Bugman by Yves Vrancken (movemycheese)  (OWC name - Mirrim)  - Short, Thriller - There is a reason our parents told us that being nosy is bad.   August '07 One Week Challenge entrant. - pdf, format

This one was actually pretty good. The concept is a bit unoriginal with the whole slasher deal, but it was actually good.



SPOILERS



- Dang, I thought Ginna was the smart girl of the group but once her time was up she became the stupidest one.

- Kind of ironic how the bugman gets 'owned' by a beehive...since he is a bugman and all...though I think that the beehive was a bit weird, I guess...I don't know what I'm trying to say so if you're confused or whatever, you're not the only one. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I didn't really like the idea of the kids getting away by knocking a beehive off the tree. I don't know.

- The ending was great. That was a good pun. Hehe.


So yeah, good job and all and I really liked it.

Sean

This screamed bad teen flick, some of the jokes fell flat and some of the lines called for constant 'You have to be shitting me'. With a bit more camp I could possibly see this as one of those IFC shorts, not to be taken seriously of course but as a thriller it failed hard to me I found the main characters annoying and hackneyed infact bugman really was the only enjoyable aspect of the script to me I liked the character. But that's pretty much all I did like. Um, good news being I thought your format is good and I think you have a lot more potential it just seems and I too suffered with the same problem, that you rushed to finished not to win but just to finish and it came off a bit sloppy. 3/10. But I am interested in you as a writer and look foward to more.

This was a slasher with no real body count, plain and simple.  I was waiting for Bugman to make my day and ask if one of the girls was a size 14, but no luck.

The dialogue could have been much better through the use of contractions.  "He is going to kill us" just doesn't flow, and there were a lot of lines like that.

Despite being low on the thriller scale, the story was alright and you did a decent job of incorporating the boat.

Hey Miriam,

This reminded me of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre/Friday the 13th without the gore. Some things were unbelievable such as Ginny staying behind for a swiss knife. I think she would rather prefer to run away with her friends. The thrill factor was low and concept conventinal.

Hope this helps,
Gabe

Premise:  Teenages come across a weird guy in a houseboat. It's the sort of thing that has been done before. It could have used a bit more motivation from the bugman to come across as being a bit more original.  5/10

Relation to Theme: Good use of the houseboat. You actually gave it a little life and history. Not much of a thriller though, more of a slasher. 5/10

Story.

Short on originality, but well-written nonetheless. The ending was satisfying but I would have liked to have seen more of the bugmans motivation. 6/10

This was a fairly typical slasher type. It was better written than the average so at first I thought it might be someone poking fun at the genre. Later, it took the standard slasher route.

Why would a swim suit be so strange and item to have when camping by a lake?

It was insane for Ginny to throw the gun at Bugman -- haha. I was thinking, let’s see; the guy just shot one of you; you got the gun away from him; you threw it back. Not too bright.

It had a lot of clichés. The girl refuses to run when she has the chance. Another girl falls down and sprains her ankle.

Ryan sure was confident of his aiming abilities. The beehive was awful convenient. Maybe they could have run across it on the way to the camp site. That would have foreshadowed it and made it less convenient to have around later.

Pretty standard slasher plot wise although it is above average writing for such a story.


Breanne

I thought this had quite a bit going for it until the slashing started.  Then it kind of went downhill into the valley of lost cliches.  I'm not sure what to suggest for them to do with bugman but it certainly isn't what they did.  

The dialogue  could really benifit from contractions.  It was actually distracting.

The bee hive should should have been foreshadowed.

It wasn't terrible, especially not the begining, but it could have been much better.

I agree with most of the other comments. Above average overall, but the detractors are just too much to ignore. 'In which bag did I put my knife?' ?? By now I'm sure you know exactly how that sounds. You did great with the space though. I'm interested to see what you can do without the page restrictions. Good job.     -MsN

Nice use of setting, and well-described.  Though not a fan, I liked the consistency of saying the spits out the characters and that they drip from the ten, keeping a water theme going.  At first I thought you might be using the literary trick of the unreliable narrator to build tension about the Bugman until the very end by making his threat built up by the characters, so I was very curious to see where this would go.  Then Bugman had an itchy trigger finger and became another killer.  As others have said, the beehive needed to be foreshadowed (the old chestnut about putting a gun in a drawer in Act One if you're using it in Act Three), and I laughed at "I twisted my ankle."  Maybe Ryan should twist his ankle in the next draft.  And, wow, Ginny was stupid.

