Written by:M. Night Shyamalan (Screenplay), Paul Tremblay (Book), Michael Sherman (Screenplay), Steve Desmond (Screenplay)
Script Synopsis:While vacationing at a remote cabin, a young girl and her two fathers are taken hostage by four armed strangers who demand that the family make an unthinkable choice to avert the apocalypse. With limited access to the outside world, the family must decide what they believe before all is lost.
Written by:Will Smith (Story), M. Night Shyamalan (Screenplay), Gary Whitta (Screenplay)
Script Synopsis:One thousand years after cataclysmic events forced humanity's escape from Earth, Nova Prime has become mankind's new home. Legendary General Cypher Raige returns from an extended tour of duty to his estranged family, ready to be a father to his 13-year-old son, Kitai. When an asteroid storm damages Cypher and Kitai's craft, they crash-land on a now unfamiliar and dangerous Earth. As his father lies dying in the cockpit, Kitai must trek across the hostile terrain to recover their rescue beacon. His whole life, Kitai has wanted nothing more than to be a soldier like his father. Today, he gets his chance.
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
Nothing like a sudden turn of the wheel that leaves the audience in disbelief. But what happens when the audience actually disbelieves? Screenwriters are aware of the double edged sword quality of plot twists: they can make a story successful almost by themselves, but can also turn against it if they come off as predictable or implausible.
In some genres (horror, thriller) they have become an expected, almost mandatory device. Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) set the foundations for the use of narrative unreliability in films. And it’s already a great example of a twist that didn’t only aim for shock- it also tried to provide a solid justification for the visual and narrative styles of the film.
Night Shyamalan’s irregular career illustrates both the rewards and the risks of subjecting the story to a plot twist. The recent success of Split may have brought him to a second youth, but for many years, the ‘Shyamalan twists” served more as a burden than a perk, becoming the smoking gun that proves and defines the film’s failure.
So what makes a good plot twist? If Aristotle stated that good art should be both unexpected and inevitable, contemporary screenwriters like William Goldman have pinpointed a reality that Hollywood has exploited well: that a controversial ending may still work effectively if it’s at least satisfying.
Some examples of films with memorable plot twists are:
Written by:M. Night Shyamalan (Screenplay), Greg Brooker (Screenplay)
Script Synopsis:The adventures of a heroic and debonair stalwart mouse named Stuart Little with human qualities, who faces some comic misadventures while searching for his lost bird friend and living with a human family as their child.
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
Script Synopsis:The tale of a ten-year-old boy in a Catholic school who, following the death of his beloved grandfather, embarks on a quest to discover the meaning of life.
Script Synopsis:An ordinary man makes an extraordinary discovery when a train accident leaves his fellow passengers dead — and him unscathed. The answer to this mystery could lie with the mysterious Elijah Price, a man who suffers from a disease that renders his bones as fragile as glass.
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
Script Synopsis:When a willful young man tries to venture beyond his sequestered Pennsylvania hamlet, his actions set off a chain of chilling incidents that will alter the community forever.
The Village Script PDF - REVISED DRAFT. at Script City ($)
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
Script Synopsis:A psychological thriller about an eight year old boy named Cole Sear who believes he can see into the world of the dead. A child psychologist named Malcolm Crowe comes to Cole to help him deal with his problem, learning that he really can see the ghosts of dead people.
The Sixth Sense Script PDF - 5/1/1998 at Script Fly ($)
The Sixth Sense Script PDF - Final Shooting (miss 52,53, last pg) at Script Fly ($)
The Sixth Sense Script PDF - 9/12/1997 at Script Fly ($)
The Sixth Sense Script PDF - 5/1/1998 at Script City ($)
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
Script Synopsis:The story follows the adventures of Aang, a young successor to a long line of Avatars, who must put his childhood ways aside and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water, Earth and Air nations.
Script Synopsis:When a deadly airborne virus threatens to wipe out the northeastern United States, teacher Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) and his wife (Zooey Deschanel) flee from contaminated cities into the countryside in a fight to discover the truth. Is it terrorism, the accidental release of some toxic military bio weapon -- or something even more sinister? John Leguizamo and Betty Buckley co-star in this thriller from writer-director M. Night Shyamalan.
Note: Multiple links are listed since (a) different versions exist and (b) many scripts posted become unavailable over time. Please notify me if you encounter a stale link.
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