Script Analysis: “Prisoners” — Scene By Scene Breakdown

Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay:

After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire.

For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that comprise one event or a continuous piece of action. Admittedly this is subjective and there is no right or wrong, the point is simply to break down the script into a series of parts which you then can use dig into the script’s structure and themes.

The value of this exercise:

• We pare down the story to its most constituent parts: Scenes.
• By doing this, we consciously explore the structure of the narrative.
• A scene-by-scene breakdown creates a foundation for even deeper analysis of the story.

Today: Prisoners (2013). You may download the script here.

Written by Aaron Guzikowski

IMDb plot summary: When Keller Dover’s daughter and her friend go missing, he takes matters into his own hands as the police pursue multiple leads and the pressure mounts. But just how far will this desperate father go to protect his family?

Prisoners
Scene-by-Scene Breakdown
By Melinda Mahaffey Icden
GoIntoTheStory.com

P.2: KELLER DOVER, a professional remodeler/repairman, takes his teenage son RALPH hunting on Thanksgiving morning so he will learn how to provide for himself in any situation. Ralph successfully kills a deer. Keller has a religious tape on in the truck.

P.3: An old, yellowed RV van drives past the Dovers’ modest home.

P.3–5: The Dover family — Keller, Ralph, six-year-old ANNA, and mom GRACE — 
walk down the street to the Birches’ house. We learn that Keller owns his father’s old apartment building. The Birches — music teacher FRANKLIN, mom NANCY, 15-year-old ELIZA, and shy seven-year-old JOY — greet them, and the families prep for the meal.

P.5–7: Anna and Joy go outside to play, their older siblings trailing behind. The younger girls run up to the old RV, now parked in front of a house with a For Sale sign in the yard. They all investigate the van, stunned when the radio comes on inside. They run, a shadow watching them go.

P.7–9: Post-meal, the parents lounge in the living room, having fun. Everyone’s drinking, except for Keller. Anna and Joy run in, Anna asking permission for them to go to the Dovers’ house — they want to find Anna’s red whistle. Grace says they have to go with their older siblings. The girls run out singing Jingle Bells.

P.9–12: Later, Keller goes down to the basement where Ralph and Eliza are boredly watching TV. They don’t know where the girls are. Keller runs home, searches the house, but the girls aren’t there, either. Everyone back at the Birches’ home, Ralph mentions the RV. Franklin, Keller, and Ralph run outside, but the van is gone, and for-sale house is locked.

P.12–13: DETECTIVE LOKI eats Thanksgiving dinner alone at a Chinese restaurant. In his car, he hears on the police radio that an RV matching the description has been found at a rest stop, and he heads over there.

P.14–16: Loki and two cops approach the parked van. Suddenly it roars to life and, after a failed escape attempt, crashes into the woods. Through the smoke, Loki finds a terrified 34-year-old ALEX JONES huddled in the back and cuffs him. He asks him where the girls are, but a potentially high Alex doesn’t reply. Loki pushes him into the woods, but there’s nothing and no one there.

P.16–17: Keller, Ralph, and neighbors search the neighborhood in the dark, while Loki interrogates Alex at the police station and forensic guys tear up the van.

P.17–19: Loki looks around the backyard of HOLLY JONES, Alex’s aunt. She then takes him through the inside of the house, where Alex has essentially lived since his parents died.

P.19–20: The search for the girls continues. The van is clean, and searchers — including Keller, Ralph, and Franklin — comb through the woods.

P.20–24: The next morning — initial aftermath. The parents are in shock. Keller interrogates Loki about Alex, and Loki says that he has the IQ of a 10-year-old and couldn’t possibly have pulled a kidnapping off in broad daylight. Keller isn’t convinced.

P.24–27: Although Loki believes Alex is innocent, he asks his boss, CAPTAIN O’MALLEY, to continue holding him, based on Keller’s plea. We learn Loki is looking for a transfer, and his boss will give him his blessing if he finds the girls.

