Complacency is a killer in Grown Ups 3, the spec script lovingly written by Best Show host and What We Do In The Shadows producer Tom Scharpling. Released on Monday, January 6 without any more fanfare than Scharpling stating that it’s “the best thing I’ll ever do in my life,” the script has galvanized disparate sections of the internet – specifically comedy and film twitter. However there’s no discussion about the film in horror circles, either because the slasher aspect of the script is one of the many twists that are baked into the story, or maybe people just don’t think spine chilling horror when they hear the words Grown Ups.

Adam Sandler is an anomaly in American cinema – an over the top clown who’s just as at home making movies with his buddies that have been referred to as paid vacations as he is baring his soul in panic attacks on film like Uncut Gems and Punch Drunk Love. People between the ages of 30 – 50 grew up with Sandler and watched him oscillate between stagnation and rapturous artistic expression in a way that shows that the Sandman’s best work comes when a fire’s been lit beneath him. Grown Ups 3 uses that as its emotional core while wringing out pathos and horror from Sandler’s artistic complacency.

The Grown Ups 3 spec script is available for free download from http://www.grownups3script.com/ and it’s clear from the opening pages that Scharpling not only loves but understands the Grown Ups movies and their stars. He captures of the voices of Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade and the rest of the guys with a perfection that only comes from innately knowing these people and their work. Similarly, the horror aspects of the script are spot on. The whole spec is only 52 pages long so once the tone shifts from the more straightforward comedy of the early pages to being a full on slasher you’re in it for the rest of the read.

On a 2019 episode of The Best Show, Tom Scharpling’s long running online radio show and podcast, he speaks at length about his disdain for Michael Myers born from the character’s stillness and passivity. The killer hidden in the pages of Grown Ups 3 is at times like Myers but only in the ways in which a mask obscures their emotions and in their apparent invulnerability. The anonymous killer in Scharpling’s script wears a tragedy/comedy mask as they chase Sandler and his famous cohorts through the grounds of a New England lake house. Whenever the killer’s ready to do away with someone they turn their mask from tragedy to comedy and each time it’s clear that’s what happening is a matter of perspective: tragedy is when something bad happens to me, comedy is when something bad happens to you.

The kills in the script aren’t just spectacular, but they fit into the context of the Happy Madison universe. “Characters” like Nick Swardson and Chris Rock are dispatched in ways that not only feel tonally consistent with their work in previous Sandler films, but in inventive ways that would be fun to see on screen. Longtime Sandler friend and sometimes lackey Alan Covert is even dragged to his death by an RV owned by Sandler. His failure to find his own success in favor of latching onto his famous friend literally kills him. By the end of the script Scharpling ditches the comedic tone of the first half and wrings as much pathos as someone can out of a slasher movie where David Spade gets a handjob from a Red Robin waitress.

Like all great horror movies, Grown Ups 3 eats away at you long after it’s over. The fear of becoming passive, of finding yourself over the hill and not even realizing that you’re closer to death than birth, of being shot through the neck with an arrow, all of those things sit on your chest and grind you down once the short script comes to an end. It’s not likely that Adam Sandler will ever produce Grown Ups 3, but that doesn’t really matter. The spec script is so affecting that it lives in your head.

You can follow Jacob Shelton on Twitter and Instagram or read more of his work in Mindfuck or in like every issue of Kill Pretty.