It's Coming by László Görög - Short, Horror - The crew of a subway tunnel digging machine unearth something that was never meant to see the light of day again. 12 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

It seems you've put an awful lot of thought into this underground world you've created.  Lots of technical jargon that was hard to follow or visualize for much of the time but felt it was real and sincere.  You made me believe in this underground operation and the people who made it work.  

It could be that everything was so over described and technically detailed that I had trouble losing myself in the story.  I had to go back and re read passages to make sure I understood what was actually happening.  

I don't know anything about rock drilling or what was accurate or inaccurate.  All I can say is that I had a very hard time keeping track of the chaos.  

You obviously have a strong talent for descriptions and action.  But I would dumb it down a tad bit and make all your techno jargon more reader friendly so we can concentrate on the chaos of the moment and not get a headache.  

The canister of Satan was very "Prince of Darkness".  This would be a nice setting if they ever decide to do a remake.  Which I'm sure they will.    

I enjoyed reading this; you either know what you're talking about when it comes to tunnel boring or you're very creative and convincing when making it up!

Well written, no issues. I bet you wish you had another couple of pages, I think. It seemed to end a little too abrupt? Regardless, nicely done.

Is the Operator's Cab the vehicle in question?
There are so many locations on foot.
A tunnel classify as vehicle?

You've clearly put a lot of work into this, so credit due.
The trouble is (jmho) all the info load and tech description makes it a bit dry and ironically light on visuals. It also slows building suspense.

Good effort. I just think it needs streamlining, less characters, just have them stuck underground in a cable car (or something) and then I'm going to feel the suspense.

Hey I loved this! Even all the techie rock drilling stuff was cool. The dialogue was snappy and pretty real without being too cheesy.  I would SUPER exactly where it is right at the start - ok, we have American workers but the tunnel could be anywhere in the world I guess.

Loved how you utilized every page and din't waste any space. Lol at the inadvertent use of another script FIRST RESPONDERS at the end. The ending is good too  and theres scope here for a possible feature or at least a 40 pager.

I've read 9 so far and this is my fave.

Hi writer,

This felt more like adventure than horror, although there was a bit of suspense. I think the horror is yet to come, we just didn't see any off it.

It also feels more like an opening to a feature than a contained short.

I'd be lying is I said I knew what I was meant to be visualising a lot of the time, I also didn't understand a bit of what they were talking about.

In saying that the writing is top notch and the dialogue is exceptionally good, the parts of it I could understand that is  :P

Not entirely sure why the devil lives in a black box, but sure, why not.

A pretty solid entry.

All the best

This was very well written. For a short though, I felt there were too many characters and a lot of technical lingo that by the end was starting to overwhelm me.

Not much of a horror for me, and the ending was too abrupt.

But I'll give you this: Writing was on point and this would easily make a great opening for a feature. A boring company building a tunnel for a new Hyerloop train uncovers an ancient demonic artifact. What's not to like about that?

One of the better ones I've read so far. Great job!

I really liked this one! It immediately put me in the mind of the better parts of GHOSTBUSTERS II. This had so much machinery, though, that I had a hard time imagining them without pictures. The great part is that it didn't detract from the story, so you did well there.

The horror element is definitely intact there. And it, literally, was a mystery box. I can picture the lens flares now. ;)

The dialogue was excellent. I particularly liked the lines:

CHAD (V.O.)
We already wrecked an 18-milliondollar machine; we can’t afford to
lose a lowly mining engineer, too.
BILL
And my kids think you’re such a
good guy...

Also loved it that you named a background guy Jack Garner. I hope that was intentional because you're a Rockford Files fan.

Superb effort overall. Thank you for contributing!

Reminded me a lot of Quatermass and the Pit, no bad thing in that!

Well writtenm, though perhaps a little too technical in places - can be hard to balance authenticity and flow.

But thought you built the world well and the characters had depth.

Might be only me but I was a little disappointed with the last couple of pages, the convenient linguist and the Devil as the answer just felt a little rushed/obvious.

Very decent effort though.

Feels weird that they'd have this huge piece of equipment that they can't retrieve after the project is complete. It's fancy enough to lay its own concrete, but it's built for a one-way job? So, giving you the benefit of the doubt... this is one super-specific task the machine was built for. (After completing my read, I see we never actually learn what their task is. That's fine, didn't bother me.)

My media background is flaring a bit. The camera is with the talent? Nope.

And, can't mention saints on TV? That's silly. I worked in broadcasting for 20 years and never once heard anyone say something anywhere close to that.

"build of a rock driller 20 years before" And, we, the audience watching this short will know this how? Build of a rock driller, maybe. 20 years before?

What just happened? An explosion... no, they breached a cavern.. no, they hit a strange rock material. Or, all three? This could be clearer.

They seriously stop to check their laptop!? He just said he'd buy drinks if they make it out alive... but first, let me check my email. (I thought it was unbelievable enough that they even bothered to carry the cases out in the first place.)


Not bad. Writing was pretty good. Excellent vehicle choice. Completely different. Horror was light... not really present until the last pages. But, there was good suspense. All in all, a strong entry.

I'd suggest making the character actions a bit more logical as they attempt their escape. Rework the reveal of the message somehow. And, for my sake only... fix the lines about the media. :)

I liked the writing overall aside from the particular notes from others, so for future reference... just be careful to not overdo it with all the techno jargon.  Audiences just want to be entertained. So does the reader.  This has some claustrophobic atmosphere that could be very creepy if filmed as well.  I would expand a little more and give it more depth, but don't want to mirror what's been said so far.  I did like this though.  Just a coupla thoughts, hope they help, otherwise, ignore.
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Title Page - Hmmm...written by László Görög, the Hungarian actor?  For reals?  Why else would someone put that name on their script?  Interesting to say the least.

