Slender Man by Curtis James Coffey - Horror - A little boy named Joey is terrorized by a sentient being known by children as Slender Man, who may be responsible for countless missing and murdered kids. Determined to help his younger brother but unable to believe him, Sean digs deeper into the myth of Slender Man, discovering the horrifying truth and a town's dark secret. 94 pages - pdf, format

Curtis, are you active on the boards?

If you show up and are a contributing member I'll give it a whirl and give you some feedback.

I've glanced at the first 2 pages. A question sprang to mind instantly:

Have you seen the movie "Phantasm"?

Quoted from B.C. Have you seen the movie "Phantasm"?

Maybe, maybe not.

Pretty sure he has seen "Marble Hornets", though.

Curtis,

Welcome to the boards.
If you're a contributing reader member, I'll take a peek.
Isn't this premise akin to the SomethingAwful series, "Marble Hornets"?
http://marblehornets.wikidot.com/

E.D.

I've no idea what Marble Hornets is. Maybe Angus Scrimm 'inspired' that as well? Any shiny spheres in hornets?

Should I get out more?

Curtis posted a script last year without contributing to the board.  The only post in the thread commented how this script sounded like another movie.


Phil

Definitely has a Phantasm/A Nightmare on Elm Street vibe in that opening bit.  Still, decently (if not expertly)written.  I'd spend more time with it if I knew the author was around and/or contributing feedback of his own to others.

Ah, well...

Here's a link to the wikipedia page on the Slender Man if anyone's interested:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Cougar_Draven/Slender_Man

Is it strange that I was just reading about this thing a few weeks ago?

The author may want to get in touch with the creator for use of this creature. I remember this internet phenomenon from awhile back too, and that marble hornet website(s).

From what I understand they tried to get a web series going and claimed their footage/photos were real. Didn't work out. Cool pictures though.

So, are you guys saying this script is a ripoff, or what?

It's not a rip-off, it seems more like a fan-fic. I'm a big fan of the Marble Hornet series, and the Slender Man used to scare the shit out of me when I first watched the series. I read the first five or so pages of this, skimmed through it, and read through the ending, and I wasn't very impressed. It read more like a Goosebumps version of Slender Man, which, just like Goosebumps, in the eyes of a 10-year-old back in the 1990s would this be scary, but in 2011, it is not.

The thing that the author here did wrong with the script, IMO, is that he showed the Slender Man on the first page. He described as much detail as he could for the "thing" and that was that, telling us that it was supposed to be "creepy". Well, what's wrong about that, you say? What made Marble Hornets scary is that the Slender Man couldn't be seen, unless you looked real closely, and if you did spot him in an entry, then it would be a bit shocking. I don't know about anyone else, but spotting him without realizing it at first scared the crap out of me.

That's what this author needs to do. With the Slender Man, less is definitely more when it comes to showing him. And the ending was just ridiculous.

If this was made for younger audiences (aka, 12 years or younger), then this would be passable, I suppose.

Sean

If it's fan-fic, based on an already established premise, shouldn't it say so in the logline?

I've never heard of this Slender man or Marble Hornet thing.  I thought this was an original screenplay...if that's not the case, I think it needs to say so right up front.

Quoted from Dreamscale If it's fan-fic, based on an already established premise, shouldn't it say so in the logline? I've never heard of this Slender man or Marble Hornet thing.  I thought this was an original screenplay...if that's not the case, I think it needs to say so right up front.

It's just an urban legend internet kind of thing.  I am not sure he "belongs" to anybody, and to call it a rip-off is too harsh.

It would be akin to saying the author of a "Bloody Mary" screenplay needs to acknowledge that they did not invent the idea of Bloody Mary.

Actually, the whole Slender Man idea is pretty cool -- look it up if you haven't -- and a really good screenplay involving this character would probably attract a little attention.

This seems an appropriate time to ask...

... How do you know if someone is active ( other than rememeber their name)? Is there a function to check this? Like you all I want to help those who help others.

