Commencement by Jon Lickness - Horror - Graduation day, Carpenter high school.  A small group of tight-knit teens are ready to celebrate the next step in their lives with a weekend of partying at a lakeside getaway - but what they don't know is that a cunning, ruthless killer known as the Ripper has just escaped from a mental institution and stalks them.  One by one he picks them off, but as the body count piles up and the cliches and references to classic horror films jump out, one girl plucks up her courage to face the demented killer. - html, format 8)

Is this supposed to be serious, or a joke?

Quoted from Dreamscale Is this supposed to be serious, or a joke?

That’s what I wondered.

Quoted from the logline …partying at a lakeside getaway…

Quoted from the logline …killer known as the Ripper…

Quoted from the logline …killer…escaped from a mental institution…

Quoted from the logline …clichés and references to classic horror films jump out,…

These don’t scream originality.

Quoted from the logline Carpenter high school.

Let me guess…an homage? Can we officially call homages in films a cliché yet?


The following is based on the presumption this is serious since it’s in the Horror section:


I opened the script, honestly expecting it to be really bad. The good news is that your writing is nowhere near as bad as I expected. The bad news is that it wasn’t enough to keep me interested for too long.

First off, the “we sees.” I don’t mind them but wow, you use them in almost every sentence. You could probably cut a couple of pages out of your script if you removed all those we’s from your descriptions. I mean, wow. Really.

At first I found your little asides somewhat stylistic. Then they quickly just became annoying. Then I realized that that’s actually your style. Then I just sort of concluded that I don’t like your style. So perhaps it’s all just a matter of taste. Whereas I didn’t warm up to it, others may.

Story wise, I understood when I opened it there would be a lot of clichés. I thought I could handle them but I was wrong. They got to me.

I also think you take too long to get where you’re going. We spend seven pages on two characters that die and are never seen again.

Your descriptions are just riddled with typical this and stereotypical that. I stopped reading in under ten pages. The clichés are bad enough but the total lack of passion in the writing is just such a turn off.

Sorry for this to sound so negative. Your voice is actually pretty good. And I don’t recall any spelling and grammar issues. I believe you’re capable of writing something really good. But this not only seemed beneath you as a writer, you seemed to feel it was beneath you as well. Your cynicism toward your own subject matter came off as almost artistically dishonest.

Sorry. It just wasn’t working for me.


Breanne

Breanne!  Wow...kind of amazing, cause I was thinking the same thing as I read, and I stopped right after the intro.

It was so irritating, and I got the feeling that it was intentionally done this way, as a joke, or something.  Or...that someone decided to start writing screenplays, and watched numerous "classic" horror flicks, and wrote as he watched, pausing every scene, and literally writing in the action as "he saw it".

Interesting to say the least.  Funny, cause this is the same writer who just posted a "Nightmare on Elm Street" script that came in at the same time as another "Nightmare" script.

I don't think either writer has responded to anything, so it will be probably be that way on this one also.

Great feedback, though Bre.  Very funny, how we thought alike...