Blow Fly by Patrick Taylor - Horror, Thriller - A two-faced Bible salesman manipulates a struggling widow and her two inquisitive daughters, who suspect the irresistible salesman may not be human after all. 119 pages - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Hi Patrick!
I'm about to read your script. I appreciate the effort you took in writing a feature! No guarantee that I will finish it. I will if its a good read. I scrolled through to check on formatting looks pretty solid. If you see this before I post my feedback, what kind of feedback are you looking for?

Thanks for offering to read my script! I’m looking for notes on tightening Acts 1 & 2 specifically. I feel the script has moments where it feels very passive (esp in the beginning of Act 2.) Would like some feedback on crafting a more active mystery.

Patrick, send Don a new draft when you can with your email contact on the title page. It's also a good idea to include the copyright symbol (C) and this info:

All rights reserved. This screenplay may not be used or reproduced for any purpose including educational purposes without the expressed written permission of the author.

I finished the script. I'll compile my notes and give my feedback to you tomorrow.
First impression, I can't say I liked it, but I finished it which says something. So I didn't dislike it either.

Take everything I say with a glass of salt. I sat on the script, I thought about why I felt certain ways and tried my best to remain objective in my response. You have a lot of good stuff but accolades won't serve you in moving forward so here are my thoughts…

I read from fade in to fade out so that’s always a good note to start on.

Plot
I think this is your weakest point. Not because there's no plot, no the plot is there but it's messy.

Exposition: Do we need to see all that stuff on the train? How does it benefit your story? Why doesn't the story start at the Blow Fly? I found that it created more issues than anything. Here’s why:

The tension is lost on me in that sequence.  We meet the stranger, we get the idea he's a bad ass or something so the book seller has no chance. And the moment we see the bookseller come out of the train... That kills a big part of the mystery for me. I’m an audience member, I hold a big piece of information: this thing is a monster. Since we know as much information as the monster, the story now belongs to him. I’m not convinced this was the right approach.

Act 1-2 biggest issue. No tension.
Us knowing more than Philly and her family creates an emptiness. Until Philly discovers the monster's secret and joins the audience in terms of information known, there’s no tension. We go on for the ride and see everything so there’s no suspense. Only the town people don’t know what’s happening so the murders eco more of a slasher than anything else.


The ending was twist okay, but the whole sequence leading to it – I checked out for most of it if not all.

Plot Holes

-What I'm processing is that there's your story and then there's a generic story line. As if you didn't scratch enough the surface of your characters and concept. Everytime you came to a junction that had an issue it was filled with a generic idea rather than something authentic to your story. This happens especially throughout the second act.

Examples

-Why did Phily go back to her hiding spot? You wrote a smart character who knows the monster has found her hiding spot before, so why does she go back? I feel like this was just the easiest way to have that confrontation but as an reader/audience I don't buy into it. The choice takes me out of the story.

-Hazel gives her husband’s address book to a stranger? She clearly holds dear to her husband's memory. Why give away this book? Yeah no.

-There's a plot line that never gets confronted. When the monster goes around town boasting that he's a known affiliate of the late husband wouldn't this bit get back to Hazel in such a small town. Especially since she runs a tavern.

-Hazel threatening to kick the monster out right, when just before she was having a good time with him. He was thrashing the place, so maybe he has a reason? I feel like this is less of a plot whole and a scene that needs to be fleshed out more.

-Hazel wants to reach out to Daisy. She’s worried about her but she went to her house personally to check up on her moments ago (she basically spoke with the monster then). Seems repetitive.

Other Plot details
-The only bit of subplot that sticks is the Guy and Hazel drama (that was a solid subplot) - when he died you got an emotional reaction from me. Anger, frustration - now you gave me an emotional reason to want this monster to die.

-Christmas, yeah no. (I know you might see this as a marketing tool). The thing is it has nothing to do with the plot/concept. Any mention of Christmas – always took me out of the story rather than in. I know it's the town name also but yeah change the name. I would stay clear or weave its importance into concept and theme cause right now it's an ick. (Including the singing at the end, though cute I skipped that scene.) It took me out.  


Characters
Didn't expect to be blown away as we are after all in the (horror) genre. A bit about that later. The character arc isn't as important (Horror genre isn't known for it). I do think your story will benefit if you develop Philly further, though.

Your protagonist is your antagonist: the monster. I suspect you wanted Philly to be the protagonist? Yes she fights the monster, has a moral argument... Think about it, the protagonist simply means the most prominent character in a story.

Think of it this way, who do you focus the most on? Whose story are you telling? His. Philly and her family are just part of it.