P.27–31: Loki visits the local sex offenders. The last person he visits is FATHER PATRICK DUNN, who he finds passed out drunk on the floor. Loki takes the opportunity to look around and finds the corpse of a long-dead man in the basement, who Dunn says was a child-killer. The corpse has a pendant necklace on.

P.32–35: Alex is being released. Keller arrives furious at the police station and goes for Alex, convinced he’s guilty, and eventually manages to tackle him to the ground. Alex reveals to Keller he knows something, but Keller is quickly handcuffed as Alex and his aunt are whisked away.

P.36–38: The police captain lets Keller off with a warning. Keller tells Loki what Alex just said to him. Loki agrees to go talk to him, but it isn’t enough for Keller.

P.38–39: Loki questions Alex at his aunt’s house, tries to pressure him into the truth, but Alex denies he said anything. Loki calls Keller, says they’re moving on from Alex as a suspect. Keller hangs up on him.

P.40–42: Grace is freaking out, accuses Keller of not protecting them like he promised. She knocks herself out with Xanax. Ralph is crying, needs his father. Keller, turning off his religious tape, drives over to the Joneses’ house, parks outside and watches. Alex eventually comes out with the dog, and when he begins singing Jingle Bells, Keller gets out of the car and confronts him with a gun. The dog runs off.

P.42–45: Keller collects a confused Franklin from his house at dawn. Keller drives them to his father’s apartment building, now falling apart and boarded over. Alex has been tied to a pipe in the shower. Franklin wants to give him over to the cops, but Keller says he’ll just clam up so they need to hurt him until he talks. Keller begins punching Alex.

P.45–48: Loki walks around the lawn of the for-sale home as Captain O’Malley tells him there’s no ID match on the priest’s corpse. He then goes to visit the Millands, the owners of the home who now live elsewhere. MRS. MILLAND shows him a video of six-year-old BARRY, who was kidnapped 26 years ago while playing on the for-sale home’s front lawn. ELLIOTT, her son, takes Loki back over to the house to look around.

P.48–50: Franklin and Keller continue to beat up a barely conscious Alex, who still isn’t saying anything. Franklin wants to stop, but not Keller.

P.50–54: Franklin returns home, sickened by his actions, to a candlelight vigil on the street. Loki is there, watching, eyes alighting on a TALL MAN acting strangely. The man takes off running, Loki giving chase. After a brief confrontation, the man escapes.

P.54–55: Keller pulls up the next morning as Franklin watches a news report about the tall man, the new suspect. At the apartment, they argue, Keller convinced that the tall man and Alex are working together.

P.55–56: Loki tells Captain O’Malley that the Joneses’ dog was hit by a car and Alex has disappeared. He’s not completely convinced Alex is innocent and watches on video his interrogation of Alex at the station.

P.56: Based on a tip, Loki goes to a discount department store where he finds out the tall man has been regularly buying children’s clothes there.

P.56–60: Franklin is crying, broken by what they’re doing, but Keller reminds him of the girls, gone five days. Back home, Franklin snaps at Nancy, and (off-screen) she wrangles the truth out of him. Nancy makes them take her to the apartment, and she makes an emotional appeal to a beat-up Alex. She unties him, and he tries to escape out the window, but Franklin and Keller eventually restrain him.

P.60: Loki questions Father Dunn about his victim’s kidnapping methods.

P.60–64: Keller constructs a cell for Alex out of plywood, and he fetches Nancy and Franklin at 2am to show them how it works. He’s constructed a basic torture chamber. Franklin wants to let him go; Nancy wants to know if he’s said anything. Franklin and Keller argue over Alex and what to do.

P.64–67: An INTRUDER breaks into the Birches’ home as Eliza takes a bath. Franklin and Nancy pull up; Franklin wants to let Alex out, but Nancy declares they’re not going to help or hinder Keller. Inside, Nancy can’t find Eliza and panics until Eliza finally comes out in a towel, angry with them for leaving her.

