I liked this, though I must admit when I opened the file the title page near scared me half to death. I like different title pages/fonts but in black and white - that was a bit of overkill for me. Each to their own...

Your story is inventive and very creepy. Jon's the whack job, right? Hence the prescription meds his own sermonizing etc. Took me till the end of the script to realise that. Duh. On screen I'd be on it, don't worry.

Hope you don't mind me offering a few suggestion:

stares at his own reflection - might sound better
reaches over to the passenger seat for a bible (lying not laying) if you want to add to it - still a bit clumsy.
I'd stay present tense with: they call him the Bishop (instead of called)
How he earned that particular title no one
ever did say. (no one ever says, or no one knows)

Up to you, of course. Tis a first draft and probably rushed up to a point.

JON appears to all of a sudden not speak as well as he did in the opening?? He speaks as an educated man in the first part. Deliberate? Not sure that worked for me.

Along those lines, would he really use a word like: exhorting when he also says: 'I seen...' bit of a mix of characterisation imh there.
Ladies first.
world/word?

I think you miss an opportunity for a great visual with Jon recalling the 'lizard' and the 'devil's tongue' - showing it instead of speaking of it in the past. Ah-ha, I see you make up for it in your denouement.

raise their head (s) plural
his last visual: (take out those words and see if they're even needed.l)

This was really good. I enjoyed this very different tale around the 'game' theme. I do think however you could add to it a bit.

Well done for bringing something different to game night.

Did you miss me?

Those pesky kids down the road did. They were throwing cans at me. Missed me completely. I think some of them might have been empty.

I would have liked to have known what Jon looked like.

He lives in a normal neighbourhood. As opposed to a nutty one?

The start irked me a bit. I blame these underpants. Far too tight. Anyway, I'm fairly sure they didn't have guns and the like back in the days they were writing scripture. Just knives and swords, so I doubt they'd call them arms.

As I said, my pants are far too tight so I may be judging too harshly. Just seemed to undermine the opening gambit too much for me. Like that fecking badger did to my shed. Black and white barstard.

I didn't get the bit about Bishop Tom. So I presume he's not a bishop, but he's giving sermons strong enough to loosen his teeth?

Overall not bad. Bizarre but I quite enjoyed it. Needs more at the end.

I thought this was great. Seriously! IMHO, you could make this one even more chilling by making Jon being delusional. That's what I thought while reading this. It sent a chill up my spine and I kept thinking that this is what it must be like for those killers that go into some place and kill a bunch of people. They're either insane or on drugs or something and they are convinced that they are doing the right thing. I kept thinking about the Charleston shooting for example.

Loved the V.O. and the descriptions.

Great use of the scrabble.

A couple of typos. Altar not alter. Magazine not clip. Look up the difference.  

Could see this in B&W set in early fifities.

Am not certain what I think about whether Jon is  delusional. When Jon arrives, the Bishop says something like "Are you ready to give me what I've got coming?" I suppose that refers to another loss at Scrabble, but you could also read it as acknowledgment of Jon's mission.

The pills could signify delusion, but he clearly was not off his meds when this happens.

If Jon dies at the end, is the Voiceover from the Afterlife? If so, is he still delusional?

The tongue thing reminds me of the monsters in "The Strain" TV series.

The subject matter is age-old territory, but the ambiguity here (intentional or not) comes off as a plus.

Some notes.

The voice overs don't work for me.  I think you can create much more tension by not giving us his thoughts.  Work out a visual way to show us that this crazy man thinks the Bishop is a demon.  And work out a better solution than a pistol.  Oh, btw, it's not a clip, it's a magazine.  

If you can work out a way to keep the audience guessing as to which one is the demon, you have an even better script.  A little confusion in this one goes a long way.

Best
Richard

Interesting.

Jon was pretty humorous with his paranoid internal monologue. I liked that. The serious tone he strikes early on followed by his neighbor asking where he was going in the morning and his response of "game day" made me laugh.

The writing was good early on. Good descriptions of Jon entering the church. Most of the dialogue as I said was great too.

