Bryan Woods has a gift for simple, frightening premises, usually developed with Scott Beck. We rate the suspense, but his scripts too often stop to explain the characters' pain when they should be getting on with the danger.
Fi1m perspective
In Heretic (2024), Hugh Grant's Mr Reed invites two missionaries inside and starts asking questions. Scott Beck and Bryan Woods keep them talking in a front room, with the door shut, and make the prospect of another question alarming. We were frightened because Reed's interest made an ordinary welcome feel unsafe. This is Woods at his most effective: giving the characters a predicament we can grasp, then making us wait.
Woods's work is closely tied to Beck's, and separating their contributions would be guesswork. Their early writing and directing included Nightlight (2015), before A Quiet Place (2018) brought the breakthrough. With John Krasinski directing and sharing the screenplay credit, the rule is immediately clear: stay quiet or be hunted. The performances make that danger matter, though the writing sometimes bends the family's decisions towards the next scare. It remains our strongest recommendation among the films here.
They went on to write and direct Haunt (2019) and 65 (2023), but the latter exposes the limits of a good premise. Adam Driver's stranded pilot and Ariana Greenblatt's child face dinosaurs without a shared language, a promising excuse to let action do the talking. Instead, Beck and Woods keep interrupting the journey with the pilot's grief, without writing enough to justify the solemnity. Editors Jane Tones and Josh Schaeffer repeat the same rhythm of threat, escape and quiet sorrow. Chris Bacon's score dutifully announces each change, making the repetition harder to ignore.
The Boogeyman (2023), scripted with Beck and Mark Heyman, has a related problem. A therapist explains the monster's connection to grief, while the school scenes give Sophie Thatcher's Sadie routine cruelty to endure. Rob Savage can make a dark room frightening, and Thatcher holds our attention, but neither repairs the thin writing. The family never buying a torch is the sort of practical omission that makes a carefully prepared scare feel arranged.
The talk-heavy Heretic is the encouraging change after those films. Beck and Woods make Grant's courteous questions threatening, and for an hour the dialogue needs little help. The second half settles for more ordinary horror. Choose it for the conversation, and do not expect the later scares to improve on it.
Biography
Bryan Woods is an American screenwriter, director and producer. Born on 14 September 1984 in Davenport, Iowa, he attended the University of Iowa with his frequent collaborator Scott Beck. The pair founded Bluebox Films while students and have worked together since childhood.
Woods and Beck wrote the story for A Quiet Place (2018) and created characters for its sequels. They wrote and directed Nightlight (2015), Haunt (2019), 65 (2023) and Heretic (2024), and wrote the screenplay for The Boogeyman (2023). They also produced Heretic and 65.
Their work has earned nominations including for the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.
