Be Careful What You Wish For by The Wish Factory - Horror - Revenge tastes sweet when you don't have to work for it. ( G ) - pdf, format 8)

This one was an inventive piece, and you've certainly been creative.

There are lots of characters in there.

I did get the feeling that the story got a little lost now and again due to the number events that were happening - this sidelines it somewhat.

I'd make sure that your bring the reader in on certain key points - I'm not too sure I picked up where the two key characters have their conflicting moment (turning down the music etc), and as this is resolved, it has to be established.

Quite a fun left-field bit of work none-the-less, but do be careful with your spelling.

Be careful what you wish for

Spoilers

Logline - yeah quite like that. Sounds a touch familiar, but all the same it's interesting

Fade in on the right !! how dare you, it's a sin ...only joking, it's normally on the other side. I don't care to be honest.
As we go I am finding this quite a dense read
P4 - this may be present day but it's not a place I know!
What's Jonathon M.I.T?
Jim - Jonathon - I accept I am confusing them
And a comment after Fade out !!- this could have Jeff all over it

Finished

Sorry I couldn't work this out. It was different and not very horror, to be honest. What is the story? Not for me

My grade D/c-

Damn, out again very early.

Many mistaks litter this script.  Terrible Slug work, misspellings, awkward writing, unclear writing, poor punctuation, poor writing.  "elfs" - "elves".

Overwriting as well, in terms of unnecessary detail.

I stoped on Page 3, because there's nothing happening of any interest - what has happened is very cliche and just unrealistic, in a juvinle way.

Sorry, but that's all I've got.

Hi,

So, this was cute but predictable.  And it really seems that you took the long way around to get to the point of your story.  

A lot of your slugs did not indicate time--mini's?  Either way, it red a bit awkwardly.  

Not a horrible story, but def could have been much tighter and cut down.   But still, it was cute.  

Congrats on getting this finished, though.  

Steve

Pg. 1 The first paragraph is over written. It gets a little better, but there are still issues here and there.

Pg. 3 Is Sally’s bag speaking? No one seems surprised.

This just kept getting crazier and crazier until I was completely lost. The main conflict between the neighbors didn’t seem to be set-up properly.

I wish I could say more. I did start off as a fun read, but it quickly went off the rails.

Congrats on completing the OWC.

The first sentence goes for 5 lines, way way longer that it needs to go.

What the hell is happening on page 3? I don't believe I understood anything.

Page 4: Wtf? Arnold Schwarzenegger?

"JONATHAN M.I.T." MIT?

"JIM
(Screams)
Ahhh." ;D ;D, I'm sorry but I laughed really hard.

Well, it was original... But not a very good script, sorry to say. I understood nothing, too convoluted with too many things going on. Very hard to take in, story doesn't work because of the lack of clarity.

Grade: E but take that lightly.

I got a bit lost in this. Actually, I found myself quite a bit lost. Once I got to the end I went over it again, but this didn't help. I think this needs some trimming or revamping.  

I couldn't work out what the M.I.T. business was either.
However, I did get the bit about Schwarzenegger.

There's some typos and some of the headings need some time indication. There's a bit too much 'telling' going on too. This one needs some polishing for it to work.

R

Too many trick or treaters IMO. Got a little bored with it.

Jonathan M.I.T.?? I have no idea what that means.

"It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark under the moonlight." Writing like this belongs in a book. For a screenplay you have to show us. So maybe a clock is displayed so we see the time and then we need to see something lurking and you have to show us it's evil.

After reading I'm not really sure how the title fits.

The writing is a little rough. Lots of grammar mistakes and your action doesn't read smooth. Just takes practice. The story, well...it took a long time to get to the punch line. And that's all it really ended up being. I think we needed a clue that the guy was pissed about the loud music instead of just being hit with it at the end. Less extra characters, more story development.

Horror and G rating seldom work out for me. I like my horror R rated but this wasn’t too bad.

Interestingly enough the phrase “furrows his brow” was in a script I perused recently. Can’t remember the script, but it’s the only other time I’ve seen it…

When you have a group of children all saying the same thing like “yes, please mister” it reads awkward IMO.

That’s an easy fix however.

It was a cute ending. But the last scene, IMO takes it out of a G rating.

I think you should re-write this and crank it up to an R rating or re-do the last few lines and remove the cuss words.

Overall decent story though.

Shawn…..><

Quoted from mmmarnie "It’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark ...

