The Vatican Tapes (79 pages) by Christopher Borrelli is a horror about a documented account of an exorcism. A priest flies into a rural American town to do an exorcism. After a long a trial-some effort, the girl/exorcist wins, killing the priest.
SYNOPISIS COMMENTARY
________________________________________
In lieu of the synopsis I have some commentary.
The logline that caught my attention and made me want to read this was:
“In a highly secured vault deep within the walls of Vatican City, the Catholic Church holds thousands of old films and video footage documenting exorcisms/supposed exorcisms and other unexplained religious phenomena they feel the world is not ready to see. This is the first tape – Case 83-G – stolen from these archives and exposed to the public by an anonymous source.”
It was the first tape I will give it that much, but I was thinking this was going to be some kind of DaVinci Code story. WRONG. The logline talks about unexplained religious phenomena, since exorcisms are so overrated, okay so maybe an X-Files type story. WRONG. The logline mentions the tape is stolen, so maybe a heist type flick. WRONG.
If you like Blair Witch but less excitement or you like watching Discovery channel specials on Exorcisms, you will like this. I, for one, am not into exorcisms. I am not even a fan of any of the Exorcist features.
The audience would be anyone up at 1:00 AM looking for something to watch. The dialogue is so boring and dry this makes Clerks look like a Blockbuster Oscar film. The script after page 7 is in one location and reads more like one long monologue.
The logline was misleading and I wasted 40 minutes of my time reading this awful script. The logline should read like this: A documented account of an exorcism. A priest flies into a rural American town to do an exorcism. After a long a trial-some effort, the girl/exorcist wins, killing the priest. That, folks, is what the story is about, logline and synopsis, in a nut shell.
COMMENTS
________________________________________
The script is not compelling in the least; it is long in the tooth and dry, very dry. If anything worked well is that the writer was writing a Blair Witch-esque script, and it did work in that respect.
The good: Descriptions were adequate and the visual potential is there, given that the writer is going for a documentary style. Kudos for no story holes.
The bad: For starters the concept is old and unoriginal. The uniqueness and the high concept ability are only in the false original logline. The script opens and closes in a mocumentary style feature with no mention of any break-in to the Vatican. The theme is tiresome from the get-go. The script is 79 pages.
Otherwise the characterizations, dialogue, format and writing style is fair.
The writer would not be recommended.
COMMERCIAL POTENTIAL
________________________________________
The best window for this would be as a SyFy channel movie. The directorial attachment would be any mocumentary director. The MPAA rating would come in at an R.
BUDGET: Low.
Script Recommendation: [ ] Recommended, [ ] Consider, [X] Pass.