Loves Me Not by James Whale and Boris Karloff - Short, Horror - A hopeless romantic desperately searches for the perfect girlfriend. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Well things got suddenly very dark. Was sitting here with my family. Good that I didn't read it out loud.

Thanks for this little creepy  "love" story

I liked this one. When I first saw the page length I wondered how you can make a love story with one of the deadly sins as a theme and make it work. Everything I thought up seemed impossible to boil to under 10 pages, but you did it and it works.

This is a good horror story you have here.  When he kept repeating " She loves me not" I could almost hear some creepy music playing.

Good work.

Well this was creative and gory.

It reminds of Human Centipede and Jeepers creepers at the end.

Good entry, kept me intrigued

Page 1.   Perhaps use a different word to describe the houses rather than various. Something that will paint a better picture of the neighborhood?

Not quite sure what the first visuals add to this. The neighborhood and the garbage truck. Why not start with the restaurant?

I know, I think, what you're doing here, but I think there are too many repetitive turns. Maybe cut a couple of the scenes, so it doesn't seem that way.

I'm sure I'm just a dense old person, but after having read this twice, I still don't quite get the garbage truck significance.

Anyway, I love that you're not afraid to take a a very dark turn, I just think it needs a rewrite to bring it to its full potential.  

These are always tough for me because horror and gore are just not my thing.

The opening with the garbage truck - not sure I get it - a lot of real estate setting this up with very little payoff.

I don't really know anything about Victor's life - confused to whether or not the first lady in the house was his wife (why else would he be in the house in the morning at the table). Was he rich or poor? Is he a mechanic or a professor? etc. There needs to be some more work on setting his bearings - who is he?

Okay - thought the love me - love me not thing was a chilling device - cicely done.

So, I think people who enjoy horror will love this. I don't - but I appreciate the effort in the genre - I think you will score well since my tastes are really not in line with most folks.

Nice work - just give me more on Victor.

Creepy stuff for sure.  I enjoyed how you told the story using essentially two lines of repeated dialog.  That's a unique technique.  Nice job.

That was hmm disturbing to say the least.

It's a very neat script, a good horror. Very terrifying at that.

It got a little repetitive for me in the middle - but that's due to the way you decided to tell the story - no dialog, no appropriate character development etc.
Which is great in it's own way btw - the fact you chose to do it that way and managed, I mean.

Nice story

I love grisly horror so this was right up my street! I was thinking early on in the story "is this guy gonna make his own human sex doll out of all these women?" And so i had a great big smile on my face come the end! Reminded me straight away of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. And yes, i too loved the idea of only having two bits of dialogue. Couldn't fault it, well done. Would love to see more of this genre!  

Nice little story packed into 5 pages.
Congrats,
Cindy

Dark and giritty, and I guess kinda a love story

I can't quite say I enjoyed it but it worked for me.

At this length it's a little one dimensional so I'd consider expanding it a little.

Writer

Bloody loved it. A serial killer born from constant rejection by women, hateful and driven to create his own girlfriend that will "love" him.

The V.O saying way more than the words used, the repetition of the garbage truck and the reveal of him disposing of the unwanted body parts that way was great.

Also liked how you circled back to the dates from the opening, to show that afterwards, they were victims.

Chef's kiss from me

I like the simple, gruesome structure of this. I expect that some horror filmmaker will scoop this up.

I was expecting some sort of complication, like a woman loving this weirdo back. What if he got stuck on "She loves me," and he couldn't get the woman to "She loves me not"? That might drive him over the edge--but he's already there.

Almost a perfect script, but I have two complaints.
First, you introduced too many victims which may confuse the reader and also be too much when casting. And I don't see why is it necessary to have those you mentioned even though he was compiling a Frankenstein girlfriend.
Second, you didn't setup the twist properly for maximum effect. You make us sympathize more with Vector. Show how the dates were mean to him and rejected him for no fair reason. This will mislead us and make us root for him. Which will make the twist even more powerful.

Smart use of simple voice over instead of dialogue. It doesn't matter what's said, all that matters is his dashed hope. I get the sense that these were all first dates or approaching strangers, so I imagine they all picked up on something off about him, and rightfully so.

That's where I have an issue with this. It drops us right into the base fear women have about dating men. Reject a man and he might rape or kill you. I'm not a fan of perpetuating stereotypes, but in this case it seems there's something clearly wrong with him so the victims were all correct to turn him down and they still died for it. If the ending wasn't so horribly tragic it wouldn't work for me, but it does. The payoff is worth being unsettled.

The victims and the end result don't match up though. Too many women were introduced, it should have been kept to what was needed for that Frankenstein "perfect woman." The return to each of those women after being rejected to show him murdering them works well, it should have been kept to only those women. Emo chick, soccer mom, college girl muddied the waters and broke the flow.

I like dark and disturbing. Wrath is evident. The love story isn't really there, it's more the pursuit of love with a twisted solution to the problem, but I'm fine with it.