Cheers. RD

I just googled this mythical creature and the lore is fascinating. I would think that a non-comedic mockumentary, chock full of dummied up photos and video sightings, would be more terrifying than a full on horror film...

It would take a very talented writer / filmmaker to pull that off though...

Rick?

(0:

You search for the author's name with the SS search engine to see if he posted other scripts earlier.  If so, read through that script's discussion board to see if the author replied to any posts there.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of people who post scripts without becoming active members of the boards.


Phil

Sorry I haven't posted before - I've only just now started to get how this site works. Ok, here we go.

It was my understanding that Slender Man was an internet-based urban legend. I did not intentionally rip anybody off. Believe it or not, I haven't seen Marble Hornets. I came across the creature on several different sites, but only with a few snippets of fan pics and stories - also why I'm pretty sure it's just an internet-based urban legend.

I thought in my logline I put that it was based on the internet phenomenon, I have in all my other loglines for it. If it's not there, I apologize to anyone who didn't realize that the creature itself is not original.

As for the creep factor, I don't know if you noticed while reading, but I tried to make it pretty clear that Slender Man is never to be fully seen - he's always either masked in fog or shadow or some other form of concealment so there's never a clear view. Perhaps I didn't make that clear enough in the writing - or perhaps you just missed it. In any case, more than any other genre, horror is subjective. What scares you may not scare someone else, and vice versa. I've had plenty of other writers tell me it's a creepy script. But to each his own.

Anyways, thanks for looking and responses, even though they weren't very friendly. I'll try to post more often.

Hey, Curtis

The first scene lives up to the genre. Always, good start. I’ve only read up to page twelve because, I usually get a good idea of what type of writer I’m dealing with also you never know whether the writer’s are still active. Glad to see you still are. You’re scenes are structure well, only knock would be in you’re narrative telling rather than showing with the use of words such as “suddenly” or “linking verbs.”

Again, scene structure from what I’ve read is good though that last piece of subtext at the end of the kitchen scene where Christie cheers Joey up, but once she’s alone you SEE the concern in her putting her face in her hands.

She’s active. She learns something and decides to do something about it, and out of that new desire comes. Because of that I’m planning on continuing to read. I’m she continues to do so, one of the pitfalls of horror is having a protagonist that’s too passive, and I hope she gets as much screen time if not more than Joey.

First reel lives up to the genre
Show don’t tell
Good scene construction
Nice piece of subtext at the end of “kitchen” scene
Show don’t tell


BLB

Hey BusyBee,

Thank you again for your feedback. I do like that you're enjoying my work. At least you seem to understand the angles I'm trying to approach.

I just want to note that this particular script has gone through a few different re-writes now and has been optioned.

Quoted from CurtisJames52 Sorry I haven't posted before - I've only just now started to get how this site works. Ok, here we go. It was my understanding that Slender Man was an internet-based urban legend. I did not intentionally rip anybody off. Believe it or not, I haven't seen Marble Hornets. I came across the creature on several different sites, but only with a few snippets of fan pics and stories - also why I'm pretty sure it's just an internet-based urban legend. I thought in my logline I put that it was based on the internet phenomenon, I have in all my other loglines for it. If it's not there, I apologize to anyone who didn't realize that the creature itself is not original. As for the creep factor, I don't know if you noticed while reading, but I tried to make it pretty clear that Slender Man is never to be fully seen - he's always either masked in fog or shadow or some other form of concealment so there's never a clear view. Perhaps I didn't make that clear enough in the writing - or perhaps you just missed it. In any case, more than any other genre, horror is subjective. What scares you may not scare someone else, and vice versa. I've had plenty of other writers tell me it's a creepy script. But to each his own. Anyways, thanks for looking and responses, even though they weren't very friendly. I'll try to post more often.

Slender Man is copyrighted by the creator, but there's so many blogs/vlogs out there that expand the "Slenderverse", there's an unsaid permission to use the character as long as it isn't for profit.

Interesting to see the script. I'd been making notes on a Slender Man project just for the hell of it. I'll be glad to give this one a spin.