Screenplay Analysis - Don't Worry Darling
Please note: the following is an analysis of the blacklist screenplay from 2019 - not the movie. #spoiler alert!
Don’t Worry Darling is a psychological thriller about a 1950s housewife whose reality begins to crack, revealing a disturbing truth underneath.
This script landed at #3 on the 2019 blacklist with 19 votes.
It's written by the Van Dyke brothers.
This was an interesting script.
Its central premise being - "is the main character crazy?" Which is a very done subject. I'd go so far as to say cliche. However, in this script, they manage to wrap this trope in a very contemporary subject matter - sexism.
Let's look at the story and see what they've done right and where they could have improved.
We start in 1950's cliche, white, perfect America. The town is nondescript, it's one of those perfect places right out of a magazine. Here, we meet Evelyn, the hero of our story. She's a housewife in an era where the majority of women were led to believe that it's a Man's world, and all women exist to please their husbands.
We first meet Evelyn making love to her husband, Clifford. The sex itself is pretty good, and Evelyn even seems into it, but directly afterwards she hurries away to the bathroom where she uses a female contraceptive.
Clifford really wants to start a family but Evelyn is terrified by the notion of being weighed down with the permanency of kids.
Evelyn longs to have a career of her own. She even has intense dreams of being a surgeon. But these dreams are so vivid and real, they feel like memories.
This is where the story starts to twist. The first question is, are Evelyn's dreams just dreams, or are they deeply buried memories?
We soon meet Betsy and Joe, their neighbors. Betsy and Joe have the picture-perfect family. Two kids, Joe working hard, Betsy really good at all things homely. While Clifford aspires to their family paradigm, Evelyn is horrified by the notion.
It seems that Evelyn is a modern woman stuck in a 1950s culture.
When Clifford discovers that Evelyn is using a contraceptive they have an argument that involves a lot of yelling, a broken mirror and a temporary loss of patience and civility between them. But the next day, they both pretend that everything is fine, that nothing happened. They go back to their usual routine.
While on her way home from shopping, Evelyn sees her husband's car parked at a seedy motel. She investigates and sees Clifford enter room 1.
Evelyn has to know what's happening in that room.
Something very strange happens when she opens the door to room 1. There's a blinding flash of white light and Evelyn wakes up in something that looks like an MRI machine. She's hooked up to this futuristic device with a myriad of tubes and wires. Her legs atrophied from lack of use. She freaks out, and manages to get out of the machine, she tries to crawl out of the small dimly lit room she finds herself in, when she suddenly sees Clifford who injects her with a syringe.
When she wakes, Evelyn finds herself in her bed back in 1950.
It was all just a dream.
Or was it?
From here, things only get worse. These visions become more frequent, and as Evelyn investigates she comes to believe that she is from the future, 2050, to be precise, and that her 1950s reality is really just a simulation, her real body is back in 2050 hooked up to that futuristic MRI machine.
The premise and the question of the story becomes, is Evelyn living in a simulated reality or is she going mad?
The problem with the 'Is the hero mad or not?' question is that you have to answer it at some stage. There are only ever three answers to this question.
Yes, they're mad, and they're imagining all this craziness.
No, they're not mad, this craziness is really happening.
OR
You leave it unanswered. You let the audience decide if she's crazy or not. It's hard to get any of these endings to work well. I won't ruin it by saying how this script ends, but it's an interesting screenwriting point to look at.
The SETUP and the PAYOFF.
For your film to feel rewarding, your payoff needs to be bigger and more unexpected than your setup. I talk about the importance of unpredictability in screenplays a lot. If the audience can see where the story is going they'll tune out and become bored quickly.
The same goes for your central story premise - if you set up your story to look like it's going a certain way, and then it does, there's no sense of reward to the viewer.
Essentially, what they expected to happen, did.
This is an example of your payoff not exceeding your setup. If you inject twists throughout your story and constantly keep your audience guessing right up until the very end, then you will have succeeded. Your payoff will be greater than your setup.
