Critter Camp

Story brief

Synopsis

The movie opens on a folded flag and a military honor guard rifle salute. Brody Bekas is eleven, and everything after that is smaller — a downsized apartment, a mother holding it all together alone, a new school where three boys crush his glasses and grind his lunch into the floor. He refuses to sign the school's camp outing permission slip. His mother signs it for him. Camp Wannarunaway is not what the brochure promised. And in the woods past the boundary markers lives Grimsby: eight hundred pounds of bear who can't catch a salmon, can't touch his toes, is on a diet he has no intention of honoring, and whose best skill to date is stealing a park ranger's debit card for a $421.88 raid on a burger joint drive-thru. Grimsby lost his father to a poacher's rifle when he was a cub. It takes him most of the summer to say so out loud, but he has found a kindred spirit in the young Brody. Two fatherless sons find each other. And Grimsby has a plan. He'll black out his fur, paint a white slash across his forehead, impersonate the scarred alpha bear 'Slasher' the whole valley fears, and charge — so Brody can drive him off in front of the bullies and become a Camp Wannarunaway legend. The paint runs. Grimsby catches his own reflection in the lake, screams, slips, and knocks himself cold on the rocks. The bear that walks out of the treeline is the real 'Slasher'. However, Brody is certain he's looking at his friend in makeup, apologizes for hitting so hard — and clubs the apex predator of the valley across the face. That's the first act break. What follows is crueler and smarter than the kids' movie you think you're watching: a bully who understands that if you want to hurt someone you don't go after them, you go after what they care about. A lure past the boundary markers. A meat trail to a bully ambush. And a coward coming down a ridge with no paint, no disguise, and no plan — to fight the bear his father would have fought. At the closing ceremony, Brody is awarded the Camp Medal of Heroism. He won't wear it. He pulls his father's medal out from under his shirt — I already have one — and pins the camp's award to a bear's sling.

Tone

Big, funny, and unapologetically emotional — slapstick animal comedy sitting directly on top of a Gold Star kid's grief, and never cheating either one.

Setting

A present-day American summer camp and the deep forest just past its boundary markers, where the animals hold roll call in their pajamas.

This original feature screenplay by David R. Wilcox is available for option, development, or production. A complete review copy is available to qualified producers, literary managers, and development executives on request.