Here is the next set of 2025 loglines for famous movies.
Remember, we’re looking for a Hook, a clear Conflict, and the potential for Change within each of these examples, all capped at 25 words or fewer.
As ever, to write your own loglines, the best thing you can do is to practice on other people’s (good) films. If you can figure out the idea that makes a film tick, you’ll better be able to isolate and communicate your own ideas to prospective readers–or, hell, to yourself.
It goes like this: we give it to the Chatty, our favorite “statistical reversion to the boring” machine, and see how painful the outcome is. Spoiler: not great, sometimes hilarious, sometimes the wrong film entirely.
The films for this edition are: After the Hunt (misunderstood and underrated), Sirât (see it to believe it), 28 Years Later (you’ve obviously seen this), Sentimental Value (drama is always tough to make interesting), and Magic Farm (also misunderstood). I did actually like each of these, for what it’s worth.
After the Hunt
This is a film that a lot of people hated. It’s not perfect, but there’s little to justify the scathing reviews it got.
My assessment of those reviews is this: this is a film that is challenging and refuses tidy endings. It thrives on the ambiguity of the situation and none of the characters look like decent people. Most filmgoers these days–and this goes triple for professional critics–are basically children. They expect a tidy lesson and obvious character growth. They get butthurt if this doesn’t happen.
After the Hunt is having none of this. It’s a confrontational and challenging movie and steadfastly refuses easy answers. That appears to be part of the theme, from the Woody Allen-style opening credits to the lingering question of what really happened behind closed doors.
The only givens are that Maggie plagiarized and that despite the setbacks described in the film, no one really got destroyed for good–given that they are a bunch of ridiculously privileged people in one of the best universities in the world. Even the final scene of the film, which I found largely cloying and unnecessary, could be read as a commentary on this last point.
Now let’s see what Chatty has to say:
A brilliant college professor is forced to confront buried secrets and moral compromise when a star student levels a devastating accusation that threatens to unravel her career and closest relationships.
/30 words
Wow. There are numerous reasons this will not do.
First and foremost, let’s talk logical clarity. We have no idea who the “her” toward the end of the sentence refers to: is it the “brilliant college professor” or the “star student”? This must be clarified because the “her” could refer to either.
Next, there is absolutely no reason that the professor needs to be “brilliant” to make the story work. The context that she’s a professor at Yale would, in large part, get this point across. This school isn’t exactly in the business of hiring slouches.
“Buried secrets” is just giving the plot away, and remember, a logline is not a summary.
Logline Example 6: After the Hunt (2025)
A Yale philosophy professor, drawn into the fallout as a PhD student accuses her colleague of sexual misconduct, finds her own career in peril.
Note how the specificity helps us here. The signal of Yale means that this is a high-powered academic. “Sexual misconduct” is much clearer and more evocative than “a devastating accusation.” I don’t know that the “closest relationships” part is even necessary, because in any normal sense that would sort of come along for the ride with the accusations and career peril.
“Peril” or “jeopardy” might each fit here, but the sense of “peril” is a little bit tighter. I had to use “drawn into the fallout” to indicate that although she herself is not the accused, the situation affects her and her career.
That’s a feature of the story. Perhaps there’s an argument to be made that this would be a more interesting film if the accused were the main character, although David Mamet’s Oleanna covered that ground quite well 35 years ago.
Alma’s parallel history to the scandal is an interesting point when analyzing the film in retrospect, but it’s clunky and needless to give up the twist in the logline. Remember that the twist in the film won’t really come until the end of the second act–or, for certain films, the midpoint–so the interest of the film has to be carried forward before the twist.
[1] Although–not mentioning any names–I could name a couple of Yale PhDs who raise an eyebrow.
Sirât
This film is surprisingly effective and evocative given how sparse its plot is. For all that, the plot is fairly shocking, with moments of genuine, remorseless surprise. This could border on comedy (thanks Guardian), but it’s all handled deftly. It is a film that will stick with me because of its visceral metaphoric depiction of grief.
That’s a bit abstract for the plagiarism bot, so I’m interested to see what Chatty has to say. Here’s Chatty’s take. Actually it kept asking to provide me more different ones for different occasions. We ended up with three (!). Let’s see what they are:
Take 1: A desperate father and his young son search for a missing daughter at a desert rave in Morocco, joining a band of ravers on a dangerous odyssey across the Sahara.
