Nicely written, good characterisation and easy to follow. This seemed more like the opening scenes to a feature, as it didn’t go anywhere and you pretty much covered ever zombie cliché in the book but it was slick and fulfilled the criteria of the OWC quite nicely.

I like how you put in little bits of humour in the dialogue and the zombie falling over like a Mr Bean zombie at the back of the ambulance was funny.  

So low points for originality but high points for everything else, great effort.

-Mark

This was a pretty fun zombie script, although it seems like only about half of it featured a vehicle. The ending veered off into the house and then into cornfield.

You definitely nailed the suspense though.

I enjoyed the writing for the most part. Very crisp and easy to follow. Not a fan of how you just kinda dropped "zombie" Javier on us at the end. Surely you could have described his physical condition a bit.

Pretty sure I know who wrote this one.

Really solid effort here. I enjoyed it, just think more of it should have taken place in a vehicle.

Not bad. I especially liked the first 1/3 of it. Very creepy and suspenseful with the bodybag starting to move in the back of the ambulance. After that it became a little more predictable.

My biggest issue with this script was Earl and Greta. I'm guessing a young person wrote this. Nothing wrong with their names, but they have sort of an old fashioned ring to them. Nothing wrong with that either, but they are in their 60s. That's not THAT old IMO. People that are around 60 today grew up during the hippie era. These two sound more like they are in their 80s to me. They shuffle around. They recently got introduced to modern phones and miss landlines. Seriously, these two really do sound more like they are in their 80s. Nowadays, people that are in their 60s are active and fit and with it. At least the ones I know.

Other than that, good job!  

FIRST RESPONDERS

Code JAVIER (30s) fiddles with the radio dial.

This must be an old ambulance... wouldn't it be a digital radio? This is the second script I've read with a radio dial. I haven't seen a dial in at least 10 years. Now it's all touch screen.

So these zombies have superhuman strength? Struck me as weird the old guy being dragged into the ambulance. I've always associated zombies with being pretty weak and vulnerable. Their success lies in numbers. Just one, a female at that, yanking a fully grown man into an ambulance seems off genre to me.


If I'm commenting on the story that means the writing is good, so well done with that.

The action was well done, and I liked the suspense in the first sequence, but then it gets repetitive in the following sequences. This was well written, but it's your standard Rise of the Zombies story.

For a change, I'd like to see a character come up with a new way to kill the undead (or does that term apply exclusively to vampires?). Perhaps Christian and Javier initially think the woman is alive, and one of them slaps an oxygen mask over her face before she can do any damage. And the body explodes. That may be silly, but I'd like to see something new in a zombie flick.

You scored in all the right areas - the right tone, literate writing, great descriptions, tight dialogue. But Zombies.  That road has been used so often it has ruts in it.  You didn't turn anything on its head.  Granted -you didn't marry a tired premise to mediocre execution either.  But this is natural talent, people work a long time to write something as cinematic as this.  That said, I liked it... I'm just not gushing over it. -Andrea.

Thanks to everyone who read and reviewed this.

By far the most common comment was on how unoriginal this was. Yup, I did warn you all what I wrote was nothing special! And you're all correct, there's very little here that is original.

What I wanted to do was explore how first responders would react to a zombie apocalypse they didn't know was coming. How they would actually be partially responsible for the spreading of zombies because of ignorance. It's just a different perspective on the established zombie fare, and there's probably a story in there somewhere but I didn't have time to dig for it.

Instead, I focused on the writing, which I'm happy with, and it seems everyone else was too.

Jeff - I will always use INT/EXT any time the production needs to control both the interior and exterior of a scene. It's necessary for filming. As for the ambulance pics, not everything is on google, apparently. I've seen many ambulances with direct access from the driver cab to the rear. A friend of mine is an ambulatory transport paramedic and his rig has access to the back from the cab. Maybe it's a Canadian thing.

Zack - did you really know it was me?

Pia - You aren't old at all, and neither are Earl and Greta. They're country old, their bodies are worn down from hard work, especially poor Earl. Greta is, well, not the brightest tack in the box.

Dustin - Nice job spotting the radio dial. It was a deliberate choice, it's more visual and the static is more ominous that watching a digital radio just skip stations. It also worked, in my mind, to suggest this small town gets by on old and run down equipment. Kind of like Earl and Greta with the phone.