Shadow of a Thought by Jared Shayne - Short, Horror - A short horror film about a crew of community college students attempting to make a documentary about the infamous Blood Fang Witches at an old hotel find that the witch's cabal may be more than myth. - doc, format

I'm under the distinct impression that you heard this story around the campfire one night and chose to write it.  There's nothing wrong with this; this is actually the third such story I've read here.

This story would be a lot better if you fleshed it out a bit.  And by a bit, I mean make it a ninety page script.  Develope the characters a little bit.  Show the characters making a little more of the documentary.  Build some suspense.

Now onto the script in a nit-picky sort of way:

On page one, you say that the story takes place a few days before Halloween.  Don't do that.  You have to show it, somehow.  Perhaps the van with the characters passes by some stores with Hallowen decorations and costume sales.  You mention the bare trees and multi-colored leaves, which tells the viewer that it's fall.

On the same page, you describe the group of Scoobies (my term, not yours) by what they do.  That's wrong.  How does the camera record that Jamie is the cameraman and editor?  How do we know that Alexis is the researcher by the way she sits in the back of the van?  You have to somehow show these things.  Maybe Jamie has a camera on his lap and he's trying to fix it.  Maybe Alexis is flipping through pages of notes.

Movies is a visual medium.  Don't tell us; show us!

The origin of the place (on page three) is a little much.  Your history of the place includes witches, wolves, ghosts, vampire bats and people disappearing.  The only thing that was missing is the Frankenstein monster and Bigfoot.

Why did you specify the Mohonk Mountain House for the shoot?  It's a beautiful place (I've been there for a wedding) and all that, but there's no reason to pick that out, especially when you spend so little time with it.  You didn't specify if the Golden Lake Hotel was open for business or desolate at first.  You should.  Is it busy (lots of cars in the parking lot)?  Is it slow (one car in the lot)?  Is it long time abandonned (overgrown weeds)?

Is the character of Adrian Bates (the manager) based on that fifties character actor who always played store clerks and hotel manager?  I can't remember his name, but he was famous for greeting people with 'Yeeeessssss?'  Anyway, it's a little distracting.  Giving him the name, Bates, is also distracting to the reader.  In a script I have on this site, called 'Suicide,' I named the two main characters Lenny and Carl.  While their names are never spoken, someone wrote to me to say it was distracting because of obvious reasons.

A lot of your dialogue was too on-the-nose.  You told the viewers everything they needed to know, rather than show them as the story progresses.

Steven's rant (on page 6) was very uncalled for.  His spends are spending a weekend with him to help him out and he explodes.  This makes him extremely unlikeable.

As I said earlier, you would do really well if you stretched this short into a full-length movie.  Add some minor characters and flesh everything out.


Phil

I actually thought after reading the synopsis this would just be a hack job of the Blair Witch Project. It isn't, so why sell it as that? I'm not saying its greatly original, but lets be honest, most of the horror that comes out these days isn't.

I could see it working as a feature if the story of what happens to the teenagers at the hotel ran concurrently with the flashback of what happened to Stephen as a child - the climax would be him making the pact in the past and the last girl uncovering his betrayal in the present.