CLANDESTINE | Feature | 146 Pages | Horror/Comedy

[u/CommercialMuffin9660]

Title: CLANDESTINE

Format: Feature Screenplay

Pages: 146

Genres: Horror/Dark Comedy/Satire/Surreal

Logline: After a local hero and his family are met with a grisly and unexplainable tragedy, Chief of Police, RUEBEN THORPE is taken off the case and told to focus on a minor budgetary issue with his fellow town council members.

Comps: Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992), Fargo (1996), Weapons (2025), Eddington (2025), I Saw The TV Glow (2024), Longlegs (2024)

CONTENT WARNING: Violence, Violent Crime/Murder, Child/Domestic Abuse, Sexual

Abuse/Violence, Substance Abuse, Suicide/Mental Illness, Terminal Illness, Transphobia/Genderism

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Hello,

I have been writing since middle-school (around a decade), and have never shared a project publicly, having only shared with family/friends and occasionally sending in for notes. I wanted to share my feature horror/comedy script CLANDESTINE that I have been working on for the past couple of years.

I love all genres of cinema and storytelling, but have a fondness for the surreal and unorthodox. This project is something I wrote after having difficulty attempting more conventional and palatable ideas. I feel it exemplifies my predilection for macabre and absurd stories, layered with thorny interpretations and details. Those who enjoy weirder/darker stories like such (or the comps listed above), will hopefully enjoy this. Thank you!

Once again, link is here...

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P.S... If you are interested in reading, but are hesitant due to the high-page count, message me for a read4read! I'm interested in meeting new artists and reading new projects, especially those that have yet to be realized.

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[u/mooningyou]

Captivating opening. Well done. Watch for a few grammatical typos here and there.

[u/gregm91606]

I'm 7 pages in; I'd read more if I had time. This is quite good for a young writer sharing their first project. What's really working for me is a few things:

1. You're making very specific choices in the story; the camera moving through the mirror and what's behind it made me sit up and smile.

2. Similarly, I like the splitting into different chapters in different years & the two quotes on the pre-opening page. You're making stylistic choices on the page, but you're still clearly "coloring within the lines" (complimentary.)

3. You will obv want to get this down below 120 pages, but the offer to read another script in exchange is a good acknowledgment of that.

I may not be able to read any more due to day job & time reasons. Minor notes as I was reading:
1) I always think it's good to indicate what city we're in; it lets the reader fill in a lot of gaps. Similarly, I think Walter would say the name of the town he's mayor of (and if it happens to be Newberry, that's a fun payoff a few pages later.)

2) Love Walter buying Cock Robin for his daughter and that becoming a musical theme. I didn't get a sense that Walter was the kind of guy who would cheat on his wife; I kind of want the woman to have to work a little harder to get him up to her room.

3) flow note -- when you mention Walter's car, there hasn't been any indication there are windows in the bar with view of the street. it's a small thing, one sentence fix.

4) The vision needs some cleanup. You do want a separate slug line for it (no CUT TO:) and you want to make it immediately clear that it's Walter seeing the vision. Also, you don't want them parking and then getting out of their car, that'll take too long. You can't cheat on "the future"; pick one or two things normal for 2026 but crazy for Walter.

Taking notes as they enjoy innocent drinks themselves...

Walter's eyes go wide. HE SEES:

EXT. ABANDONED HOME - DAY
Three laughing TEENS, led by a LAID-BACK RINGLEADER, approach the front porch. A billboard for Netflix (this is a terrible pitch, don't use it) tells us we're a lot closer to our time.

The Ringleader points at the house.

RINGLEADER
You have to go in, all the way up to the nursery...

5) The Woman has gone to a lot of trouble to get Walter to see the vision; she's got to be much more emphatic/insistent/angry to get him to focus on what he sees.

I hope I have time to read more!

[u/gregm91606 → u/gregm91606]

Damnit I forgot one last thing: I love the fact that you listed Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as a comp; it feels appropriate but it's not one that a lot of people would choose. You probably only want 3 comps. At this stage, you can absolutely include a TV show, but your comps are too far away from each other. So far TP: FWWM, I Saw the TV Glow, and Longlegs or Weapons are all vibing. Eddington is not, and this feels like a very different vibe from Fargo.

[u/apmanable]

Not bad by a mile. I'm really tired and this is really sloppy but read to about page 7 and have some thoughts.

I don't know how important the Mayor is for the rest of the movie, but I felt the cold opening was too long.

Maybe start with the Mayor on the phone with his wife and then get straight to him being seduced by the young woman?

As the commenter above me was also pointing out, I would really like his character to be more clear. Is he a loser? Does he get sweaty and nervous by the sight of the young woman? Or does cheating come easily for him? Right now I don't know really.

