The Ghostly Cut by Eileen Yourway - Short, Family Horror - On Halloween, three friends explore a house that is once owned by a kidnapper. - pdf, format

Lots and lots of problems here, sorry to say.  An awful lot of sentences don't make any sense, have the wrong tense going on, have really awkward phrasing, etc.

Biggest problem though is that this doesn't meet the challenge and doesn't even remotely try!  There's absolutely no Halloween festival here, and I hardly find this fitting into family horror.  I kept waiting for the setting to change, but it never did.

Finally, the story itself isn't fleshed out at all, and makes little sense because of that.

Seems like a really rushed script, with little thought and effort put into it.

Wish I had some positive comments here, but I really don't.

Great vibe to start....I like the beginning with the flashlight shining in the house.  That was creepy but I think it could have been written much better.

Very creepy with the pics on the wall being with different children.  Yikes.  

I didn't really get the hair cutting thing, especially at the end,

I think this story would scare the crap out of my kids.  I think it crossed over the "family" horror line a bit.  

Oh yeah...where was the Festival???  

There are a few technical probs. here for sure but maybe due to the time constraints. What's with the repeated 'ya' ?

More just plain 'Horror' (minus gore) than 'Family Horror' really - can't see the little ones watching this!

Could've tightened up the last couple of pages too. The 'hair cutting' was an original and unique idea, but there's something reminiscent of the 'Grudge' films.

Gotta' say though verrrrrrrrry creepy story. Good job.

Family - not so much

Horror - yes!

Halloween Festival - none

Other than that, I liked it. It started out great. Tense and creepy right off the bat. The house was creepy and so was the hair cutting.

Your descriptions were confusing at times and there were many typos.

I think you should re-write this one. Let us know a little more about the house and what went on there in the past. I think you did a good job. Good horror!  

Outside of the fact that there was no Festival, I really liked this story.  It had a wonderful creep factor, and the hair cutting angle was truly unique.  Boxes of hair and unseen creatures skittering from room to room our of the corner of your eye in a spooky old abandoned house?  Brrr.

I liked it a lot.  I'd venture to say these boys snuck away from the local Fall Festival to go to this house, eh?  There, we got a festival into the story!  

Sorry but this one seemed to just drag on and on and on, with little happening. It became a real chore reading it, I'll tell you.

The actual writing was ok, its just that the story was sort of boring.

And there was no festival...

I think you had the makings of an interesting story here, but needed more time and pages to develop it.  A lot of typos and grammatical errors.  Some of the dialogue sounded unnatural.  For instance, after the two guys are under the bed and witness the ghost cutting the hair of the ghost children, their ensuing conversation is way too calm and collected.  They would have jumped through the windows or kicked through the walls to get outta there.  But, you definitely had a creep factor going on here.  I think with a few more rewrties, you could have a tight, creepy little story.

I stumbled through the reading this one. Agree with the other reviewers that the writing could be cleaned up and tightened. I liked the scene with a different kid in every picture with the same creepy looking guy. I wasn't sure about the missing brother as a motivator for going in the house when we didn't find out  if he was in the house. I thought two characters might have worked better than three allowing for more story development. Ghost Cuts was a ghoul idea but needs work and a festival.

Gary

I think there's a decent story here but it's lost in the hard to follow descriptions.  As mentioned in other posts, there's no festival and I also think it's a bit too scary for the family theme.  The stories not really explained and neither is the missing Joel.  I think there's just not enough space to play out the story, an extended version after the OWC could help.

I also had a few questions; You say broken windows are beside the front door yet Zack shines the torch light through them before Mike smash them to gain access?  How do you cut your own eyelashes with scissors?  Mike kicks the boxes while in the living room but I thought the boxes were in the master bedroom?

Overall, not bad but a bit too hard to follow.

I liked the beginning. The cutting is good to if it is was tied to a kidnapping theme properly and in my opinion it's not. Reads like two different scripts in one.

I'm guessing the kidnapper used to cut children's hair and the bad energy in that house turns everyone into a hair cutter? I just wish there was some resolution, better resolution, you mentioned Mike's brother... It just leaves me with depressed feeling of all these kidnapper deeds left unpunished...

Good script nonetheless, I think.

I thought this was very creative and managed to convey an exciting creep factor without being too blatant.

It had me interested throughout and I can imagine it on screen as working extremely well. It's a good traditional and yet CUTTING EDGE Halloween story!!!  

I was confused when I read that Will had a beard. Not too many 17 year old boys have beards. Was he in costume perhaps?

This does not appear to me as being a little kid's story, but I think it's well conceived.

Good job!

Sandra

There was some interesting factors to the beginning of this...but it lost most of it's power due to the misspelled words, inappropriate tense factors, etc.

Too bad because there was obviously some creative juices working initially, but it failed to deliver...becoming sloppier the more we got into it.

Many good apsects in here and I'm actually disappointed with the end result.   You need to go back through this, expand and develop the story details and turn it into a short horror.

It was not appropriate for this challenge and that's why we have them...to challenge us to write creatively within a framework of genre, demographics and location...
Yea...that's right...the festival...or should I say...no festival.

Morgan

It started out on track. Edgy and eerie right out the gate.

But reading some of your descriptions I felt confused at times and I can’t forget to mention some of the typos. No biggie though.

I just think taking another look at this with the intention to rewrite would be very beneficial for you. Maybe filling the reader with some of the houses past. Overall just making the story well rounded.

All in all this was definetely creepy, especially the cutting of hair... i'd be interested in reading a rewrite if you get to it!

Bryan.

This certainly needs work, as has been pointed out - but it isn't too bad - it is certainly creepy enough, and I the story makes some sense, though it could do with being fleshed out a bit more.

Maybe outside of the OWC you can work on this and sort out some of it's problems. It has the makings of a nice little horror story, I think.