This is the general one. I don’t like the “desperate father” part because we have to work too hard to associate that with “missing daughter.” Also: “a missing daughter”–whose missing daughter would that be? Unclear. The “dangerous odyssey” is plot, not hook. It’s not terrible, but not exactly good. It also begs the wrong sort of questions, e.g. why a band of ravers is driving across the Sahara.
Take 2: When his daughter vanishes at a remote Moroccan desert rave, a desperate father and his young son join a band of nomads, risking everything to find her.
This one, so Chatty claims, is the Hollywood-style one. Here, the “desperate” finds itself better placed. The “band of nomads” is unclear; is this a bunch of horse-riding Mongolian archers or something? We have no indication that these are a bunch of dirty hippie ravers. The statement “risking everything to find her” is too broad and woolly. We have no idea what it means.
Take 3: In the Moroccan desert, a father and his young son drift through a nomadic rave community while searching for a missing daughter, confronting grief, danger, and dislocation.
This one is apparently the “festival logline.” I sort of understand what they mean in that sense; writing for festival brochures isn’t as much about selling the film to people given that they’ve already bought the ticket to the festival. They’ll probably just watch whatever’s there because they’re bored schmoozing over drinks.
Here we remove the missing daughter from the foreground, which sort of makes the whole thrust of the logline unclear. How, precisely, grief, danger, and dislocation are confronted is totally unclear. That’s a bit like having the film tell us rather than show us that it’s about grief.
It’s not a Blake Snyder-drunk Hollywood movie where someone needs to specifically mention the theme at three different points in the film; that is, the film is about grief and that’s fairly obvious, but it’s not the sort of thing you need to state in the logline. What we’re interested in is how the film communicates its message.
Let’s give it a shot.
Logline Example 7: Sirât (2025)
Searching for his missing daughter, a Spanish man–young son in tow–tags along with five ravers trekking to a party deep in the Moroccan desert.
This is another one that ended up remarkably tricky. You’d almost think I’d be pointed in the right direction by the failures of the three above loglines, but trying to get enough of the hook in proved quite difficult.
A big problem was figuring out how to include the son as well as the context of the missing daughter while keeping the words down. We need to know that this is some daggy middle-aged Spanish dad who’s with his 9-year-old son and they’re looking for the daughter/sister and they end up in the middle of the fucking Moroccan Sahara after they follow a bunch of dirty hippies on their way to a rave.
That’s a lot to pack in. As much as I hate the dangling modifier “searching for his missing daughter,” what QT might refer to as “weak sauce” writing, it saves a bit of space here. We need to get across the point that the dad is Spanish and they’re in Morocco, because the displacement is an important part of the story. This ain’t some Tech Bro-infested Black Rock City party scene. The Moroccan Sahara is no joke. It’s important to hint at the idea that the whole journey is a terrible, terrible idea. That said, it works better for logline purposes to let the audience infer outcomes. Then, of course, they want to see the film to see how well these line up with reality.
Also, he’s with a small group, so I relied on the number of ravers they’re going with (five) rather than saying “a group of” or some such, mostly just to save words. If there’s no official limit on the length, fine—go to 30 or 32 because no one really counts, but much like in poetry, it’s excellent practice to cut ruthlessly so you land at 25.
(loglines for famous movies is added here for SEO purposes *shakes fist at the overlords*)
28 Years Later
Somehow I think I actually liked this film better than the original (28 Days Later (2002). There’s a lot going on here, and there’s certainly a case to make that it’s actually three movies rolled into one, but I would argue that it all hangs together quite well. It provides a ride that kept me intrigued all the way to Jimmy’s appearance at the end.
Then again, I’m a big fan of Alex Garland’s work, so perhaps I’m just imagining it’s better than it is.
So let’s see what Chatty has to make of it.
Decades after the Rage virus devastated Britain, a hardened survivor and a sheltered teen leave their island sanctuary, confronting infected hordes and terrifying truths outside.
Oh, dear. OK–let’s start with clarity. What the fuck is the “Rage virus”? A good logline must give us a reason to watch a film without it being related to outside knowledge, such as the story line of the first film.
Second, facts: Spike is twelve. The point is he’s not old enough for this. He is not a “teen.”
Third, “confronting… terrifying truths” is woolly and stupid. Abstractions such as this are no bueno. We can infer such things, but otherwise this is leading the audience by the nose. If we can get them to ask the question themselves, fine.