Think about your own film-watching experiences. Think how many times you have watched a film and felt like it was a waste of time, you came away thinking, 'was that it?' You don't want that to happen to the audience of your movie.
MAKE SURE YOUR PAYOFF IS GREATER THAN YOUR SETUP.
I liked Evelyn a lot in this story. It's funny, as there weren't many instances of ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY - that is where the hero actively goes out of their way to do something good for someone other than themselves. This being the strongest form of empathy and the best way to get us to love your hero.
While there wasn't much ACTIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY, there were bucket loads of PASSIVE POSITIVE EMPATHY. That's where we feel sorry for someone because of the bad things that happen to them.
Evelyn's life is loaded with sexism. She isn't allowed to pursue a career, her place is in the home, she is supposed to cook clean and make babies.
The reason we like Evelyn is that she stands up for herself. She's not just letting herself get pregnant, she is ACTIVELY taking a contraceptive. When she finds her husband go into the motel, she ACTIVELY investigates and discovers this crazy futuristic world.
The keyword here, you may have noticed, is ACTIVE.
We love heroes who stick up for themselves. We love heroes who actively go about trying to better their life.
Now, if the writers had taken the passive approach, if they had written Evelyn not taking contraception, and that she didn't stand up for herself when Clifford confronted her about it, or that she didn't investigate further when she saw Clifford at the motel - there's no way we would have loved her quite so much.
Her life would still be awash with sexism, there would still be all the passive positive empathy beats, but we wouldn't really care about her.
AUDIENCES CARE FOR HEROES WHO CARE FOR THEMSELVES.
I'm not saying self-love in a narcissistic way, I'm saying heroes who have enough self-respect to stand up for themselves, despite the consequences of doing so.
AUDIENCES RESPECT HEROES WHO RESPECT THEMSELVES.
This brings me to a very broad point about screenwriting in general.
FILMS REFLECT LIFE.
The more I analyse films, the more I come to realize that what works in life, works in film. Think about who we like in real life and why we like them. All those reasons transpose perfectly to the world of film.
The more nuanced and layered your characters are the more real they feel. The more life-like you can write your screenplay, the more it will resonate with readers, producers and finally, your audience.
One last thing I want to look at in this screenplay was the OPEN-ENDED GOAL.
Films with a closed-ended goal tend to do better than scripts with an open-ended goal.
A closed-ended goal is - X must do Y to prevent Z.
An opened-ended goal is more ambiguous.
In this story, Evelyn's goal is to discover if she is crazy or not. How does she achieve that? Even Evelyn doesn't know how to do that.
Take the film Saving Private Ryan for a great example of a closed-ended goal. The title of the film tells you what the GOAL is. Save private Ryan. It doesn't get much more closed-ended than that. When your goal is tangible, your audience feels oriented. At any given time in the film, they know what is happening and why.
When your audience doesn't know what the hero needs to do next they start to feel disconnected from the story. Where possible, try to write your story with a CLOSED ENDED GOAL.
STORY NOTES
I’m a professional working screenwriter/director/producer. I have worked with Morgan Freeman (The Shawshank Redemption), Harvey Keitel (Pulp Fiction), Olga Kurylenko (Quantum Of Solace), Matt Doran (The Matrix).
I offer a script notes service that is very different to most others. I give detailed feedback covering every aspect of storytelling that is rarely less than ten pages of notes. There are two parts to the notes...
Page Read Notes are beat specific notes that arise as I read your script. These focus on the minutiae of your story as it unfolds.
General Notes focus on all the key aspects of your screenplay, being: Concept, Form, Characters, Dialogue, Hero, Antagonist, Voice, Production, Hero’s Journey, Goal, Stakes, Urgency.
A two hour Zoom call to go over the notes together and answer all questions.
Lastly, I offer indefinite email follow up. Feel free to email any questions that may arise as you rewrite your screenplay.
For this in-depth analysis of your screenplay I charge only $250USD.
DM me to take get the notes you need to take your story to the next level and to improve your storytelling ability. Invest in yourself.
All the very best with your writing journey!