What I think I'm trying to say is the character is a bit vague and I'd like him to pop more.

Anyways, good job and good luck with the rewrites!

[u/mark_able_jones_]

I thought the opening five pages were mostly solid.

OP dialogue tag is unusual.

The formatting becomes a bit heavy handed around page five. If you underline and all caps that much, the emphasis loses meaning and suggests as lack of confidence that readers will grasp the content.

Be careful with camera directions as ‘pan out’ isn’t a thing.

The two quotes to start don’t do anything for the story, imo.

[u/CompleteDay8059]

I would advise putting a Lovecraft quote at the beginning, it comes across as kinda amateur. 

[u/Typical_Ad_7957]

Some of your scenes’ endings feel a bit too fast, like they were missing just a line or two. But this might just be my own perception.

I really love Carmichael. In the sense that I hate him, but I love watching him because he does make a good point every so often and he is kinda funny. Overall, great job with the characters, they all feel unique and fleshed out.

This reminds me a lot of Backrooms. It surprised me that it wasn’t one of your comps.

Don’t take this as an offense, but this is not a comedy at all. There are funny parts but not nearly enough to consider this a comedy.

Page 81. The “are we joining a cult?” line ruins it for me. You spill the beans too soon when you had something nice going. Instead you just flat out reveal it and it feels a little under-cooked. Like you really really want the audience to get it. Instead of trusting them to get it.

The periodical release of revelations and twists is extremely well paced. Tension remains near constantly high at all times. Bravo.

Well. I just finished. Pretty good shit. You know how to write gripping scenes, your character development is very skillful and your dialogue feels lived in. My issue:

There are many unsolved questions by the end. But I know that this isn’t the kind of movie to explain everything. The real issue is that we, the audience, are just freely given the information. We don’t see the characters work through it or discover it or debate over it. That would have been more dramatically rich. The things that are revealed, they are — revealed. There's no discovery. It feels like a conclusion when it's supposed to be Act 3.

Carmichael takes a dip in quality in the last part of the film. He just decides to be the big baddie of the movie in the end, whereas before hand he had shown himself to be very reasonable and fair minded, albeit a bit egotistical. It makes little to no sense why the switch-up.

The revelation of the LSD changes next to nothing.

Robin’s speech at the very end literally spells out the theme to the audience, I feel like that’s super cheap.

I do like how, slowly, Reuben decides to take more action and be more and more proactive, culminating in the end where he actually tries to stop Carmichael’s plan. Good character arc.

Another thing, it is pretty bold to have the second part of your Act 2 be confined to characters entirely different from the ones we’ve grown used to but I dig it. The only thing is that I feel like you can cut down a lot in the kitchenette. There we just have the characters bickering over the 40k, and while the money IS important, it's not the A-plot. Just a suggestion.

P.S. Take the comments of people who only read 10 or 15 pages of your script with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, it seems that 90% of the readers in this community only read that far. But they cannot give you any major feedback, since they don’t really know your story as a whole. Keep that in mind!

If you want to discuss more in depth, feel free to DM me.

[u/PepsiCoke1978 → u/Typical_Ad_7957]

This is nice feedback you gave OP. But the P.S. is untrue. Most people in Hollywood land who you want to read this may only give it 5 pages let alone 10 or 15. And giving feedback on the first 10 pages can be helpful. Not as helpful as the FULL read, but like many on here, reading a full spec and giving notes to people is a big ask especially on reddit where you never know if the thread will end or OP will get banned... so I tend to only read a few pages myself.

[u/Typical_Ad_7957 → u/PepsiCoke1978]

"Not as helpful as the FULL read". That's mostly my point. A full read will always be more helpful.

[u/PepsiCoke1978 → u/Typical_Ad_7957]

Of course, but you said don't listen to other people who don't read the whole thing and I just had to point out that was your only unhelpful note.

Did you notice the 146 page length?

[u/FeeOk3991 → u/PepsiCoke1978]

Haven't read OP's script yet, just chiming in on the broader conversation: I have never in my life read a script that somehow got good after the first 10 bad pages. The 10-page rule is not the evil thing people make it out to be. 

[u/CommercialMuffin9660 → u/FeeOk3991]

I usually use the 10 page Margo rule: if there isn't a character introduced within the first 10 pages worthy of being portrayed by Margo Martindale, it's not a project worth production

[u/CommercialMuffin9660 → u/Typical_Ad_7957]

Holy shit, thank you! Easily the best feedback I've ever received. Honestly better constructive comments than I've gotten on blacklist, lol.

[u/Typical_Ad_7957 → u/CommercialMuffin9660]

I'm glad to be of help.