P.67–69: The intruder moves on to the Dovers’ house. A drugged Grace thinks she hears Anna and goes into her room, where the window is open. She later leads Loki around and brings him down to the basement, where Loki sees some suspicious articles. Grace doesn’t know where Keller is, even though it’s 3:45am.

P.69–74: Loki begins tailing Keller. Keller parks near the apartment building and begins walking toward it, but when he notices Loki goes instead into a nearby liquor store. Coming out with a bottle of whisky, Keller confronts Loki. He explains away his suspicious items/behavior and says he doesn’t know where Alex is. Keller seems to be losing hope of finding the girls, and he begins to walk home.

P.74–76: A drunk Keller arrives home, finds Grace passed out in bed and passes out himself. He dreams of Anna and wakes up with a start. Eight-year-old BILL BREWER tells his mom there’s a man in their pool. His father, PAUL, goes out to investigate when Keller bursts through the surface of the water and lumbers off.

P.76–82: Police boats dredge the water as an exhausted Loki studies his computer screen. He reads a story about Keller’s dad and finds an address. Keller uses the shower water to torture Alex, hears him saying, “I’m not Alex.” Keller is nearly broken himself. Loki arrives and Keller attempts to escape; when he realizes he can’t, he pretends he’s been sleeping there. He gives a suspicious Loki a tour and is just leading him upstairs when Loki’s phone rings; it’s the discount department store clerk telling him the tall man has just left. Loki rushes up to the second floor, gives it a quick look, sees nothing and leaves.

P.82–85: Loki questions BOB TAYLOR, the tall man, about his behavior. He forces his way into Taylor’s house and calls in reinforcements, believing the girls might be there. The house is creepy, disgusting. Loki breaks open a locked door and finds tubs filled with bloody children’s clothing and live snakes. The last tub contains a homemade book of mazes.

P.85–87: Franklin and Nancy leave the police station in tears. Loki asks Keller to come in and identify his daughter’s clothes. Grace hasn’t come, and Bob Taylor has apparently confessed to killing the girls. Keller finds Anna’s sock and blames Loki for not doing enough.

P. 87–89: Eliza has told Ralph that the girls are dead, and Keller makes Ralph swear to shield Grace from the news. Keller promises to find Anna, but Ralph accuses him of spending his time drinking.

P.89–91: Loki and O’Malley watch Bob Taylor draw a maze through a two-way mirror. Loki goes in to question him and gets angry when Taylor won’t answer his questions. Two of the other cops come in, Taylor manages to grab one of the guns, and he fatally shoots himself.

P.91–92: Nancy goes to the apartment and gives Keller poison to kill Alex with. She says she wants to protect what’s left of her family and keep her and Franklin out of jail. But Keller isn’t willing to give up hope.

P.92–94: Keller drinks whisky and debates what to do with Nancy’s package. He hears Alex say, “They’re in the maze.” But he won’t say where, just laughs instead. At the police station, O’Malley gives Loki Taylor’s bloodied maze drawing.

P.94–97: Keller goes to the Joneses’ house and acts contrite. Holly allows him to come in. Keller mentions something about a maze, but she doesn’t react. Threads begin coming together: Holly’s husband kept snakes, and Alex hasn’t spoken much since some traumatic childhood incident involving them.

P.97–100: Loki is consumed by the map, doesn’t hear when O’Malley says he isn’t getting promoted. Back in his office, Loki sees that the map matches the pendant the corpse was wearing. Then forensics calls and he goes over to Bob Taylor’s house to find out they’ve found two kid-sized mannequins buried in the backyard and that all the blood was from a pig. It turns out Taylor had been kidnapped as a kid and was working it out with all this stuff. The maze is an unsolvable maze from a book. And maybe the girls are still alive.

P.100–102: Strife between Nancy and Eliza. As Ralph talks to Eliza on the phone, he sees Loki poking around their bushes, reminded of something by the forensics guy. Loki finds two footprints and Anna’s other sock. Ralph and Eliza take off in Grace’s car.

