Smile by Jason Earle Helgerson (TattooGigolo) - Short, Suspense - Years ago Harmon lost his smile, and today he has found a new one. 14 pages - pdf, format

Thank you for posting this. This was originally an assignment for school. It had a few requirements:

The location had to be a restaurant in an alley near our school, a loft that overlooked the alley and the park nearby. It also had to involve a couple - one of whom had to work at the restaurant, the person who lived or worked in the loft and their interaction.

Any comments would be appreciated. Fear not, the class is over and I received a satisfactory grade. Thank you in advance.

I love stories like these. Tormented main characters you sympathize with, but at the same time feel very awkward about because you know deep down what's going to happen.

To be honest, I don't really have any criticism to add. Your descriptions were great, your characters believable, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I'll be watching more of your work once/if you post it!

Thank you. I tend to gravitate toward movies that don't have your typical happy ending. I was mulling over a few directions to take this one, but I found the happy ending to be a bit too predictable and not as interesting.

If you like the tormented main character, then I think you'll like my next one: A Patient Man. I'll post that soon.

I have to admit, I didn't see the ending coming.  Ya got me.  Nice curveball.

It seemed like a very sedate tale of a sweet-natured shut-in and his fantasy girl.  And then in those last few sentences you changed everything.  I like a script that does that.

Thanks. I hope it didn't feel too out of the blue. I wanted the ending to be a bit of a surprise, but at the same time the viewer/reader would say: "I could see him doing that".

Here is another script with some great ideas. A reclusive artist obsessed with a woman's smile. The first twelve pages were very enjoyable to read for its unique ideas.  You set up a very strange and kooky situation with the artist whose window over look a cafe and his starnge obsession.

What I didn't like was the ending. Once the artist and woman come face to face  you finished up with a clique psychotic monster ending that for me ruined the whole  tone of the story and felt like a lazy way to wrap up your story. A twist for the sake of a twist.

I would of liked to see the two come to some sort of agreement or disagreement and leave it at that.

The only other thing to comment on is for the first pages you seemed to overwirte your action. It was just a collection of tedious domestic details and checklist of items in a room.

It slowed down your script and made for a long read. Bit once the plot got moving your action got a bit tighter.

Despite my criticism I really enjoyed the story and ideas and situations you going on in this script and will look out for future scripts you post here.    

  

Sorry I missed this when it was posted just over a decade ago   It's one of the better thriller shorts I've read on here.

I'm not sure that it would have been that easy to convince her to enter his loft.  She would be pretty creeped out with the situation.  He expressed a need for her to enter but she didn't have a need to do so.

While I liked the idea of the ending, it did seem to just kind of happen.  Throughout the script he seemed more like a hopeless romantic than a crazed killer.  I suppose the fantasy scenes could be creepy enough and the paintings of mouths could be made to be clues so that the viewer is tipped off.  But then those clues might make her entering his room, voluntarily, less believable.  

Much of the dialogue is unnatural.  It does do a good job of moving the plot but it's not entirely conversational.  

I'm going to save this one to come back to.  There are a lot of possibilities here.