Beast by Simon - Short, Horror - A one Location horror short, when her ex boyfriend and roommate Luke brings a girl back  to house after a night of drinking their one night stand turns violent, locking her in his bedroom but suffering a blow to the head, Ella and David their other roommate will have to work out who's telling the truth when two different stories for what happened are told. 17 pages - pdf, format 8)

Simon,

Pretty sure I've seen you around the boards -- thought I'd give this a read.  

Logline needs work -- very clunky and most likely where this is holding you back from reads -- I'll hold off on that for now.  Storywise it's a fairly quick read, but at 17 pages it feels drawn out for what it is.

One point to work on is the story logic.  The debate on whether to call for help or not is where you started to lose me.  Ella and David find Luke badly injured in the hallway; yet instead of calling the emergency services they decide to wait and ‘see for themselves’ what’s going on.  Their actions feel forced into the story.  The less logic behind your character’s reasoning the more likely you are to lose the reader.  

What if you applied the overstayed visa angle to them instead of to Samantha?  That way you’d have a more logical reason for their reluctance to call the authorities.  The situation then becomes one of making a moral choice -- which could lead more naturally to conflict between those that want to help and those that are afraid of the consequences.

Ella mentions calling the police three times; David once -- it starts to feel like you’re moving in circles rather than driving the story forward.  

Ella’s desire to get away from it all was a nice touch, but ultimately served little consequence to the overall payoff.  What about re-working Ella’s decision to leave as your intro scene -- which then leads to the argument with Luke.  He realises she’s thinking of going -- he still loves her and tries to lay on the guilt trip to make her stay.  They argue, he leaves and later returns with Samantha.  

Liked that Samantha played on David’s affection to open the door.  Having him previously rebuffed by Ella helped that work.

Ending felt too predictable (for me at least).  Despite the ‘who do we believe’ set-up it always seemed likely that something was amiss with Samantha here.  Soon as that door is opened everyone’s in big trouble...

Single location works well.  Relationships between characters feels suitably strained to create conflict, though it’s a premise you could wring a lot more suspense/tension from.  Think about trimming the fat and building an original twist into the payoff and this could be a lot more effective.

Hope this helps.  

Steve.