Going Down by Anonymous - Short, Thriller, Horror - An elevator reunites a woman with her two exes -- one a pudgy gentleman; the other a suave, abusive creep. 8 pages - pdf, format 8)

Umm,

Not bad.  A few mistakes with who does what.  Once again, we have a random event with no explanation of why.  Or how.

It was pretty good, the end doesn't quite make sense...

6/10

Didn't float my boat...but I think there is something in this.

Claroty let this down a tad- felt rushed

Got potential, but needs work

There's an idea here, and I've read worse, much worse, but I thought it was underbaked. I think, understandably, it was done in a hurry. With more polish it might work.

R

Hi,

THe idea of a girl meeting her ex's in an elevator is a good one. But the action confused me in this one.
I am wondering what Mitch was doing when Zane started his fight with Amy. Zane lifted her skirt and removed her underwear. Slowly, you said. How's that possible for Amy then to not be able to resist but she was able to dial 911. Also, what was Mitch doing? Why he's "tremling in horror" at the very beginning - at the very beginnign when he just saw Zane?

Also, they get inside the elevator only on the third page.

And, at the beginnig it says AMY (VO) - think it's a typo.

:(

I was all in for the premise. But the first page threw me out to left field. Why is Amy in voice over? I'm looking right at her. Zane has yet to appear, he's a voice over. So this is a memory. Mitch comes along. Then Zane actually shows up...stroking his beard. As the script progresses he is seen as a more demonic stereotypical figure. She's being attacked. Mitch stands around. (Hey, even if Zane is a thug and could look like he could stomp you like a bug, I have trouble with Mitch just standing there while Amy gets her underwear ripped off, y'know? Not even a protest!)

Zane and Mitch start to struggle (what took him?) and description gets a bit hokey. Zane turns out more and more to be...some sort of demon(?!) which didn't make much sense given the premise. Then when Amy and Mitch get to the lobby, Zane disappears as if he was a demonic enity. Okay. I'm okay with that.I mean, it isn't all in her head, Mitch was there, eventually struggling with Zane and getting subdued by the guard in a case of mistaken identity.

If you ended it right there I would have liked this script. Instead, you...oh no you didn't! Zane does not exist. Mitch does not exist. The event may have never have happened. There isn't any event seen in this script that took place.

Quoted Text Amy walks into the psychiatrist’s office and closes the door behind her.

That one line makes me hate your script. Yep. This one thing. It is equal to that of a narrative cheat. It is a writer's trope of explaining away something so crazy that makes no sense "it's all just a nightmare/dream" it "didn't really happen". It's a lazy way out. Had the script started in the psych office or on the way to the office (going up) it might have worked better. But for now- it feels like a cop-out.

So if Zane didn't exist, why did Mitch see him too? Mitch is obviously real as he was wrestled tot he ground by the Officer... unless the Officer wasn't real too.

4 out of 10.

Okay - a little confusion in the start:

Quoted Text AMY -- early thirties and pretty -- walks toward the elevator and stops. AMY (V.O.) (crying) No! Stop! Zane! You’re hurting me! A male voice chuckles wickedly. AMY (V.O.) Zane! A slapping sound. AMY (V.O.) Creep. Amy has a smile on her face. She appears relaxed. AMY (V.O.) (sighs) Mitch, I don’t know how to say this.[quote]

It has all these V.O.s yet Amy is in fact in the scene. Maybe I'm missing something - but this threw me for a loop right out of the gate.

Now at where Amy is being raped by Zane and Mitch is just watching until a full page later??????

Okay - at the end now - got what you were doing. So - an interesting idea but the execution creates too much confusion along the way. Most notably this - is Amy the only insane one? That why is Mitch imagining all those things too?????

There is some nice writing here and there - but there are logistical problems with the story.  

First page makes zero sense.  Why all the V.O.?

Dialogue on page 2 is not remotely good.  Extremely forced and fake.

I'm sorry, but that's all I can take.  Needs lots and lots of work.

OK, this was intriguing… in a perverted/animalistic kind of way. I’m glad I stayed with it to the end, because it made for a more realistic scenario.

I’m just curious, as are others I presume, as to what is real vs. illusion regarding Amy’s bout of psychosis. I’d like to think the title was a well thought out metaphor pointing to her degrading sanity, perhaps it is. If this is your first time out, it’s pretty good IMO.

Some of the dialog makes Amy appear too complacent to this strange public violation, as well as being OTN. It’s entirely possible her ex was so abusive, that now she’s just running on ‘triggers’, that is, following routine patterns of obsession in his presence, she is after all heading to see her shrink. Hmm… I may even come back to this. It’s bizarre in a good way.

I don't think you need the VO at the start, show not tell... I'd start with them meeting at the lift.

Mitch lets Zane take Amy's underwear off, when she's clearly protesting??? Sorry don't buy that reaction at all.

Zane is the devil? How'd Mitch knock him out so easily then?

The end implies Amy is mad? But Mitch shared the 'incident' sorry, I'm lost.

Anthony

This showed some promise, but it’s held back some. For one, Zane is described in a comically evil way. I expected him to start twisting his moustache, but he was already stroking his beard. Maybe this makes sense, considering he’s a projection of Amy’s subconscious, but it still comes off as too much. I think the pacing was also off here. Zane barges onto the elevator and is sexually assaulting Amy almost immediately. It could’ve used more build. I also think Mitch is wasted as a character. Considering what this is supposed to be, it seems more interesting to just keep it between Amy and Zane and let it build up instead of going straight to 10.

