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Reynard: Doors & Rings by Dark Stanley - Short, Horror - An abusive husband pushes his wife to extreme action only to have him pursue her return from a world he belongs in. (PG) - pdf, format
I like that this started out with some action. We get a quick feel for Marcus and Lauren.
I dug the initial underworld stuff. I could see it being filmed in a very surreal and trippy way. Actually reminds me of the dream sequences in the MAX PAYNE video game. At page 5 though, Reynard becomes Dark Lauren and also becomes Renard and I’m not sure whether that’s a misspelling or intentional. Capping the intro of these new “entities” may have saved me some confusion.
I like the gist of the ending, with Lauren being given a fresh start and Marcus being trapped in Otherworld Purgatory. But I’ll admit I got lost around the time Dark versions of characters started appearing. At one point Marcus yells, “You lying bastards!” But I was never clear what they promised. Or what he wanted. He seemed equally interested in finding his wife and getting his hands on Reynard (why, I’m not sure). But of course that’s the challenge in a nutshell. How to communicate all that. Unfortunately I couldn’t grasp it, and maybe it's just me.
So pretty good bookends to the story, a nice surreal otherworld, but also some cloudiness in the plot. All in all not bad for a week's work.
Now, do I dare.... Yes I do.
CONGRATS on completing the OWC! (and to the valediction nazis)
Okay, Let's get one thing straight. Early on there's way to much overuse of the cutoff to different sub-locations, and done incorrectly. It got on my nerves fast.
Quoted Text
He steps back, BAM! kicks open the door then enters the...
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT Fists clenched, his focused attention scans from bed to window to closet to...
INT. BATHROOM - NIGHT Lauren rests still beneath the bathtub water.
The problem is that the HOUSE is the main location. Therefore, you won't need INT for every one of them. NIGHT isn't needed because the action should be from room to room, in the moment. It was constant and took me right out. It should also be noted that Marcus scans the bedroom but does not enter the bathroom.
The Trick Treaters at the beginning don't have much to do. They are there only to establish Halloween night and nothing more. Would have liked to see them run about the house. And what's up with Fox Face? He's there and then he's gone. Marcus pursues. and pursues..he gets angry. He flies into a rage of epic preportions.
I don't know. Might be just me. Feels a bit clunky. And I didn't give two hoots about Marcus. Sorry.
Quite like the LOGLINE and mystery of the title. Let's see...
Some nice writing displayed and within reason more likely to be filmed than others will be.
Almost I sense the writer of this one.
Got to say it did lose me a touch and felt a bit repetitive by the end, rings and mirrors and dark versions etc
As absuer is a good character to use and you open late which is sound. I found his blaming of her a little strong and perhaps this could be blended with more confusion. Why did you do this etc they often have little conenction to what they do, as you convey, but here the blame feels a little heavy
So, the exchange of rings swaps them? I would have to re read that as I don't recall any change.
The surreal baby ? It would add tension but is never resolved, well to me anyway
So, an abuser leads to his wife killing herself and Reynard - Foxman was that the same - and the ghosts seek revenge. They are successful because...they get an exchange of rings?
So, sound effort, but like many OWC just needs a few tweaks, IMO
The Elevator Most Belonging To Alice - Semi Final Bluecat, Runner Up Nashville Inner Journey - Page Awards Finalist - Bluecat semi final Grieving Spell - winner - London Film Awards. Third - Honolulu Ultimate Weapon - Fresh Voices - second place IMDb link... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm7062725/?ref_=tt_ov_wr
Had an interesting Dark Fantasy tone. You could imagine it looking good on screen.
Never personally had much of an idea of what was at stake or how anything worked.
Not quite enough of anything in particular at the moment. Not particularly scary, or emotional. Marcus is essentially a dis-likable character, which makes in hard to want him to win, so that limits any tension in the Otherworld.
Would probably work better with Lauren as the main character, having to escape the Dark Marcus.
Not very easy to follow (partly because of the Reynard / Renard typos throughout, had to make sure it you hadn't introduced a new character when RENARD first appeared.)
Also - and I wonder if this will be a theme of the entries - the requirement of one character being allowed to speak means that some of the dialogue feels pretty unnatural and exposition-y. Mainly talking about page 2 there.
BUT the tone is great, it drips with confusion and surrealism. Nice work there. Bit of a paradox: while it's an enjoyable reading experience, I think visually I had a tricky time following the images you were describing. So atmosphere won out over clarity, you may want to readdress that.
Also liked the twist ending. Particularly the closing image. That was excellent.
The transition to Marcus killing Lauren was a little abrupt for me - I would have liked a little more lead in and build up to this - mind you with a limited page count it's no easy task to get all of the story onto the page.
Nice horror tone to the script but I found the repetition a bit tiresome and found I was scanning a little too much. I guess all the repetition is a horror/ground-hog device but I had a bit of a hard time with it.
'supporates into rage' - suppurates?
I don't recognize that word - is it a typo and meant to be 'suppurates' in that case 'fester' might be a more accessible word imh. Sometimes the simple word works best. I'm all for giving us something unfamiliar - we're in the 'words' business after all but I'm not sure it worked - least for me. Apologies if it appears I'm being pedantic.
It's not bad I just have to wonder if it could have been executed in a more streamlined way. Great idea, though.
Well, we all knew it was bound to happen and it happened here first. I wasn't able to get through this completely and started skimming on Page 4, finally throwing in the towel on Page 5.
Dialogue is not well done. Transitions not well done. Writing is awkward throughout. Story is hard to follow. The repetition is irritating.
I read this twice and I'm still not sure what I read. While I think you have the mind games down packed, the story is just a little too loose. I wasn't sure exactly what was going on.
The best thing for this story would be to turn the mood down a little bit and make the story a little more cohesive.
I think a good job has been done with the atmosphere here. If a filmmaker wanted to do something cool and out there with some cinematography and editing this could be interesting. I found it a tad difficult to follow as well around page 5.
It feels like the writer wanted to make this PG and in the end the dialogue suffered a lot from it. The script is hard to take seriously with the current cheesy lines that Marcus utters out. Can't buy him as an abusive husband, he seems almost harmless.
I'd have to agree with the other reviews that this one suffers from a lack of clarity. Even if most of the story is hallucinatory, the reader still needs to be able to grasp what's going on. I couldn't figure out what Reynard the fox man or the ghost children had to do with Lauren's plight. I'm sure this script made perfect sense in the writer's mind, but something got lost on the page.
Wow I am really confused. I started drifting then found myself skimming and I'm sorry I could not get into this one. I didn't care for any of the characters in this sorry to say. I think there is a good story in there somewhere though and it's worth a rewrite or more work. Good for completing the owc.