More or less perfect for what it is. A fun little gotcha with some great final images.

Not my thing, but this could easily be picked up by a team today. Good job.

Once I looked up what in the holy hell "A leaving do" meant things fell into place. Great dialogue here. Especially the beginning when they're basically talking about nothing but you still built in a nice rhythm. Main character had a fun personality quirk, fast paced story, really the whole thing was extremely solid...

Probably a recommend but for now I'm just putting CONSIDER.

Quoted Text Cleethorpes what?

What can I say? I was digging it. Despite some minimalist action and a bit much reliance on wrylies, I quite enjoyed this piece. The reveal about the zombie attack was icing on a fine cake; but even if you didn't have it, I really liked this take on the challenge.

Great work overall - gets a vote from me as one of my faves.

Who wrote this? Awesome piece of work.

It's got a bit of that Hitchcock element with Gareth and his phobia.
I like that Gareth is fighting his fear, thus making the other elements just a little less obvious.
The clicks of door locks, the traffic lights, the car moving through a street past flash mob chaos, that's a beautiful setup.
It was like the tumblers of a lock falling into place.
I read this and I felt confined to the back seat of this cab. I felt the guy's angst, the sweating, the unease...
and the rising zombie madness outside — an initial distraction. Then when the cabbie started bleeding, and the cab ultimately coasted into a sea of the dead — I'm like 'Wow.' Loved that ending, too.

If I have any suggestion, it would be to consider Gareth harboring a secret. Maybe he isn't 'a leaving do.' Maybe he's out on a more daring venture. Maybe he's got an attache case.  
I offer this because it would increase the stakes even more. Just a thought.

Overall, this is one helluva story. Great writing. Spare, but I like spare. What more can I say, but
Click — and out.

Zombies. Okay. Not the most original idea (but what is?) but the added phobia made this different though it ended up the same. The writing is a step above. I wonder what else the writer has done? A few nits. The words supercilious and suppurating  struck me as unnecessarily collegiate. "A leaving do" means what? (I'd like to know so I can rid myself of ignorance.) You sure this wasn't written by Keith Richards?

Sting wrote this! Cool!  

First mistake happens on the first page. Page One is numbered.

No colon after FADE IN

Bold slugs.

"Supercilious." A new word to add to my vocabulary. Thanks.  

New York, LA, or British Times?

"A black cab." I guess that answers my question.

"Revelers." Another new word. Thanks again.

Very British names. Nice.

"Where to[,] mate?" Is Cockney capitalized? My spell check accepts it both ways.

Euston, we have a problem. I had to Google this.

Establishing the titular red light on the first page. Nice! You need a comma, though.

Had to double-check the definition of "curt."

"A leaving do." Is this a British expression? Reads awkward grammatically (American). A laving hairdo?  

P2

RE: "attention" vs. "attentions"...

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/99975/what-is-the-appropriate-usage-of-attentions

The flash mob stuff could be merged into a single paragraph.

We can tell from the dialogue ("Pardon?") that Gareth is confused; parenthetical is unnecessary.

"The leaving do." There's that phrase again.*Googles* *Gets this definition*

P3

Watch those parentheticals. Nine times out of ten, they're unnecessary.

"You okay[,] mate[?]"

"I've got a fear of being locked in."

And a script to exploit it.  

Now we've got that established. Moving on to P4...

"Fuck[']s sake."

"BANG." Where'd the gun come from? Or banging on the windows? Might help to specify.

Ooh. Establishing the horror mood?

Yikes! Whose hand? What's hand?  

P5

Ooh. "An OLD WOMAN in her seventies."

"Purchase" is an orphan.

So Peter intentionally pulls up to the curb?  

"Seat" is an orphan.

Nice use of sound effects.

"Follow" the road.

"You're bleeding." We can see that.

P6

"You okay?" "I'll live." If you're in a horror movie and say that, most likely you won't. Remember Scream?

The traffic lights can be one line.

"Cobbles." Another new word. Thanks again.

P7

Wow! Very vivid descriptions. I can see it in my head.

