Hey Lonnie, I saw this was once posted on Talentville and was intrigued by the log line.  I found it here and decided to review it before reading the latest thread posts on it. It appears you've gone on to other projects and are shelving this one.  I made a few notes (up to page 7). Good luck on your other projects. On a rainy day I may finish up the read just for fun because though I didn't get too far, it was a good read.

Page 1.  In your slug you have Christmas Night. Given that the slug appears only to readers, I wonder if you wanted to use a SUPER to have it shown on screen for the audience.

Your previous slug says Christmas night then the following slug says Christmas Day. This leaves me to wonder if the first slug was supposed to be Christmas Eve, or did we travel back in time?

Another confusing thing is you have "Continuous" but we've gone from night to day.

I'd format your slug like this: INT. HOUSE - LIVING ROOM - DAY   Then SUPER  CHRISTMAS DAY

2.  A YOUNG GIRL, 7, cowers...   (your way was pretty, but when you can, keep the white space).

3. ...and a jumbled cacophony of similar commands from the others. (you can probably lose this line)

cautiously close in.

CAPTION: Earlier.   (Ok, so it appears you are jumping back and forth in time. Review the transitions and make sure it's apparent to the audience that this is happening because I was confused)

Children try their damndest  (if you remove "several" you'll save an entire line by eliminating a single word on a line)

4. And Mommy says it's almost

5. EXT. VICK HOME - DUSK  As Christmas Day gives way to Christmas Night.  (I think you can delete this scene clip as it doesn't serve much purpose)

The family sits about

7.  I'm all for girls having guy's names, but using one deliberately in a screenplay makes things unnecessarily confusing, slowing down the read.

WOW - Brilliant.  Real good read. Love to watch this in the movie house.

Barry John

Man, talk about reviving a dead thread.  This was the first script I ever completed.  While I was very proud of it at the time and it placed well when I submitted it to Shriekfest (didn't win, but was a finalist) I look at it now all these years later and see one mistake after another.  Not so much from a story perspective -- I think the concept holds up, though there were a couple dramatic missed opportunities that didn't occur to me until much later -- but the actual writing screams "amateurish."

Currently I have this script promised to an indie filmmaker in Canada.  But it's been a while now and no real progress has been made, so I'm thinking maybe I'll dust it off, give it a new rewrite and put it back out there.  I like to think I'm a much better writer now than I was fourteen years ago when I finished this script, but there's only one way to find out.  I just have to finish the three other scripts I already have in progress first!

Hey Lon, yes, you should rewrite this.  In your opening passage, you wrote "reef", instead of "wreath".  

I've never read this, but would be interested if you get around to rewriting it.

In my own defense, I've never once claimed to be a genius.