I must say my favorite character by far is Guy. I think he brought me into your script. Before that I was looking for an anchor and was ready to quit. Why? because he has a lot of dimensions (different strengths and weaknesses when interacting with others) he creates drama. Philly also but not so much.

I think Philly should be the protagonist but that requires a big rewrite. Note: Philly uses some high vocabulary words, yet doesn’t know symmetrical? She uses way more sophisticated words at times.

Dialogue
I didn't see any big issue here. It does the job. There's quite a few times actually now that I think about it that I was like that's smart.

I would suggest looking back at your bits of dialogue and cross your T’s. There's a lot of action that can be added into your dialogue that will reveal more of who your characters are and what they want. Oftentimes two characters are going back and forth forgetting that there's also subtext and action that can build up the moment.

Genre
I don't quite see the horror to be exact as the story is often seen from the perspective of the monster. Once you know what's hiding in the dark it's not as scary anymore. Think orphan first kill. Not much of a horror is it? Much more a crime. Simply labeled a horror to help market the film.

You have a bit of the same, but also a mystery. Crime/Mystery. As in what is this thing? Why is he here? What's his deal? As the monster goes about his way killing around town. We don’t really get an answer either though…

There's potential for a couple of scares but it doesn't define the genre. From the beginning the opening sequence isn't scary but mysterious and a crime being committed.

Concept
Not the strongest, "a serial killer that embodies the faces of his victims".

It forces you to really work the story. I believe this made it hard on you.

Other comments

Your scene descriptions are great, loved them. Your locations were also captivating, I loved the whole Blow Fly thing.

You were successful in your ability to make sure we knew when and who the monster was. Not sure you should have done so, but since it was what you were going for it felt seamless. Isn’t easily done with all the characters.

I'd recommend a clean up and making things more tight (only keep what serves the story). If you want horror then try focusing less on the thing and more on Philly and her family.

Overall 5/10 - I could see this as a solid 8-9/10. But it would be a different story.

If you are going to do a big rewrite in whichever direction you want to take it, put the script aside and write another script then come back to this one. If you simply want to clean it up that could work but will require finesse.

Wow thank you again for reading the script! “Didn’t like it, but didn’t hate it either” has pretty much been the gist of all the feedback I’ve gotten so far. I appreciate your detailed notes and can’t wait to dig into them! In the meantime I’m already following your advice and working on other projects before revisiting this one.

Hey Patrick,

Just finished this - but annoyingly I forgot to take notes as I went, so I'll try my best to remember.

First of all, I have to commend you on your dialogue - particularly in the first half of the screenplay. It fits into the time period nicely, and comes off the page well, in fact I'd go so far as to say it's some of the best I've read on this site on an unproduced screenplay.

In my head this played out as a feature-length episode of something like The Twilight Zone, I'm guessing this was one of your inspirations behind the style you chose?

There's a lot here that's really compelling, and the Walker girls are nicely characterisied. To echo the other reviewer on this thread I liked Uncle Guy as a character and was disappointed that he didn't triumph at the end.

To that point, how come the villain was able to make the bullets from Guy's gun disappear, but couldn't do that when the shotgun was pointed at him later on? Or did he get into Guy's house earlier on and remove them? Sorry if I missed that.

In terms of tightening the first couple of acts, I wonder if you should start with a flashback to the war days? And then transition to a shorter sequence on the train.

Most of the action flows nicely, but some sequences had 'unfilmables' in them - pieces of action more befitting a novel than the flow of a screenplay. Particularly in the scene where Philly chases the cat across the town.

Who was the real protagonist here? Philly or Hazel? It felt like a mix of the both, and Lorraine was mostly there just in the background. I'd maybe aim to beef up Philly's scenes a bit more - most film kids tend to be annoying in stuff like this, but you did a good job with her. Making her a smart know-it-all but also someone you rooted for.

To again echo the other review, I'd love to understand more of what the actual monster was. I get that he was some kind of shapeshifting murderer, and this did lead to some cool scenes but I was never clear about his origins, or even his motivations for taking Winston's identity? Was it just to get money? Would a creature so powerful even need money? And, what was the creature?

I wonder if you could explore an angle where Winston was about to die, and somehow did a deal with this demon creature that took him over? Or something like that?

All in all, I think the writing and the dialogue is good. There are some nice creepy scenes and I enjoyed the showdowns with the girls and the shapeshifter. But I think the narrative needs some work to reach a more coherent story with clear motivations and an understanding of the character's origins.

I'd encourage you to tackle this in a second draft, or at least in a fresh plot outline and see where it takes you. Oh and also, I'd love to see this as a Western movie - I think it could work well in one of those dusty cowboy towns.