I think that's from the song, THRILLER... :D

Shawn......><

Opening paragraph: I feel like there's a lot of descriptions here that aren't necessary. You say a bunch of random photos and then describe that there's pictures of people. I think it would be better to start out describing the specific photo of the man from the newspaper clipping and then say it is surrounded by other random pictures. Or just use a period or something in there.

I think it is elves, not elfs.

The kid dressed as Arnold was hilarious!

This was funny, and it kept my interest. Not really horror but that's okay.

The writing was pretty good, no big glaring flaws that I noticed. And the story had a lot of charm.

It could be cleaned up a lot though, it is confusing at some parts. But after a few seconds to stop and consider, I figure it out. But the problem is, the reader shouldn't have to do that.

Good work though.

I was waiting for this to catch its groove, I'd say I'm confused with the writing.  Obviously not written by a bad writer because most of the sentence structure fell where it should.  It was clearly overwritten, from the three darts to the eighteenth century candle holder.

In the first passage, we are introduced to a web of targets.  This is a pretty creative way to start things.  The largest photo was the centerpiece, but the heavy description of the surrounding the photo took away from it being a focal point and made it less visual.  But it's so hard to dismiss it either because it is structurally sound.

The slugs made this a confusing read as well.  When they are incorrect, they can add confusion to the reader.  This caused me to dwell on little things longer than I should, and slowed down the read.

But when things were done correctly, I enjoyed it but I didn't get far until I hit another speed bump.

A creative effort for sure.  Arnold Schwarzenegger eh?  I thought about how funny it would be if a child asks their folks if they could be him for Halloween.  Not the Terminator, just Arnold.

From what I've read, I feel the writer is talented and creative but suffers from some overwriting and confusing formatting.

Good effort!

Johnny

This was sort of cute, albeit aimless and redundant. I thought the intermingling of different holiday iconography was fun. Once I got a sense of the rhythm though, I didn't really anticipate anything all that significant to happen until the end. Just tricker-treaters and Jonathan's benign witchery. Maybe a joke or two.

The ending, I didn't like. "Payback's a bitch" killed the vibe and totally went against the rest of the script. Even without it, the whole thing felt tacked on, presumably to meet the horror criteria. Well, you didn't, which makes this like comedy script #10 or something. Can't believe that's an honest guess in a horror OWC.

Anyway, I thought this was pretty harmless overall. One of the better blatantly cutesy ones though... again, in a horror OWC. Make of that what you will.

No comments read before.
Non-native speaker – take it or leave it.


Be Careful What You Wish For

Hello!

I'm not a fan of your script. You show sensitive dialogue, establish all these adorable kids, but the images are just not flowing. The pictures look like frozen.

Jonathan speaks: then a girl follows his advice and runs across the street. The mother follows like a robot, or what? Without intervening.
Ahmm, do they really eat the house? What? I can't imagine that from the script. Maybe I'm wrong. The first 2 pages gave a positive impression of the script and had potential IMO, but then it goes downward. Sorry to say...

Weighted Matrix: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AsBznn8D13zOdGJValQtbHU1LUNPVWQzY0gzajRTTUE&usp=sharing

Producer's Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NNGaVlrrpkjIfp-BRGjpTE03W1e5lZuRceJ3wQECYaI/edit?usp=sharing

27. Be Careful What You Wish For by The Wish Factory - Horror - Revenge tastes sweet when you don't have to work for it.
Brief - Couple of warlocks use trick-or-treaters against one another

Location(s)  - Basement, house exterior & interior, 2nd house exterior
Cast - 7
Protagonist(s)  -
JONATHAN YOUNG, 40
ANDREW, 5, dressed as elf
SALLY, 4, dressed as elf
DAVE, 30s, dressed up as Santa
TED, 7
GIRL, 5, dressed as WENDY
Antagonist(s)  -
JIM, 25
Genre & Marketability - Supernatural comedy. This is not a horror story.
Comments  -  The plural of elf is "elves", not "elfs". Pg2 in very much danger of becoming classic witchcraft, not modern. Yep, not modern witchcraft.
Script format - fair.
Final word - Nice, but missable.

$2,000 - 3,000     Lo/Hi Estimated Budget Range
/ 6               Screenplay Pages
= $333 - 500          Estimated Cost Per Screen Minute

Adherence to Given Criteria:
Modern Witches and/or Warlocks - Nope
Horror - Nope

I, too, got a bit lost in this with the back and forth to Jack and Jonothan's house (best not to have your main characters names start with the same letter).

By the end I got it and found the ending to be the most enjoyable. Probably because I was expecting horror and that was the only horror in this.

Though parts of this were cute, it didn't work for me. Good effort though.:)

Renee