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Sluglines miss periods after INT./EXT. and I dislike you constantly avoid standard time references as DAY and NIGHT.
P3 and I'm in. I found the very first page is hindering your script from moving forward. He should be quicker within his song, which is entertaining.
You're funny and charming, good dialogues, but I'm not sure if I read the right genre here.
Hm, now it switched very late and in an odd way. I see no balance of the concept when he suddenly beats a kid, Red, and checks her innards since we've watched a completely different atmosphere up to P 5 out of 7. The violence was used in an odd way here for my taste. I'm not sure if the audience would like such a sudden switch of tone.
I like the portrayal of Jack. That's a very good decision. The OCD personality with a violent temper, combined with his happy-go-lucky rhyme humming was very effective at making him feel almost dimensional, as much as this kind of fairy tale character can be made that way. So I want to emphasize that was truly very well done. The hardest thing is to make a main character we want to travel a few pages with, and Jack is pretty much that kind of character, though of course we would need more development in a longer story.
As an OWC it's effective. Quick and to the point.
As for storytelling, it kind of gets an incomplete. There needs to be more. There's aren't realy any narrative elements. There is no antagnoistic force, internal or external, no struggle, no dilemma, no conflict, no story goal. Red gets made into sausage, and other than the fact that she is an innocent little girl, we're kind of unmoved. If Little Boy Blue brought the sky down on the house at the end and killed Jack, we wouldn't care about that either. The story didn't make us feel anything at all, or stimulate any thought.
But it could! Jack is the beginning of a well-drawn character. And as I said, that's never easy.
Maybe if we saw Jack struggling over killing Red we would care more. But like this it feels like a more violent Bugs Bunny cartoon where Bugs actually kills Porky Pig.
I hope that is not taken harshly, because for an OWC, the writer did fine, it's a nice contribution...thanks! And it does have the potential to be improved, so IMO, good work.
Good idea with giving Jack OCD and anger issues, that turned out well, but I would like a bit more insight into how messed up he really is, to make him killing Red more believable. Seemed more like a spilt second decision to kill her rather than him intending to do so all along. Perhaps she can be killed due to Jack's OCD or anger. killing the three pigs then going on to kill another human being is quite a step.
When I saw Little Red Riding Hood in the story I didn't know what to think. But then when she starts to mention everything that's been going on, I started to get an appreciation for what you were doing. I liked that you incorporated different stories into one.
It's not very suspenseful in my opinion because you know right away where it's going when he speaks to Red, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.
The whole "view on..." isn't needed. What else would I be viewing? Perhaps there are people out there who don't really mind that. I just find it unnecessary.
There's things I liked about this script. I like the setup. Having Jack as OCD and using the original nursery rhyme to help him go about his daily business was perfect. I also liked the little nods to other nursery rhymes. Good writing on display, easy to follow action and I could visualize the scenes.
Things I didn't like. Jack's psychotic turn was out of left field, too out of left field for me. It was like you suddenly realised you had to have some horror in this script but if Jack was such a psycho I doubt he would have such friends as Red and not be locked up by now.
I know this is fairy tale territory but you need to make me believe it and I didn't. Also, the little nods to other nursery rhymes became a bit annoying once Jack left his house. Until then, they were nice little background nods. Then they became in your face a bit and felt thrown in.
A pass for me but I appreciate the effort and enjoyed the read.
-Mark
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I've yet to read any comments, but I can't wait to see what others have said! Be it my dirty mind, but I was thinking dirty things as Jack fed Puss a sausage! Forgive me. I kinda liked this one. You intro'd a couple other fairy tales in there, and I don't believe that was against the rules. As long as it works, and this does. I was thinking it wouldn't, however, when Jack killed Red. But then he made sausage out of her, which was cool, because his intention was to get sausages in the first place. So yeah, this worked, was quick and clean. Good job!
A mixing of tales which isn't bad, but the rhyming got tedious. I would prefer Jack simply stop with it at some point. That's me. Not a bad piece of work.
Good description of the disordered personality of the psycho Jack. Well written and good structure, but no tension and no twist. The story didn't really schocked, cause one's know that Jack is going to harm her. But it is a really enjoyable story.