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The Grotto by Marc Neesam (trax) - Short, Horror - It is coming up to christmas time and a single father has to take his son to visit Santa at the local shopping center's grotto. But things are not what they seem. 12 pages - rtf, format
Formatting was not quite right. Camera directions galore.
Conceptually, I thought this was an ok idea for a horror story. I don't think it is the greatest fit for a 12 page short. It needed to be longer. I wanted to see more motivation provided for the bad guys and more character development. I ddin't feel very involved with the characters. The end didn't really work for me, Bobby's excuse didn't fly. I also could not tell if Santa was involved or not from what you wrote - was that intentional?
You have an interesting start, but it needs to be longer. I wouldn't say full length, but longer.
pg 1 crossing his arm - crossing his arms pg 2 camera directions. You can get away with camera directions sometimes, this is not one of them. fading in or out - nup. pg 3 waves forward? more camera directions! Into frame. your character only need to be CAP'd once. pg 6 GEORGE ignores his some - his son? pg 8 GEORGE sighs and slips out of be - bed? Shadows filling - fill Interesting - Georges phone call looks sort of like a christmas tree. pg 9 Would recommend putting white space in your longer descriptive passages.
They already said something about your format so you know, I think your paragraphs are to bunched up it messes up the flow a little .
Rewrite it stretch the whole story out make it a full length the story is there I liked the horror and add more action with Santa give more reason for Bobby the Elf.