P.102–104: Keller pushes a snake through the PVC pipe at Alex. Finally it sounds like Alex is going to say something, and Keller pries a piece of wood off. But Alex says very little, nothing that Keller understands.

P.104–106: A drugged Joy notices the door to her prison is open. The same homemade maze book that Bob Taylor had is on the floor, along with spilled grape-aid. She helps Anna stand up and they make it outside, but Anna gets caught. Joy escapes but, terrified of a woman trying to help her, runs into the path of an oncoming van.

P.106–112: Grace receives the phone call, tries to get it together. Keller arrives home, and she tells him about Joy. At the hospital, they push past a cop to reach Joy’s room, and they pepper her with questions. But instead of answering, Joy touches Keller and says he was there. When Keller sees Loki, he bolts. Quick car chase, but the cops lose him.

P.112–116: Ralph and Eliza arrive at the apartment building. Once inside, they hear a noise, and Ralph goes upstairs to kick out what he thinks is a squatter. Ralph sees the cell and a photo of the girls tacked to it, and he calls the cops. He thinks the girls are inside, and he and Eliza begin taking off the wood. Loki arrives.

P.116–124: Holly, an ice pack on her hand, opens her front door to find Keller. A bag in hand, he offers to fix up her house as an apology. But in the kitchen, he confronts her about the girls. She produces a gun. She makes him handcuff himself and drink the drug-laden grape-aid. She implies she has Anna, and she says that Alex was the first kid she and her husband kidnapped (and his name used to be Jimmy or Barry). They’d also kidnapped Bob Taylor. And they did it after losing religious faith. She forces Keller into a hole in the backyard, but not before shooting him in the thigh. He finds Anna’s whistle down there and passes out. It starts to snow.

P.124–125: From the hospital, Nancy and Franklin watch a news report showing Alex being loaded into an ambulance. Holly sees the same thing and gets angry. She begins emptying Keller’s bag and finds the poison, along with various weapons/tools he had planned to subdue her with.

P.125–131: Loki wants to find Keller, but O’Malley sends him to notify Holly. As Keller tries to escape from the hole, Loki arrives and Anna wakes up. Keller gets out and Loki is about to leave when he thinks he hears someone crying out. Loki enters the front door while Keller comes in the back. Loki sees a photo of Holly’s husband, realizes it’s the corpse they found. Keller finds Anna but then wakes up to realize it was a hallucination and he’s still in the hole. But Loki’s actions are real, and he discovers Holly injecting the poison into Anna’s arm. She shoots Loki, hitting him just over the eye, and Loki shoots her dead.

P.131–134: Bleeding, Loki drives furiously through the falling snow, trying to get Anna to help on time. She’s convulsing as they reach the hospital.

P.134–136: Loki reads a newspaper from his hospital bed. It reveals Alex (Barry Milland) has been reunited with his family, and Keller is still missing. Grace, a changed woman, wheels Anna in. She has a new whistle. Nancy and Joy come in too, and Loki sees guilt in Nancy’s eyes and darkness in Joy’s.

P.136: Nancy takes the girls out and sees Franklin in the hall. He’s conflicted and, without a word, heads toward a nearby cop.

P.136–137: Grace talks to Loki privately and swears she hasn’t heard from Keller. Loki says he’ll find him. He says he’ll probably go to jail, but Grace says he’s a good man protecting his family.

P.137–139: Two techs work in the backyard of the Joneses’ house. Loki arrives, and the cops say the ground’s too frozen to do much. They leave, and Loki stands alone in the quiet and dark. He’s just leaving when he hears something faint. It’s a whistle.

Writing Exercise: I encourage you to read the script, but short of that, if you’ve seen the movie, go through this scene-by-scene breakdown. What stands out to you about it from a structural standpoint?

To read my Go Into The Story interview with Prisoners screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski, go here.

If you’d like a PDF of the Prisoners script scene-by-scene breakdown, go here.

Major kudos to Melinda Mahaffey Icden for doing this week’s breakdown.

To see 100+ screenplay scene-by-scene breakdowns, go here.