Ste,

In general, I don't like supers that talk about video evidence and unknown acts of killers in the future. I'd much rather hear it as  a VO by one of the characters a la Vincent Price's classics. After rereading your short, I realize I didn't know what the hell I was talking about.

Forget about it!

Gary

Hey Ste, congrats on completing a script for the OWC.

Here are my general thoughts, followed by a few notes I took as I read.

Like others have said, this is indeed a brutal, depressing script.  There really isn't any story here and no characters either...I mean no characters we can relate with because we don't know anything about any of them.  And I think that's the biggest flaw here.

People say all the time how horror...or actually, I guess I'm talking about torture porn movies, don't have a story and don't have characters, which I disagree with...most of the time.  This, however, is a perfect example of what you get when you don't have a story.  All we have here is violence.

Some of it is good, but alot of it is taking place off camera, which is a pet peeve of mine when dealing with violent horror movies. If you're going to imply it, you might as well show it, as the effect is much stronger, assuming the effects themselves can be pulled off properly.

It's a completely unforgiving script and I appreciate that very much, but based on the utter lack of story and character, it doesn't work for me when it's all said and done, and that's too bad, because I feel like you could have pulled this off with a bit more effort.  You had plenty of pages to spare.  Maybe you ran out of time, started late, or just said "Fuck it".  I don't know.

Here are some notes...

Your opening line has a lonely orphan in it.  There are several throughout, but I see page length wasn’t an issue, so it’s no biggie, but something you may want to pay attention to in the future.

I personally do not like the way you used all these SUPERS here, but maybe it’s just me.

Interesting that you chose to set this in 2009, as opposed to now.

Not to sure about the use of a hidden camera POV, as we don’t know there are any hidden cameras at this point, meaning, on film, it would come across as odd, IMO.  We’ll see where it goes.  EDIT - We never see or find out where these hidden or unhidden cameras are feeding to, do we?  Meaning, I think it's a random detail with no payoff.

Samantha’s dialogue on page 2 should be OS, as she’s not in this scene.

I personally do not like the asides you’re throwing out quite frequently.

I do not like the use of “-“ and “- -“ on page 3 at all.  Not even sure what you’re after with these.

I don’t like the last SUPER at all.

Good effort here Ste!  Hope all is well.

"NOBODY KNOWS WHY THE KILLINGS STARTED THAT NIGHT, OR WHY THEY STOPPED OR MORE IMPORTANTLY, IF THEY’LL START AGAIN..." - borrowing from you an this is indeed what you were shooting for, this is the true summary of the script for me. Nobody also knows why them, why not other people, why in that house...

I don't generally like gore, blood and no substance to back it up. But I imagine those who do would enjoy the script.

The writing was a little informal for my taste. Overall it's well written (which is another thing) it's just a bit informal for me.

Hi Stephen,

Really liked the opening page. Written really well. Captures a nice atmosphere.
The rest continues in a similar vein to most torture horror scenes which although I thought was written nicely, didn't really do anything vastly different.
Not saying I thought it was bad, just was kind of expecting a twist of some kind considering the camera angle/ audience participation from behind the wall.
On the plus side, it was violent, read quick and has the possibilities of leading in other directions.

All in all, pretty good gory stuff!

Malc

Firstly, I just want to say I am pleased that someone finally went for a script without a wheelchair. Don was quite clear in his criteria for the OWC and nowhere does it say that a wheelchair had to be in it. It is not even a matter for director intepretation, if the guidelines were for a character in a wheelchair then Don would have used the word character. Instead Don used the word actor and it would be incredibly discriminatory for anyone to suggest that wheelchair bound actors can only play characters in a wheelchair, as long as they cannot walk then they can play any character. Why so many writers seem to be lacking imagination when it comes to the criteria for this OWC is a complete surprise to me to be honest.

I think you have nailed the OWC criteria here.

For the story... Not for me I am afraid, I am one of those old school guys who do not consider torture porn to be part of the horror genre. Each to his own I guess, of course many do think of this style as horror. I would have preferred some character and story to go along with the weak plot.

But what you have is well written, I like the writing style, your inventive use of shots. The hidden camera is fine and while asks questions you never get round to answering is a nice way to break up the scene and at least gets us to ask the question.

It's a shame about the story because the writing deserved so much better.

Though I think you did a great job on the atmosphere and gore,  this script has lots of style.  But it's completely lacking substance. There's not a story here and you even admit it in your last super.

Despite the fact that you wrote this well, it seemed more like a trailer than anything else.   This needs to be couched in some sort of story in order for it to work.  

Aren't there FOUR characters? Masked Man, Samantha, Ryan, and Josh?

Anyway, I need to know more about the characters to care for them. To me they are just characters used to be killed off to show the gore and horror.

You also need to show us who the Masked Man is, and why he did the killings. Although you stated it at the end "nobody knows why the killing started", we, the audience need to know because it's something that we're trying to relate to or sympathize with. Right now, these are just random killings that didn't make much sense to us.

I'm not sure the SUPERs in the beginning worked. They didn't do much for the story either.

I also didn't understand what was going on in the end. So the Masked Man just keep on killing people for Ryan to watch? Don't know why though.


Herman

SB,

Thought I posted this already. Obviously one of my more lubricated moments.

The writing's pretty good, I found myself wanting more description as some of it seemed hard to picture.

Less use of 'walks' and the like would improve it.

The odd camera direction doesn't bother me, I imagine they'd help as you've one in the script.

I think the only letdown was your final super.

Extremely violent compared to other scripts here. But then again, it is horror. It is missing something though, something that ties it together better.

You're writing and ideas are good. Just needed to be fitted better into a story, otherwise it comes across as more a series of clips.

R xo

These are notes I made as I read without looking at the other comments:

Pg 1 – I like the visual start and the SUPERs are effective. I wonder if perhaps you could sharpen up the language in them to make them shorter and more punchy.

“Black. Only the sound of a distant female SCREAM. Bloodcurdling.” – Obviously it’s a style choice, but for me the way this line is structured is a bit awkward. Perhaps “Black. A distant bloodcurdling female SCREAM.” flows better.

Pg 2 – “- what the FUCK is going on?” – A line like this seems to invite the reader to ask the same thing.

The only thing you’ve said about Samantha in her intro is that she’s pretty and since that’s presumed for all actresses it’s not giving us any information.

Pg 3 – “Screams as if the nightmare in her head stared back
at her.” – Creative description, but it doesn’t mean anything to me.

There’s been a lot of screaming in this by characters that haven’t had the chance to develop. The problem with that is it’s difficult to care about what happens to them.

Pg 5 – When Josh turns up, doesn’t that take you over your actor count?

Pg 7 – Establishing a circular pattern is a solid story telling device.

Overall you’ve got some graphic stuff in this and it is a solid horror story. I guess the genre doesn’t require it, but for me I’d like to get a better sense of the characters and why this is all happening.

Philip

liked the script mate, good old gore by the barrel load, my knee caps still hurt from reading.

mojo