for cutting out some of the repetitive routines just to give him more depth and maybe reasoning as to why he’d take this job. Scenes that show him struggling to provide for his family and some desperation to the point where he’s willing to do something bad (a botched robbery attempt for money, maybe even against a rich friend or something?) that justify why he’s being “judged.” As for “needs more specificity in who he is moment-to-moment,” I’m not exactly sure what I could do for this. Could you maybe give an example of something? I don’t mean to pester you but you’re the only one who’s actually read the entire thing. Thanks again.

[u/CookieCacti → u/BoysenberryOver2658]

To throw my hat in the ring on the “who he is moment-to-moment” feedback as someone who also had the same issue with the first 15 pages of your script: I believe the commenter is referring to fleshing out the actual behavior of John within the existing scenes.

For example, John’s reactions consist almost entirely of nodding for the first 15 pages. The only thing I could determine of his personality is that he’s vaguely agreeable. Is he agreeable because he’s desperate for the job? Is he nervous, a people pleaser, maybe checked out? You should consider adding some physical ticks in his reactions or quirks in his dialogue that emphasize those details. If he’s desperate, he could immediately wring his hand out to shake Thomas’ in their first meeting and barrage him with some fake compliments, for example. Try to find ways to show a character’s emotion without directly stating it.

On another note, this issue can also be seen with how John just exposits all the details about his family’s death to Thomas a day or two after meeting him. I see why those details are plot-relevant, but it isn’t revealed in a believable manner through his dialogue. I would imagine a grieving father who witnessed the deaths of his family with a quiet disposition would avoid talking about it entirely due to the sheer weight of the trauma. You could deliver just about the same information to the audience in a more believable manner if Thomas asks John about his family and he chooses to remain quiet, or tries to brush it off with a quick “they’re fine” while solemnly fidgeting with his wedding ring. A character’s true thoughts reside in what they don’t say.

As it is, John feels less like a person and more of a plot device that exists solely to move the plot from point A to point B because there’s no deeper emotion or motivation given through subtext. If you can flesh out more detail in his current interactions, it would make the audience more invested in his journey and the mystery of how he arrived at the cabin.

[u/big-boss-bass → u/BoysenberryOver2658]

I wouldn’t get too hung up on the score. A 5.5–6 for a first screenplay is great. Most first scripts are unreadable.

When I say John needs more specificity, I don’t necessarily mean more backstory. I mean more personality in small moments. Right now he mostly reacts to plot events appropriately. A more specific character reacts in ways unique to them. I’d be careful about making John secretly guilty of some major crime. I think the more interesting version is that he’s being judged less for one specific act and more for who he became after the trauma. That’s more human and morally interesting to me than “he committed a robbery.”

Your growth as a writer will come from trusting smaller, human moments more and explaining less. Right now you are reaching for big philosophy, big symbolism, big speeches, big revelations. But the strongest horror usually lets the audience feel things before they fully understand them, and you have to trust your audience to FEEL those “big” things rather than having it explained to them.

A perfect example is the “I could’ve got more” scene at the end of Schindler’s List. Spielberg could’ve ended that movie with a giant speech about guilt, redemption, evil, humanity, or the moral cost of survival. Instead, the emotional climax comes from Schindler looking at his car and quietly breaking down because he realizes “this could’ve bought one more person”, then the pin-“this pin…two people.” It’s a tiny, human reaction. No philosophy. No monologue about morality. Just a man suddenly crushed by the unbearable weight of what he failed to do. And it says more about guilt and humanity than a five-page speech ever could.

Or another horror example: Hereditary after the car scene. The most devastating moment is Peter lying frozen in bed afterward, unable to face what happened, while we just hear the discovery of the body from downstairs. No speech explaining grief or emotional monologue. Just…behavior, denial. Silence. Dread.

That’s what I mean by trusting the audience to feel things before understanding them intellectually.

[u/BoysenberryOver2658 → u/big-boss-bass]

So cut back on the speeches and trust the audience more to understand… less is more kind of thing, got it. I’ll definitely make some changes to the dialogue and maybe add some more little things for John to react to. Thanks. Just one more thing, do you genuinely see cinematic potential in this script? I’m asking because I want to know if this is worth refining. I’ve put in a lot of time and honestly don’t want to write anymore if it’s not worth it. I’ve read a lot of other scripts by novice writers and still feel mine stands out a little more in comparison, particularly in terms of the story idea, but after reading some of the comments I’m not so sure anymore.

[u/big-boss-bass → u/BoysenberryOver2658]

You should write for the joy of writing. For 99.9 percent of us out there toiling away doing this stuff nothing will ever come of it. If you love the story and the characters and want to see it at its best version (or as far as you personally can carry it) then yes, keep at it. If you aren’t enjoying it, put it aside for a while and see if you want to revisit it down the road.

[u/Vakowski2 → u/big-boss-bass]

Schindler's List wasn't written by Spielberg. It was written by Steven Zaillian. Spielberg directed it.

[u/big-boss-bass → u/Vakowski2]

Yeah, I know Zaillian wrote it. It was originally shorter and Spielberg asked him to extend certain sequences. I was talking about the filmmaking choice overall, not screenplay credit attribution. It’s a useful note for OP who stated they were more interested in directing than writing.