Fourth, this describes the first act of the film. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but given how diverse the three acts of the film are, we need to come up with a scope for the logline that covers all of it.
Let’s give it a shot.
Logline Example 8: 28 Years Later (2025)
A twelve-year-old and his ailing mother abandon the comfort of their island sanctuary to trek across a zombie-infested landscape in search of a mysterious doctor.
There’s a lot about coming of age, etc. that could be mentioned here, but given the fact that Spike is doing something adult and difficult pretty well implies that we’re looking at a coming of age story.
The thread that holds the story together is Spike trying to help his mother, Isla.* The ritual with his father at the beginning is nice, but it basically sets Spike on the path because he feels competent enough to risk the journey. The rest of the film is about the journey to Dr Kelson, Isla’s diagnosis and euthanasia, and Spike getting the baby back to the island.
So the seeking Kelson narrative is where we need to focus the logline. They seek the help of a “mysterious doctor” because they know nothing of who this guy really is–or even if he’s dangerous–but it adds a bit of spookiness to the journey. We can associate the doctor with the “ailing mother” well enough to leave it here, although a few more words such as “who might be her only hope” or some such could potentially make things clearer.
Within the frame of 25 words, though, I think this works reasonably well. We’re getting the idea of the conflict–the fucking zombies–and we have a good hook as to why these people would leave the island: she’s ailing and there’s a doctor they can reach.
This one wasn’t tremendously difficult, thankfully.
*Points for noticing that the supposed isolation of the island sanctuary, the fact that Britain has been quarantined, and that Spike is a young person seeking to cure a terminally ill ISLA are commentaries on Brexit.
Sentimental Value
This is a great film, but as with most “drama” dramas, it might be difficult to pin down the true conflict. This is also going to be tricky because the main conflict is actually Nora’s internal conflict and how it relates to the past and also how it’s triangulated among Nora, Agnes, and Gustav.
Let’s see what Chatty has to say:
When a famous but estranged filmmaker casts his daughter in a deeply personal new film, old wounds resurface, forcing family and art into painful confrontation.
To be fair, I’m not going to mock this too much. It’s not perfect, but many of the important ideas are here. Most of the major problems here come back to the fact that Chatty is just a statistical parrot and doesn’t actually have any true conception of what it’s saying.
Start here: what the fuck is “an estranged filmmaker”? Estranged from what? His art? His wife? His pet goat? Words like “estranged” are important; if they are to be used, we need to know whom he is estranged from.
We need to know why the film is “deeply personal” or at least have some idea of its weight. Remember, it’s a comeback film and he can’t finance it; that would be more interesting. I’ll let “old wounds resurface” off, because that’s not bad.
The idea of “forcing family and art into a painful confrontation” is sort of OK, but I honestly don’t know that it needs to be specifically “painful” or if that’s really the point of the film.
Logline Example 7: Sentimental Value (2025)
After their mother’s death, two women confront the return of their estranged father–and his plan to shoot his comeback film in the family home.
Here, we need to boil the film down to the essentials. Despite the fact that Nora is the nominal lead, the three main characters each have their own scenes and are more or less co-leads. The weird thing here is that the daughters are trying to move on after their mother’s death, and they are “confronted” by the return of their father and his mad plans for the house.
We need to get across the point that the women just want to move on, but the father prevents this from happening. It’s implied well enough that after a parent dies, one would want to deal with the emotions. “Confront” as a verb and “estranged” as an adjective give us the idea that the father is not welcome here. We don’t really know what the plans for the family home are, but they are pretty definitely not–at least for the sisters–to shoot a film in the home.
So getting the idea that the father is disrupting their grieving process and that, furthermore, his film plans disrupt their closure even further, is important here. This is the conflict. The Hook is more the fact that he’s trying to do something a bit nutty–appropriate the house for his comeback film.
Note that “comeback film” suggests already that he is a director with some semblance of success; otherwise it wouldn’t be a “comeback.” Next, the idea that Nora is in the movie is interesting, but that’s for later in the film. If that was the whole point, we’d get a logline more like “A once-successful filmmaker pleads with his estranged daughter for her to star in a deeply personal film about his mother.”
Note that this brings up a lot of questions, but there’s not really any Hook. All she has to do is say no and it’s over; we don’t get the stew of awkwardness that the above logline gets us: they want him away so they can get on with their lives, but he keeps hanging out. This promises more interesting conflict–particularly a conflict that’s less easy simply to shut down.