The scrabble game was a bit hard to understand however. Partly because it's scrabble I guess but also because the descriptions become clunky.  For example, "sober from the �r� in roar." I'm not really sure what this means.

But the scrabble game really clicked at the end when the words "kill your demons" becomes spelled out. Genius and funny at the same time! Is Jon crazy? Is this all legit? Great development.

However, after that it appears the script was finished in a hurry. It ends quickly. The writing is looser. A stronger ending would have helped the whole script a lot.

But I like this. Very creative take on the premise and on this type of paranoid crazy person story in general.

Ooh - definitely one of my top five!  Forgive the truncated review, but here are a few notes.  Very well written, great writer's voice.  Just a few polishes I'd personally add:

Though not standard, LOVE the title page (kind of makes me suspect who it might be, before even reading a line)

p. 1 delves or divvies?

p. 2 Shakespeare reference- cool!

P 2 Extra space before giant crucified

p. 3 Ready to give me what I got coming?  Ooooo -  nice foreshadowing!

Jon's VO and voice masterfully written!  Kudos!

Maybe some last line from both a dying Jon and the triumphant Bishop.

Oh... and I just read the other reviews. I agree with Pia that having Jon be a BIT delusional might make things even more pressing.  Is he right - or terribly wrong?

I LOVE the cover page letter style too! Why can't I ever figure out how to do stuff like that. And, to those who get flustered by stuff like that are not with the times as far as screenwriting goes.

Really liked the title page but I'm sure most wont.

As for the story, well I liked it.  Jon's paranoia about Bishop Tom had me guessing as to whether there was any truth in it...and still does.  The ending had me wondering it that's how it really happened?  Did Tom really stop the gun from firing or was it Jon's imagination again?  Maybe I'm reading too deep.

I did wonder if the fact Jon barely responds to Tom might be seen as odd by Tom himself and Agatha?  He talks to 'us' but rarely to Tom when asked questions?

I also liked how you didn't force this to be longer, you didn't add filler to get the page count higher.

Overall, I enjoyed this.

Kill your Demons

The VOs work. The introvert journey of Jon is interesting to follow. Although I think two or three dialogue blocks less, in the middle, could be better. Jon's last decision, between just staying away from the bishop or indeed go try killing him as he does isn't so clear to me. So, perhaps it's better to go on a bit earlier, so that the audience doesn't call it into question why he faces this demon that he's same time describing that detailed in biblical manner.

The visual climax is the best part anyway, liked all of it there.

B

Nice noir feel here. Writer knows his job. It was building up pretty well and I was wondering how it would end.

Ending was ok but I felt like it needed something with more oomph. What that might be I don't know but well written and a cool little take on the challenge

I'm with Pia on this one.  This is solid writing, probably the best I've read so far of all the entries. It's very visual, even with all the voice overs. It's one I could see filmed in some grainy tones.  A lot of dark images.  The only problem in it would be the SFX you'd have to do with the tongue, but that's a fairly easy thing to address, I think.

My only problem with this is the ending - as others have mentioned, I'm not quite sure what happened with Jon. I don't think the Bishop shot him, so I don't know why Jon fell to the floor looking at the gun. I assume he dies shortly thereafter based on the line "his final visual". If you can just clean that ending up, I think you have a real winner here.

Oh, and I loved the title page.  There is nothing wrong with having something that stands out like that, especially in today's world.

My scores (out of 5)
Concept: 5.0
Story: 5.0
Character: 4.5
Dialogue: 4.5
Writing: 5.0
Overall: 4.8

Good Job!
Gary

Horatio Miles,

Overall, I felt a little let down by this. It was building up pretty nicely and then the end felt rushed. Far from a bad script, it just didn't deliver what I thought it was going to. Also, personally, I would dial back the VO. There's a lot of it here, some works, a lot doesn't.

Not bad though.

Good luck,

Glenn.

Funny how we are all so different. This one got one out of only two recommend from me.

Quoted from Pia Funny how we are all so different. This one got one out of only two recommend from me

Aha... me thinks me knows who wrote this