All Reviews

The Utah Murder Project deservedly placed again in the Best Script Contest.

The author writes extremely well. He has a good visual style. He writes in a way detailed enough for us to feel within the scenes and part of the action without being verbose. Too many non-pro screenwriters write in a very verbose style (more suited to novels), Eric doesn’t – he’s got a screen writing style. Like most pro-screenwriters he also keeps his writing in present tense and active voice which makes for an exciting read.

The dialogue is for the most part effective and authentic.

Utah’s characters are interesting and original. They’re also evoked well, eg:

CASEY BRENNER (27), tall, lean, classically beautiful young woman with gorgeous brown hair, and a pair of haunting eyes that could melt your heart. Standing next to her is --

LEANNE BOWMAN (25) sassy, more provocative of the two girls She has wild, red hair, cut short on the neck. She sports some flashy earrings, a low-cut top and some tight jeans.

Great stuff.

The author’s obviously spent a huge amount of time crafting this script. It’s seasoned and professional stuff. He’s also spent a lot of time on the plot and storyline. It’s very well crafted with some great twists. I highly recommend this script.


WAYS TO IMPROVE/CORRECTIONS
It’s tough to recommend ways for Utah to be improved as it’s a very polished and effective script already. It did have a few minor mistakes which I will point out. I think the storyline and characters are excellent as they are.

Corrections needed/advised (all minor stuff)

When the landlord spoke I thought some of his dialogue was too expositional, eg:

LANDLORD
I'm no cop, but if you ask me, I think whoever was here was looking for something.

LANDLORD
I get it. Official police business. I'll be outside if you need me.

Ideally I would cut Utah from 117 pages to 110. I say that because it can be daunting starting a script over 110 pages and some readers will simply not give it a chance. But since you’re already placing in AS, it’s obviously not a concern here.

Sometimes you write things that cannot be shown, most pro-writers would exclude such things, eg:

De Santis pockets the cell, calmly rests on the edge of his brother's mattress and concentrates, putting all the pieces together.

The severity of the situation hits De Santis like a sack of bricks


It’s unnecessary to have the following 3 lines in a spec script, save it for the shooting script:

ROLL TITLES:
THE UTAH MURDER PROJECT
END TITLES

De Santis slowly awakens from the driver's seat.
… awakens in?

Chief Tucker steps in, shuts the door.
<two line breaks here (on PDF), should be one>
Piker still going at De Santis.

They're saying it's even possible he even up and left the city
... “even” used twice, I would reword

De Santis follow his lead.
... follows

You regularly use O.S. for voice calls when it should be V.O.

Eg Matt Carless’s screenplay format guide says:

Off Screen (O.S.) means the character is physically present within the scene, but can only be heard, e.g. they are speaking from an adjoining room.

Voiceover (V.O.) is used when the character is not present within the scene, but can be heard via a mechanical device such as a telephone or radio. It is also used when a character narrates parts of your story.

Check any format guide, they’ll say the same thing. You have made the O.S. mistake in 25+ lines. Also this, although not a voice call should be V.O. too--

ROXANNE (O.S.) She just sat there for what must've been half an hour or so, staring out the window...

Roxanne pops a smoke in her mouth - lights up as she stroll to her car.
... strolls

She reluctantly begins toward it but still cautious of her surroundings.
... but she's?? still


SUMMARY
A super twisting story line, well written with great characters, plenty of thrills and emotion, and good dialogue. Highly recommended.

A tautly paced, superbly written screenplay filled with the kind of stylized twists many thrillers wish they had. Fans of early John Dahl and John Ridley will love this one.

Admittedly, I’m a big fan of these kinds of stories, but it’s rare to find one which works as well as this screenplay does. Dickson writes in a crisp, engaging style with an extremely strong visual sense. He handles sudden reversals and unexpected revelations (and there are plenty here) like a real pro, never becoming improbable or overly complicated.

Dickson’s dialogue is solid and naturalistic, and I love the fact that it never gets carried away by cleverness/quirkiness. This is a sign of a confident, seasoned writer.

A few quibbles:

-I would have liked to see more conflict between the L.A. folks and the small town folks. Values-wise, I mean. I suppose it’s possible you avoided this because it’s been done to death, but I think a writer with your skill could pull it off nicely.

-Speaking of small towns, it seems to me that there’s something at work in your screenplay about secrets in a small town and how they’re revealed by the arrival of outsiders. Maybe you want to bring that out a bit more…

-In terms of theme (and, of course, you might have been going for something completely different here): I thought the theme was corruption, or at least the corrosive effects corruption has. I thought this could have been brought out much more. You certainly did this with one of the major characters (I won’t say who here, I don’t want to give anything away), but I think it would add more emotional weight to the story if we could see corruption’s effect on some of the other characters.

-And while I’m on the subject of characters: While I found the characters fairly strong, sympathetic, and even easy to relate to, I sometimes had trouble distinguishing between them. By that I simply mean I sometimes couldn’t tell the difference between Bobby Jo and Piker, for example, or Leanne and Casey. It might work to give the characters more ‘business’ where they have to act/make choices which reveal who they are.

To sum up: This is an extremely well-crafted, well-written script which definitely deserves its semi-finalist status. I look forward to catching it on the big screen one day!