Magic Farm
This film is a tonally weird little trip.
I’ve seen films that I would simply dismiss for being twee, or, as some might have it about this film, some sort of poverty porn. It’s not the best film I’ve ever seen, but there are genuine moments of connection in it and I think that the main point comes across fairly clearly.
That is, a bunch of privileged New York hipsters come to a poverty-stricken Argentinian town looking for a viral craze (that ultimately isn’t even there), and they are too selfish and casually exploitative to engage with the townsfolk or learn any lessons. Or, for that matter, even to see the obvious news story that follows them around in the streets: the pesticides killing and maiming the townsfolk. This last aspect is actually horrifying, and deliberately underplayed in what seems on the surface to be a light comedy.
Now I’m not reading into this–it was fairly clear from examining the film and writer/director Amalia Ulman has confirmed my suspicions in interviews.
I’ll admit that the twee framing of the film might be somewhat at counterpurposes to its dark, critical message, but a lot of the bad reviews I’ve seen simply don’t get it: poverty porn (it’s criticizing the hipsters, not the townsfolk), or that there is no real conclusion (privileged white-ass hipsters can’t see the real story in front of them and flit off to the next dance craze video). It’s not rocket science, but try to get reviewers to see past their own bent prejudices and, well, you won’t be writing for The Guardian any time soon.
So let’s see what Chatty has to say–and if it even understands any of the (subtler) story.
When a clueless American documentary crew arrives in the wrong Argentine town to profile a viral musician, they fake a trend with locals—sparking chaos, connections, and satire.
This isn’t too bad, actually. It gets the idea that the documentary crew is clueless and brings across the main story: faking the viral music trend. “A viral musician” isn’t clear enough. Is that a trumpeter with COVID? “Fake a trend with locals” could also be other things. We don’t know that they’re focusing on Instagram pap; the trend could be anything.
The “sparking chaos, connections, and satire” just sounds *gag* to me. I love the idea of “sparking satire,” though. That’s the sort of vomitous accidental poetry Chatty excels at.
“Loglines for famous movies” is going to be added again here for no reason.
Let’s see if we can do this better:
Logline Example 10: Magic Farm (2025)
Unable to locate its subject, a hapless American documentary crew enlists the locals of a poverty-stricken Argentinian town to create a fresh viral internet craze.
This wasn’t particularly easy to do, actually. We have to be extremely economical with the words. Dangling modifiers don’t make for great writing, but they can cut things much shorter.
Here, we understand that the crew itself is the subject of the comedy (that is, not the townsfolk). We can infer that the subject would be an internet craze if they are unable to find the subject and then enlist locals to do the job.
Maybe I’m just an old man, but hopefully “viral internet craze” is worth the words. Things don’t have to be online to be viral, but it helps. Remember, the world existed before TikTok, and there were plenty of viral crazes then as well: witch hunts, the Satanic Panic, fucking tulip speculation, etc. The internet thing isn’t just to demean internet video (which is obviously ruining the world, but that’s neither here nor there), but to specify what sort of viral craze we are actually talking about.
The best part about this–although it’s perhaps a shame that the element of the pesticides doesn’t really fit in a short logline–is that it brings across the idea that the townsfolk are being exploited by the crew. That’s a huge part of the film, and with a bit of rearrangement I think the logline manages to reflect how the people of the town are exploited as a “second-best” alternative to the person the crew actually failed to find.
Conclusion
The practice of writing loglines is important because it helps us distill what makes a film appealing in the first place. That is, what’s appealing to us as the viewer, but also–almost certainly–the core principles that drove the filmmaker to create the film in the first place.
Remember, a good logline raises “what if” questions that we want to see answered. The point of a logline is to sell people on an idea so that they’re willing to engage with that idea, whether by watching the film or even reading your script. And trust me, it’s one hell of a lot harder to get someone to read your script than it is to get them to watch your film.
No one reads anymore. Why would they? They have AI and TikTok to tell them what and how to think. That’s why they’re not reading this article on loglines for famous movies, and it’s why they’re very unlikely to read your script unless you give them a shit-hot logline.
For that reason, loglines–as the first-touch sales document–determine whether someone will even bother to engage with your short synopsis, which then determines whether someone will engage with your long synopsis, your treatment, and so on.
It’s important that you hook the reader from the jump. And that’s your logline. So if you can’t write a logline for a film that’s actually good, how are you going to convince a prospective reader that your own film is any good? Just saying.