Describe your characters right when you intro them...don't wait until the next passage.

Well, this is interesting so far, and it sounds legit, but why leave an $18 Million machine underground?  Why not bring it back up so it can be used again?  Strange...

I'm wondering if there are issues with your Slugs, as they all seem to be INT.  Just because we're underground, we're not necessarily in an INT scene...unless we're actually inside something...like a structure, vehicle, etc.

Page 7 - in a POV, you should only write what the POV picks up.

Page 10 - I've seen a few instances where you're omitting the word, "the".  Each time in front of cube.  Why?  It reads poorly like this.

Here's another example -

"The CAMERA ZOOMS IN on one block of text, then moves on to next one."  You need "the" in front of "next".

Writing is showing signs of being rushed.  You're missing words, typos, and then, "Now we HEAR" - we'll hear everything that makes a sound in the film.  You don't want or need to write it this way.

OK, the end.

I have to be honest and say that the last few pages are nowhere as good as the first 9 or 10...writing-wise and strory-wise.  I like the reveal, much like CArpenter's Prince of Darkness, but I don't like how you got to that.

Things are going to Hell and they have time to check a computer?  And this linguist deciphered it that quickly?  Nah...that doesn't work.  I think everything else worked quite well, although it is tough to visualize much of this, not knowing exactly what this machine looks like, or the cube thing either.  If I were you, I'd rewrite the last few pages and come up with a way that makes sense, time-wise, for them to know what they're dealing with.

I really like the effort here to go way outside the box, and this is not an easy undertaking.  I don't know if any of this is legit, but I bought it, and that's saying something.

Good work!

***1/2

I've had a rough day. Woke up to find that my pet Cockatiel had passed away in the night, then I had to stay and cover an extra shift at work.  :'( I did however manage to squeeze this script into my lunch break, and I'm glad I did.

I loved pretty much everything about this. Most of the technical jargon went right over my head, but I appreciated how authentic it seemed. It really set the mood well.

Great writing throughout. Liked all the characters and I could picture them clearly in my head.

The end with the black box and what was inside was kind of chilling. I actually got goosebumps.

Top marks from me. Great work here. ;D

Meet Astrid. 300-feet long, weighs 2,000 tons, and costs 18 million dollars. – A very unique choice for a vehicle, so kudos for originality but it does mean this entire script is unproducible based on this alone. Although it’s not a criteria for the OWC, you never know who’s browsing these forums looking for scripts to produce so it is always worth bearing in mind.

This one took too long to get going. It was around page 9 or 10 where it finally got interesting and then you had to wrap it up quickly. More sci-fi than horror. It had moments which were no doubt inspired by Event Horizon but as no horror actually occurred this one doesn’t count for me. If you had started with them breaching the cave and finding the cube by page 2, you could have done so much more with this.

Loads of potential but not quite there in the current draft.

-Mark

IT'S COMING

A good story that took too long to tell. I also don't like the Devil being the thing in the cube. The alien angle seemed the best one to me.

A good writer... I only skipped a little toward the end. The linguist part could be cut and perhaps some tightening to get this down to 10 would have made this a winning script. It's not overly told like a couple of the other good scripts on here. No show-boating.

Hello writer

This is the last one for me.

A slow burner, I skipped a bit, to begin with - nothing really started happening until page 5 - that's a long time to wait for a short.

Do tunnel diggers have a linguist on standby? seems odd - but so far the story tells me you either know a lot about this stuff, or you did a lot of research (or at least good at faking it) - So I beleive you that this is a thing.

Shit has hit the fan and I'm not entirely sure why. It went from hearing something inside the cube to the place collapsing around them - a little jarring

Pacing feels off - panic, run for your lives - wait a sec while I check my laptop - the linguist happily replied very quickly - OK, run for your lives again

A lot of promise with a good premise - too slow to get going for a script this length. weak suspense and I struggle to find much horror.

I'm a little disappointed it was the Devil in the box and that it seemed to stop before the real story got going.

Very unique choice of vehicle, it played a big role in the story and featured in the majority of it. well done for that.

well done for completing the challenge

Matt

Holy shit, that was amazing!

Feels more like the start of a feature though. A really good feature. I hope it's a monster and not actually the devil. Whatever it is, I want to watch it!

The writing is good here. Great descriptions, the dialogue is decent, for the most part, and the premise is cool. I felt confident that you knew what you were talking about for the drilling and the machinery.

There are a few issues. There's no conflict for the first few pages. It's more like a guided tour for the reader with lots of exposition about why a layperson would be down there to give an excuse for the guided tour. The pace suffers with the verbose descriptions when the action picks up. The dialogue does get a little on the nose and repeats what we see on screen at times.

The crew reacts quite strongly for very little happening. They make a giant leap of logic to conclude the cube is made of some alien material just by looking at it, and it seems a noise coming from it is enough to make them fear for their lives. Bad comedic timing with a one liner kills all the tension of the scene, so the resulting conclusion doesn't have the same effect as it would have if the tension was still high.

Why on Earth would a drilling crew have a linquist on standby? A linquist capable of reading an obscure variant of Latin? This isn't archaeology.

Overall it's still a decent entry, and with some fixing it could be great. I could see it being done as an animated short, kind of like a Love, Death and Robots episode.