The Dead Boy by Jeffrey Bruno (jeffjb91) - Short, Horror, Comedy - A young boy wakes up to find out that he is dead.  5 pages - pdf, format

Not much to it as far as story goes.
Nicely written, didn`t see a problem with format or grammar...

You could maybe have changed it up and have the hillbilly adopt him and take it from there..

Not bad overall

Mark

No FADE IN

Chunky descripts.

IMO you need to give Hillbilly and BOY a name...you give MARGE her name but you forget to properly introduce her.

The story didn't do anything for me...and the ending..why would the boy just crawl back in the coffin.

No FADE OUT

Keep workin'....best of luck.

Hey Jeffery,

Okay, the action needs tightening and the dialogue needs a lot of work but for some reason I think this has the potential to be a good comedy if done right. A lot of people will probably disagree with me on that one but I see something here.

The ending fell flat for me and I agree with Dena, give names to all the characters. You named the least active character which seems strange to me.

If you changed a few things in the story, this could be a quirky little comedy. I'll leave it at that for now because I don't know if you're about or not?

Good effort!

Steve

I think the premise is really interesting (btw the boy must be the only talking zombie in the history of movies).

But the ending was a real let down: the story had a lot of potential to be taken somewhere interesting/extreme/absurd.

It would be good to know how old the boy is: very hard to picture it without the age.

A good short, it gave me the impression that the boy had been kidnapped by the hillbillys, who were serial killers and had convinced him he was dead. Maybe as the hillbilly shovels the dirt on the coffin, the camera would pan back revealing several graves in the back of the hillbillys shack and a final scene of the car accident on a deserted road showing the other car with the hillbillys as the occupants.

p1

no fade in

"A middle to old aged hillbilly"
^ Just say HILLBILLY (50's). you also need to all cap hillybilly if you're not going to name him (which you should)

first paragraph of description is a little too long. break it up.

BOY
I promise, if you’ll just let me
come out I can show you: I’m alive.
^ no colon needed

p2

you really need to name "boy"

HILLBILLY
Yeah, I killed ya’ already. Musta’
done it three god dang times by
now. It’s gettin’ tiresome.
^and not one shot to the face? wouldn't these wounds be visible?

"Marge stares at him for a long while."
^remove. kills the pacing

BOY
Oh my god, I can’t believe this!
^ a little too on the nose

at this point, i'm a little iffy on this script's premise. a lot of questions that have gone unanswered. furthermore, it doesn't make sense overall. but i'll keep going.

p3

HILLBILLY (cont’d)
buy yer’ kids a buncha’ ipods and
new age junk. Yer’ wife never wants
ta’ have sex with ya’ like she
usta’.
^is the hillybilly related to the boy? i'm assuming not.

He has stopped crying.
^stops

The boy stops, confused.
^show us don't tell us. there are a few instances where you add just a few unneccessary words to your descriptions and over direct the actor.

p4

He finally obliges.
^no need for this since this is communicated in the following "okay"

no fade out?

done.

sorry but this one really doesn't work for me. i didnt find it to be very humorous unfortuantely. as i said before, the premise for me just doesnt work. why doesn't the boy try and eat the hillbilly? why doesnt the zombie moan? why doesn't the boy look like a zombie?

even worse, there's no pay off at the end. no punchline whatsoever. no big reveal. most shorts have a twist at the end.

sorry i couldnt be more positive. best of luck.

The old couple in this one reminded me a lot of the couple in the cartoon, "Courage, the Cowardly Dog" I really like that cartoon

but

there I was reading along, waiting for something to happen to tie it all together, and the script just cut itself off without an ending...

It really needs an ending and I'm quite sure that you could brainstorm something... unless it is just the beginning of a bigger piece.

I didn't want to get into all the technical stuff since others have already done so.

I'll just add that this little script was fun to read, but I would have liked to seen more.

Cindy

Jeffrey.

I agree, you need to name the Hillbilly and the Boy.  I also think you could tighten some of the action/descriptions. I thought the dialogue was fine.

I enjoyed this but it came across a bit like the opening to a longer story. As it stands it doesn't amount to much. Why is the Boy a zombie and why does he keep coming back after the Hillbilly kills him? Why does the Hillbilly keeping killing the Boy?

I think there's good scope to add more story should you want to.

This seems similar to my script, "SCHEISSE" that I wrote for the Movie Poet challenge, the undead, back in September.  I'm not the first one to come up with the idea, but I can't help seeing similarities between the two.

I think your script needs a better ending and I see a couple opportunities for some funnier dialogue, but overall it's a decent script.

It seems like you're trying to balance the dialogue and description, but I find it a little annoying that it is nearly always one line of dialogue then a description. It's a little too much for my tastes. But, that doesn't mean that it is wrong.
I thought it was done pretty well. I do think that it could benefit from giving the boy some better dialogue. You don't really give him much more than a few short responses.

All in all, it was good.

Hey Jeffery, this was a pretty interesting concept, but I think it leaves too many unanswered questions. Did the man kill the boy? Maybe you could explain this in the beginning. Also, I think you could've done something more with the ending. Overall, I thought it was decent and could be more with a rewrite.

The author hasn't said a single word or posted a response to any feedback, yet peeps keep on reviewing.

I don't get it, and never will.

Interesting story, told in the most uninteresting way. Nothing happens. Felt like a script exercise more than someone trying to tell a compelling story.