Kill Your Demon by Dena McKinnon - Short, Dark Drama - A troubled man sets out to kill a demon. Only problem, his demon happens to be a man of God. Or is he? - pdf, format

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Okay. First things first. I'm almost tempted not to read this as the title page greets me. I'll troop on, but that title page just rubbed me the wrong way. Keep the font between 12 and 14 point courier. No fancy graphics. Standing out from other scripts is fine---unless it's standing out for all the wrong reasons.

The Voice over was alright at first for me, but then as the script progressed I wanted Jon to either actually spea to others around him or better yet, shut up when talking to me.

Liked the use of scrabble,it could have been any other game on game night, but this will do and it works fairly well. Now if those darned voice overs would go away. The final reveal is a slight disappointment. There should have been more hints that the Bishop is a demon The only thing we have going is that Jon may be delusional.

"we pull back" a camera direction. (p1)

What is it with characters staring at themselves in mirrors?

"They called him the Bishop. How he earned the title no one can say" is an odd piece of VO dialog, don't you think? I mean, you are in a church and Bishop Tom is a high ranking member of the clergy, right? Isn't it possible he worked for it? Studied hard for many years?

Spelling errors
Ladies first
Jon is how you spell Jon's name. Why switch to Johnny in some spelling? Should it be Jonny?

The nine mil (p4) I never liked abbreviations. Besides, it is the only gun Jon has. You can just say 'the gun' and you're fine. (We can assume it is the gun that he put together earlier unless you state otherwise)

This didn't work for me overall. I'm not feeling it.

I really like these kind of stories.

Very nice display of the craft, attention to detail and atmosphere. Everything was great, and Jon's VOs melted over the visual like butter. My favorite part was when Bishop laughed, but through Jon's eyes it was wildly skewed.

I'm in the grey about the motives, felt like I was being baptized into a deeper, perhaps politically charged, meaning. The use of the game itself proved outstanding because it f'ed with Jon until the end. Psychological, well-written, convincing dialogue - I'm in. Great work! Curious to hear from the author.

Writer,

I liked this one, but the ending left me confused and unsatisfied. You built up great tension, the writing was insistent. I feel you could've used one less big block of VO dialogue to help the pacing speed along more swiftly. Not sure -- SPOLIER -- why Jon's gun didn't fire, and worse yet I still can't figure out why Jon collapsed to the floor. A little fleshing out, a better ending and you got a good one here.

Overall, good job!

Steve

I enjoyed this one to a point.  

The game didn't really matter, it could have been any game.

I was a bit let down by the end.  I wish you had spent more time making us wonder if he is right about the bishop being a demon or is he crazy.

I'd rather you have spent your time at the game and let us find out then that he has a gun and plans to murder him.

Why call him Bishop Tom and then say that they don't know why they call him the Bishop.  He's in the clergy right????

I think you missed on a great opportunity to make this really stand out.  Let us wonder if he's right, or crazy, or both....

I get that the demon froze time, but, why did Jon fall backwards?  And why was the Bishop so rude?  

6/10

Kill Your Demon


Title: Maybe a tad Generic, but strong.

Premise

A guy going off to kill the local Bishop because he thinks he's a Demon? Good enough for me.
Setting also adds something.


Script

Confident, bold opening.

The VO is a little heavy-handed. So much so that it veered into parody territory for me. Especially at the part about the Bishop. It was like time froze just to let him deliver that long VO about the Bishop, and it bordered on the comedic.

The VO really starts getting in the way of the story. It's like the whole story grinds to a halt every few moments to listen to this guy's thoughts.

The ending fell somewhat flat because it is exactly what we were told it would be.

The only way to make it work is by convincing us that John is an absolute lunatic. Having him a homeless drunk/junkie who comes into get help would suit that ending better. You have to be convinced that John is insane to give the ending as it is punch. As it is the audience is 50/50 whether John is right or not, so you only get half the power at the end....it's half expected.


The alternative is to have John kill The Bishop. We discover that he's not a demon, but the real demon is Agatha who has been secretly manipulating the Bishop all along.

John gets dragged off by the Police, we see Agatha eat one of her home-made cakes straight off the table with her long tongue.

Overall it's OK. It needs to go deeper to really make the grade.