In the end it turns out Zane is a figment of Amy and Mitch’s imagination. Then it turns out Mitch is also a figment of Amy’s imagination. This is strange because a cop tackled him to the ground and tried to arrest him for Zane’s actions. So the cop is a figment too. But then, the cop was the one who pointed out that Zane was a figment. So maybe Zane was really there and it’s the cop who was a figment! Or maybe he was trying to arrest Amy for assaulting herself.

“Amy walks into the psychiatrist’s office and closes the door behind her. “

Wait for me!

This one is off the reservation who or what is real is beyond me. Zane appears to be a figment and maybe Mitch is too. Is so, we really don't have much of a story. If she is seeing these men in her mind, so what. Her problems have no impact in the real world. Mental issues for the sake of mental issues are not interesting for me.

Best
Richard

*Spoilers*

I think the writer of this one is newish.  Which shows - though there's certainly room to grow and improve.  It's an interesting premise that could be played many ways.  But this particular execution needs work. The action of the characters is strange - rather non-organic.  (Just one example... Neither Mitch nor Amy put up much of an initial fight against Zane... to the point that he's able to actually slide her underwear off?!?  Wow, that's one passive group of elevator riders!)  :P  Yes, I do get that it turns out that Zane is in Amy's mind.  But that still doesn't explain exactly why Mitch was going along with it.  And if he's part of the delusion too.... it just comes off as a bit much to me.  Kind of like when stories end with "it was all a dream."  I like to have a bit of reality in my scripts... at least a mixture, 50/50.

Still - congrats on the OWC!  It's a fun experience, and a great way to test the writing waters!  :)

Well, this one didn't quite work. I'm thinking the writer might be on the newer side of screenwriting. There are lots of things that don't make sense or doesn't even work.

First off, I don't think we need Amy's V.O. in the beginning. You can establish that Amy knows both Mitch and Zane after they show up. Through dialogue would be easy.

The whole "action thingy" in the middle doesn't really make sense. I would encourage the writer to pretend to film this him or herself. Try to figure out how those written pages would play out on film. When Zane fights with Amy, what is Mitch doing? Is he just standing there? Zane wrestles with Amy who's trying to fight back, but somehow Zane manages to pull her panties down? And slowly too?? Again, what is Mitch doing during all this? Just staring at her ass?

I think the premise here is alright. Although, I can't say I was a fan of the hell thing, but having a woman stuck in an elevator with two exes, is actually pretty good. :)

This one needs a good mechanic to check under the hood. The idea is promising enough, given the parameters, but the ride is a little rough.

The voice-over device at the beginning doesn't work that well, athough I understand its purpose. Things get almost comical (maybe deliberately?) when Zane removes Amy's underwear without much trouble. Mitch seems occupied by trying not to look rather than helping Amy. Somehow, though, this flounder of man is punching and knocking Zane unconscious.

The Zane-is-not-there ending doesn't fly because there's no internal logic to make us accept it. I suspect the writer doesn't know what happened, either.

None these drawbacks are fatal. My recommendation: Think it through again, work on pacing and form.

Oh, man, I'm not sure about this. I have to be honest, it was very funny (deliberately or not deliberately), not because it was poorly written or anything. In fact, I thought it wasn't that badly written, enough so that a lot of the choices made me question whether this was a serious attempt by the writer or not. It's all just so very surreal and strange, Zane being a total psycho and then suddenly not being a psycho, and then being a psycho again.

And then the whole police comes in, walks away, and the office out of no where, I'm really not sure what to make of all this. Dustin brings up a great point actually, it kind of neglects the whole story in fact.

Don't know what to make of this one. I don't get it.

There’s a very interesting idea here but the writer doesn’t, at present, possess the skill necessary to get the story across clearly. I suspect from the writing it’s a newish writer, if so just keep on writing and refining and you’ll get there as this shows potential.

As it was and as many have said already, the opening with the VO’s is very confusing and threw me off. You can lose people on the first couple of pages if you are not careful. The genre in the logline is horror but this doesn’t read like a horror, the characters and action seems almost comical at times but I do like the idea of Amy being a bit nuts and we don’t know what is real or imagined.

And of course, you get points for setting this in or around and elevator on a shoestring budget so kudos for entering this OWC.

-Mark

Good job on completing an entry into the challenge.

Unfortunately, it's not for me.  Many mistakes with descriptions.  Zane doing whatever he wanted with the other guy just standing there.  Just not very believable to me.  Thanks for letting me read it though and finishing the challenge.  It did take place in an elevator.  Good luck.

The V.O confused me straight from the get go, I wasn't too sure what was happening there. Perhaps you were looking for O.S instead?

I couldn't get into this one, sorry. The stacked writing ain't my style, it seems like padding to me but that's to be expected sometimes because it's hard to get everything fleshed out in a challenge like this.

I thought you could've smoothed the script out, and the concept if you had more time.

Oh wow two pages of talky dialogue that feels like it's going no where. Not a good way to start dude.

I liked the concept from the start...could see some conflict in an elevator with two exes so very very good concept worth reworking perhaps. These things get rushed but at least you completed an OWC ...good on you for that :)

Going Down

Opening lacks because of the V.O.s. It's not dragging in but I see you need the build up that way. So...? Give it another taste at least.

Don't know why you didn't show Mitch's direct reaction to Zane abusing Amy. It reads as if he disappeared suddenly. ( @ ah, I see now, perhaps the first hint of the resolution later)

The script is charming in some parts. Easy to film. Skill's in case of plotting are there. Don't know if it's enough to deeply impress yet.