Setting the Stage
A few days ago I finally broke the plastic on my Blu-ray of It Comes at Night (2017) and sat down for blind watch. I had managed to avoid any spoilers or trailers and had little knowledge about the film: I knew it went to some dark places and that it was set in a post-apocalypse world but focused on a small, contained story. In description it reminded me of Michael Hanake’s Time of the Wolf (2003) and since I really enjoyed that movie, I was quite looking forward to It Comes at Night.
I was blown away. Everything about the film pressed all the right buttons. The lingering cinematography that knew how to extend an emotional air over the film. A world that we don’t fully grasp but are given enough clues to understand. And characters that we understand and, even if it pains me to say, we find ourselves agreeing with (even when that agreement makes us sick). I went out and read the screenplay on the same day, I found it to be that incredibly powerful.
While the screenplay differs from the movie in some major ways, it perfectly captures what goes into a powerful opening. Watching the film, I was hooked from the first scene and having read the screenplay, it’s easy to see why. So let’s take a look at how the script opens and examine what makes it so effective.
Open with a Bang
Character, World Building, and Emotional Tone
We begin tight, focused only on Bud. We hear Sarah ask him questions and we understand him to be dying – though what it is that is killing him, we don’t yet know. The scene heading tells us this is a garage but this opening could be a hospital room for all we know, visually. It’s not until we see Sarah and see that she’s wearing a gas mask, that we realize there is more than just a tender farewell happening here.
We learn through the description that something weird is happening here. There’s a blockade to move to leave, a wheelbarrow used as a wheelchair and…a rifle, a revolver, and a gas canister… this doesn’t bode well for Bud, does it? So far we’ve learned that we’re in the middle of a story and the movie isn’t wasting time to shotgun exposition at us. But we are learning, about the world and about our characters:
Paul is the practical one. Sarah is more prone to emotion. Travis is young and learning hard lessons. There’s some kind of sickness that they’re afraid of catch, one that involves something…going on in your head.
We move outside and the scene heading tells us we’re Outside of the house. While this is slightly redundant (Ext. tells us that we’re outside) it raises a question: What house? We don’t yet know that the story is centered on only this one location, so the scene heading is giving us the clue that it’s important – otherwise why not “a house” instead of “the house” or “the Surname’s house” – and this priming of questioning helps us to latch onto the individual details: All of the house’s windows and doors seem to be completely boarded up with wood; nothing else is around except a snow covered field and dense surrounding woods. We’re in the middle of nowhere and our characters are worried about what might try to get in their house. Why?
We’re given a clue when we notice the black streaks running down [Bud’s] arms and that the tips of some of Bud’s fingers and toes are all black, and almost look like they could just rot off. If we combine these clues with the earlier mention of something…going on in [Bud’s] head and reflect on the other clues have been given – boarded up house, gas masks, sickness, guns – then we start to get a clearer picture. We begin to suspect we might be in a zombie film, or if not zombies, perhaps a zombie-esque film like 28 Days Later (2002). Our suspicions aren’t confirmed – at least, not in the film, though the ending of the screenplay is quite different – but are at least lent more weight when Paul shoots Bud in the head and then burns the body (because how else do you kill a zombie?).
In less than five pages, we learn who our characters are and how each of them responds differently to the situation at hand. The situation lets us know that this is a brutal world, one in which survival is more important than familial ties and one that leaves no room for sentimentality. And we learn the ultimate struggle at the core of the film: remaining human in a world gone chaotic.
We learn all of this and more in our first scene and we spend the rest of the story exploring it in depth. The theme, the characters, the situation. But we aren’t asked to suffer through talking-heads exposition, and it doesn’t waste time explaining the world to us. It grounds us in a situation in the here and now and introduces our characters through their actions, and introduces the world through subtle clues that will be strengthened going forward.
It gives us what we need and cuts everything we don’t: a strong hook that makes the audience ask questions and continue reading/watching for the answers.