Didn't like it.

Like a lot of others have been say this really came off to me like a generic slasher movie that I've seen hundreds of times.

A lot of the jokes didn't work for me, I think the only times I laughed were when one of the characters did something stupid(why did they through the gun back at him?)

The Bugman himself was alright, but also basically generic. You used the boat pretty decently though, hat off to you for that. But overall wasn't thrilled at all.

good  day

Having not read the previous posts I'll dive straight in.

How do we, the viewer, know it's hitting the high 90's?  It would be better to have one of your characters tell/show us this.

Why do they search for the lake, find it and then agree it's too late and head back?

Why'd they not just get in the car?

Loved the final scene.

This is a slasher, the likes of Wrong Turn and the like spring to mind.  I don't really find these stories interesting simply because most slashers have gapping holes in them.  Why do they investigate the boat when their clearly scared by it, wouldn't they just move their camp?  Also creeping round the boat after they find out it's occupied, who'd do that?

The actual writing here was too bad mind but some of the dialogue was boring, mainly numerous guesses as to who the occupant will be.  i don't want to be harsh here but this is nothing new and not really a thriller sorry.

At first, I thought this was going to be a pretty generic slasher script however what these kids end up finding in the boat surprised me. Also surprisingly, Bugman didn't have the image of an imbred redneck serial killer. He was a little more sophisticated. Still, he might as well have been the former considering all he does is chase the kids around with a shotgun. In other words, this was a generic slasher, just with a more innovative theme. I really wish the bugman theme had been taken further. The beehive was a nice touch. Stuff like that, I would have liked to have seen more of.

Everyone else seems to have covered everything. I really don't have much else to say that could be useful to you. It's getting harder to give a unique review to each entry. Anyway, this was alright, I suppose. Not bad but not all that great either. Nevertheless, it fits the specifications of the OWC.

I thought this script took too long to get to the point -- the action. If this was a feature, or even a 30 page short, the slow build might have worked. As it is, it drags.

Other than that, there's little I can say that hasn't already been said. I will say this, though, I like the idea of the bug man. His collection of insects is creepy!

Seth    

This was a clean looking script.  No typos that I could see so that's really good.

In the early part where one of them says, "We should consider going back to our tents, it's getting pretty dark." I thought: the consider part didn't sound like kids talking.

I didn't find anything unusual or spectacular about this one.  

Time and space was wasted on describing the looks of these characters, but it didn't matter.  They were stock teenagers so I think you could plug in anything to work.

For some reason I kept thinking of Scooby Doo when I read this.

I didn't find this one very interesting.  The dialogue seemed flat, the characters not real.

I think it's worthwhile to spend some time with character development.  That's the most important thing.

What dramatic need do the kids have in this?  It seems only that they have some curiosity towards the boat and then "boom" there's Bugman, and he shoots Pete for no reason really.

Try and consider what you can do to increase suspense and add to the complexity of the characters.

Good effort.

Sandra

Thank you all for the reviews.

Originally I had planned to write a story to 'poke fun' at the genre, kinda like Scary Movie. However, I got stuck midway, and decided to go the old-fashioned way, but forgot to change the typically-cliche-two-couples into something different.

The character of Bugman was already in my mind on day one of the contest. Maybe that explains why he is the least boring of the bunch. (I, myself, like his character). I agree that the two couples are rather bland and boring.

Everything until the 'slashing' was done in the first two-three days. I then got seriously stuck about the ending. Couldn't come up with anything, except for a beehive. I figured let's keep it in the bug world then. But yeah, not a good ending.

Again, I want to thank everybody for their words and criticism. I have learned a lot from all this.

P.S. Sorry for the late response here. Was caught up in nasty RL affairs.

Movemycheese.

The Bugman is an excellent character, he has genuine potential. As I said in my very brief review, I'd like to see more of his motivation and his history.

There could be a lot of depth in his desire to record different species and his desire to control life.

He's definitely a character that you should work on and find a better story for.