"Suppurating." Wow, are these real words? Nice.

*POSSIBLE SPOILERS*

"Humanity faded to a shadow." Uh oh. Great way to end page 7.

Last page

Wow. I hope you get a good horror effects guy, someone of Tom Savini's caliber.

Ooh. Scary! Lights out.

Whoa! Recommended! A+

Oooo - a zombie tale! Granted, I figured out what was going on as soon as people started to mob the taxi.

But - a great take on the requirements... and a very nice ending!  )

Cheers,

--Janet (W)

I had trouble following the dialogue on the first two pages. I'm thinking it's because I'm an American. However, a good story here.

Thanks to all who took a read and fed back on the script.

To answer a few points/queries...

The red lights are common on all black cabs in the UK and as someone explained, they activate as soon as the car sets off, but even if you haven't experienced this I think I got across the meaning/mechanism in the script. The title is what it says on a little sign on the taxi door, also the title of an Arctic Monkey's song.

Two clicks at the end, one was the doors unlocking, the other was someone/thing pulling the handle up.

Leaving do, 'do' a Brit expression and given the script is unabashed British then seemed right, normally means party or get together.

Zombies, well they might be, but in my mind they were more infected like in the Crazies as they're not the undead type... how quickly an infection can spread, well it's fiction but things can travel through the body v quickly, hydrogen cyanide in a high dose can kill in under a minute as it spreads through the body. But I'm gonna claim poetic license

The things going on outside were left vague as things seen through the windows of moving vehicles are often just glimpsed, upped the tension too as they know something is going on but not what.

ChrisB, thanks for the thorough read and catching the errors etc, and glad to have expanded your vocab And delighted you liked it so much too.

I'll be going through all the feedback again and doing another polish on the script so thanks to all for taking a read.

Anthony

Quoted from AnthonyCawood Thanks to all who took a read and fed back on the script. To answer a few points/queries... The red lights are common on all black cabs in the UK and as someone explained, they activate as soon as the car sets off, but even if you haven't experienced this I think I got across the meaning/mechanism in the script. The title is what it says on a little sign on the taxi door, also the title of an Arctic Monkey's song. Two clicks at the end, one was the doors unlocking, the other was someone/thing pulling the handle up. Leaving do, 'do' a Brit expression and given the script is unabashed British then seemed right, normally means party or get together. Zombies, well they might be, but in my mind they were more infected like in the Crazies as they're not the undead type... how quickly an infection can spread, well it's fiction but things can travel through the body v quickly, hydrogen cyanide in a high dose can kill in under a minute as it spreads through the body. But I'm gonna claim poetic license The things going on outside were left vague as things seen through the windows of moving vehicles are often just glimpsed, upped the tension too as they know something is going on but not what. ChrisB, thanks for the thorough read and catching the errors etc, and glad to have expanded your vocab And delighted you liked it so much too. I'll be going through all the feedback again and doing another polish on the script so thanks to all for taking a read. Anthony

Anthony,
    Great job.  This was one of my 2 top fav stories.  I really enjoyed it.  For most of these OWC, I just ignore the typos and errors.  I had a few biggies in mine too, and sometimes, you just don't have the time to figure it all out.  One week goes so freaking fast.

Let me know if you write a second version.  I'd love to read a version where you don't have any limitations.  And I can easily see this as the beginning to a movie, or TV series...

I had wondered if they were zombies too.  That seemed to be the common idea of what the infected were, but, I could see either way, even mysticism...

Dan

Many thanks Dan, appreciated and delighted you liked it so much!

I've updated this version for typos etc and will now let it fester for a while before (potentially) playing with it some more!

Anthony

This is a great script and would work very well as a short but I would also recommend considering turning this into a feature. If you could set most (if not all) of the story in the cab this could be a unique and very low budget feature.

Thanks Mark, again delighted you liked it too... yes feature version currently percolating... has to line-up behind a couple of other projects. Watch this space

Red Light has been optioned, one of 8 optioned by the same producer.

Super news. I love this script. I hope it gets the production it deserves.