Effective execution dulled by an overwhelmingly average premise.
Any step to make the story more personal would have worked wonders.
Old woman holds her dying husband at Tony's feet, parting words, etc.
She rises and verbally berates the cocky Tony.
Maybe Tony had a gypsy deadbeat dad and she strikes a chord, something, anything!
Tony becomes enraged and lights her up, curse spit at him before she dies.
Any tweaks like that would have really up the interest for me.
Still, playing it as it lays, this one has a lot more yardage than most.

E.D.

I can't add much to what's been said, but I did like it.
Liked the unknown POV. A tad predictable.  
I don't know enough about folklore to know if this fit the challenge.
Nicely done for a one week exercise, and can easily be expanded upon.

Jason

The title has a grindhouse feel.

Why number the first page. I know that's stupid, but the norm.

Pretend you have to pay a dime for every word you use and you are poor. Does it matter what he used to light his cigarette? Is it essential for the plot.

Your dialog doesn't look like it's formatted right.

Sounds like you are just squeezing in slang to sound native.

It's drag me to hell and snatch, Snatch Me To Hell. Just playing. This is a nice short and too ridiculously expensive for a short. Fire? I know what you are thinking, why not just show the aftermath. It's hard to make look real and it would be during the day. Fire = Ridiculously Expensive.

Certainly atmospheric, lively writing -- could be, visually, a very dramatic film -- nor much of a story, though, more of a cautionary tale.  

SPOILERS
Don't mess with sick, old people.

Solid writing on this one - but there wasn't anything striking about the script either.  

The story was a standard horror tale -  with nothing that really stood out, or had particular character or charm.

Good pacing, competent writing - but it just didn't "do anything" for me.  But 2 out of 3 isn't bad...!

Cheers,

--WV

Pros

Bold and fun. Well written, fast paced and entertaining.

Thugs dialogue was good.

Cons

Forced to agree with others that this felt slightly old hat. It's like a cross between Snatch and Drag Me to Hell. It needs to find an identity of its own somehow. Be well worth trying to take it from a good story, to an excellent one.

For the sake of the challenge, changing the Gypsies to Irish, rather than Romany, travellers would make more sense.

Hey Steve, sorry for not getting to this until now...but here I am.

I guess compared to the majority of poorly written scripts, this is pretty decent, but it didn't do anything for me, as I've seen and read this story many, many times, and you didn't add anything remotely original to make it feel fresh.

I know you're a UK guy, so maybe that's why alot of the prose seems off or awkward.  Some of the word choice also feels odd to me, but hey, no biggie.

Many have complimented your dialogue, but it didn't work for me.  Maybe that's cause none of the characters had any life...I don't know, it all just seemed very generic and unrealistic to me.

Definitely not bad for an OWC though.

One more thing I wanted to add...

Love the old burned up Gypsy's last line...

"Scream for me." - Reminds me of Bruce Dickinson on Maiden's classic "Live After Death".  Nice way to finish...

Fire is the hardest thing to make look good on screen with a small budget.  I find it's best to avoid it like the plague.

I liked the payoff more than the entirety of the script leading up to it.  There was little distinction (other than screentime) between the 4 thugs.  The only reason we know Tony is the "leader" is because you tell us, but they really all sound pretty much like the same guy.  There's no one to root for in the script, and I don't think you make us hate Tony and the gang enough.  The beginning dialogue seemed to drag a bit for me.  It wasn't bad, but it really didn't offer up much as far as characterization, just some standard exposition.  

Overall this could have been far worse, but I also feel that it could have been far better.  It kind of settled somewhere in the middle.