Build the feeling of filth and pestilence that John thinks he can sense. Maybe see more of the Bishop before the game so you can build up on what John thinks of him and especially what he's doing to the town. If you really absorb us in the sense of the town's decay, and the sense that the Bishop is the focal point of it, this could really shine.

You'd also get more out of that VO, as well, using it to really set the scene and could then dispense with it in the actual confrontation scene, which will significantly improve dramatic tension and narrative drive at that point.

Worth getting into the real blood and guts of it here, I think. There's a story to tell and it's not fully realised yet.

Fancy title page

I liked this one, very well written.

The ending for sure could be changed, although it doesn't always have to be a Hollywood ending.

Strong contender.. good job

My opinions are often irrelevant, but here goes...

VO didn't work for me, just too much of it imho.

I liked the idea of a Demon in a community hall playing scrabble and some of the visuals were good too.

But I don't know if it was the lack of build up, or maybe the VO, but the ending didn't works so well for me.

Nice try

Kil your demons

Just to say - i like the start and the title page

Sedan - there's a sedan. That makes me think,.. But that's just me

I rather liked the tension in this. Can he pull it off?

But it's late am I not suue I gave it quote the right attention, but it seems the devil got him

I rather liked this. Will come back to it, but it has a certain smoulder to it. Humm

This feels like part of a bigger story. I think you need more room to really explore these characters, their back stories and their goals. I kinda get what's happening here but not really sure why it's happening. There's still a lot that is left unexplored.

I thought the writing was pretty good and the dialogue had an authentic feel to it.

Overall not a bad effort.

The first person narration had me smiling throughout this one.  Even though the subject matter was serious, it was funny how the guy talked to himself like a Mickey Spillane tough guy private eye.  But this story was all set-up with no real showdown.  Jon really should have had some kind of back up plan here.  He must have known the demon wasn't going to make it easy for him.  So, here's another entry that ended too soon.

Cheese out of the gate. Been done a million times before.

'Until the demons came'... made me groan out loud. Change things up. I'm checking the page count at page 2 which isn't good. What is good is that it's only 6 pages.

Bishop, Tom and Johnny... I'm getting a phallic vibe from this one.

Page 4 and it's getting interesting. I think the VO works but the earlier, VO needs less cheese.

OK, I actually liked that in the end. The twist with the bishop was good. Well written too, aside from the early cheese.

Kill Your Demon...

Loved the title page, jumps right out at you. Jon is an apt name for this particular strain of Bishop Tom's Congregation, the broken soul of his flock.

Why he held on all these years is most likely part of his programming. I get the sense that Little Johnny was a favorite of the Bishop, and he (Tom) just can't seem to let go of him as any other than a previous conquest of pedophilia... Johnny after all has appeared to keep his mouth shut only when he was supposed to.

The Gospel of John, I feel is the most important Gospel, it resonates a true voice of one 'crying in the wilderness' to be heard. Jon, here... feels it is a matter of life and death that he now be heard.

JON (V.O.) - "Don't get the idea I think I'm some kinda hero. Never did have much use for heroes neither. Nor do I much look the part. Sometimes your number just comes up."

I believe Jon was sent to face his demon but, he wasn't alone; "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." John 1:6

That which he must face has a deeper root in the corporeal structure however... this is the 'Fallen Angels' land and God is not allowed. Bishop Tom most likely has a few more demons assigned to him than Jon would care to imagine and, Jon brought the wrong weapon to this fight and failed miserably.

He failed to understand the true meaning of why he suffered. Perhaps, Jon's demon was there to give him purpose, a belief that there's a pure life away from the church he frequents, if only he'd go looking for it, but he murdered that purpose when he lost his faith in believing his demon was stronger.

This has a great film noir vibe, I really enjoyed it.

Another scrabble script Cool title and I like funky title pages.

Not a great logline, but I'm not good at them either.

Only beef I have is that the end didn't delivery. Must've been in a super big hurry and there wasn't enough conflict between the Bishop and Jon. I like that there seem to be deeper messages buried all in this script.

Have to admit, it felt really nice to see a lower page count. Seems every script I've read so far has been 12 damn pages.

Thought this was a solid effort - there was no place where I felt like bailing.

I would like a little more pay-off at the end - almost like it ended too quick.