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Sickening Desires by Anonymous4 - Short, Horror, Action - Desperate to keep her marriage together, a wife hatches a plan to arouse her husband's inner desires. - pdf format
Okay cool. There's only two scripts so far that have clear character motivations and indeed 'desires'. This and another one with a husband trying to kill his wife.
I got the characters, their world, and I think you achieved a lot for a short. Well done.
Not a whole lot for me to dissect with this short. A couple auto-correct spelling errors (I think) but overall, a very solid entry. The one weakness is the subtle scream that when the parcel is chucked on the table. Very poor tic-of-the-box to meet the challenge criteria! Points off? Hmmm...we'll see.
That said, great work. This will be a contender, I think.
How does the saying go..."Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned!"
The use of spells, charms, chants and incantations to summon the spirits usually works in horror films. And if I were Helen, I'd move away, or try to steal Carla's notebook.
Haha, just kidding. I found this enjoyable. I like this, a lot! I find your writing smooth and easy to read. Luv your character descriptions. The banter between Frank and Carla is effective at characterizing the two and creating a secondary element of interest in the opening sequence.
Enough of the gushing...
You gotta be careful with too many flashbacks, if anything, for clarity. Maybe it's just me, but I had to re-read them to confirm my understanding of the story.
Picky stuff... you have to watch out for your grammar.
I ain't no pro, though, can you believe it? So please take that into consideration.-Andrea
Suburban Estate? This might be a cultural thing. I'm familiar with Suburbia and housing estates that are gated. ?
not over-looked. Do you mean not easily overlooked? Or, not easy to overlook?
and rather be in bed. and would rather be in bed.
the last cutlery back in a draw, the last of the cutlery back in a drawer.
Two instances of draw when it should be drawer. Watch that auto-correct if it's the culprit.
shuffles out the house shuffles out of the house
a feint female scream faint
I miss you, mom Mom needs to be capped. The rule is if you can replace Mom with the person's actual name in the sentence, you cap it. Example of not: His mom doesn't like brussels sprouts.
Okay, enough line by line. Bit sloppy so far. Maybe rushed?
This was just okay for me, mainly because Carla just isn't likeable, which might be your intention. I needed more hurt and emotion from her part. Have her overhear the conversation with Frank and Helen - fight back tears.
Definitely more to work with here, it just didn't get me where it hurts. I needed more light and shade, some humour, compassion. And your denouement indicates Carla will use her powers for nefarious means only. A promising premise.
P.S. Maybe call it Fatal Desires or Desire, singular?
The scream is irrelevant - nothing to do with the story - okay.
This:
Quoted Text
CARLA Frank! You lost your job. And I inherited the house. If you’d been able to provide for us, and not fail... Look, we just need to be dedicated to each other.
Is painfully on the nose. They already know this - have her explain this to the cop instead. Not to Frank.
At the end:
Quoted Text
CARLA What else do you need to know?
JONES Oh, let me thing, why your husband died in a fire, after you passed out. This ain’t over.
Think?
I found the entire dialogue between Carla and the Cop at the end wanting - it simply did not feel like a natural conversation to me.
I liked much of the other ten pages and greatly appreciate it that you took the effort to provide a motivation for the gore - good on ya for that.
Nice clean writing, easy to follow the action, clear descriptions, characters that seem and act like real human beings - nice work
Great story here, enjoyed it. A newish witch casts a spell to make her husband lust for her, but his desire is to be rid of her - so the spell backfires. I like it, the story is nice with plenty of conflict and turns, things don't always right and the characters are flawed and interesting... all making for good reading.
I appreciate the attempt at a different narrative with the flashbacks of reality and she obviously telling the detective something different. But for me, it doesn't work and takes away from the story, rather than adding to it.
The detective is the worst character, with no purpose, and bad dialogue. You can cut him right out. Have the events play out in chronological order (no need for the flashbacks), with the ending of her being led out by the detective (first time we are seeing him) for her to deliver the threat ending. Just my 2 cents anyway.
Not much to say here. I liked almost everything about this. Enjoyed the story, thought the flashbacks were woven in well and it had a good ending. Saw everything you wanted me to see, even though it wasn’t necessarily scary. Thought the husbands burning death could have been ramped up and that might have helped in the scare/creepy/gore factor.
Obviously a good writer with this one. Very good work!
This was definitely written well. I loved the first half. You did an excellent job introducing these 2 characters and showing us how they feel about each other. Both want very different things.
So she summoned Frank's innermost desires and as it turns out, it was him wanting her dead. Be careful what you summon for. I love that idea, but for me after that it seemed rushed. And her interaction with the detective was odd. She sounded guilty as hell, especially when she said it could have been drugs.
In my opinion, the second half needs more work...but it's definitely worth spending some time on.
Oh yeah...the scream...it felt like you threw it in. She never really acknowledged it and it was never explained.
Lots of little things that need correcting that has been mentioned already.
I liked this one. I'm wondering though if it wouldn't be better without the flashbacks. You sort of give away the whole thing with that first scene. If you just wrote it from the beginning to end and let the tension build and things escalate along the way, it might just workout even better. One of my favorites so far.
Really liked this one. Very creative and suspensful. Writing was clear and mostly clean, save for a typo I spotted on the last page.
I liked that the ending implies more is to come, but I think Carla's dialog is pretty bad. Kinda brings it down a bit. And maybe I'm missing something, but the scream had no impact on the story what so ever.
So, we start with SUBURBAN ESTATE here, as opposed to the oh so dull and common, SUBURBAN HOME. Let's see if the fact that this is the biggest home on the street comes into play here.
"neighbors" should be CAPPED, as all characters' 1st intro should.
Hmmm, so now we go to "CARLA'S HOUSE", and I actually did a quick scan ahead and don't see this estate again, which is very confusing.
Page 2 - uuhhoo..we go to a Flashback, and it's poorly formatted...and, apparently, we're still in the same locale, which is not going to look good visually at all.
"draw"? WTF?
bottom of Page 3 - lots of dialogue going on and for me, it's not really working very well. Alot of it is OTN.
So, I guess if it's a Flashback, it will be in the Slug, huh? Makes for a tough read and I can't wait to see how you handle multiple Slug Flashbacks.
"A large garden backing onto a woodland." - Do you know what's wrong with this line? First of all, it repeats your Slug, which is a waste, obviously. Secondly, it's not a complete thought, so basically, the whole line is a waste.
Hmmm, now I'm really confused - is this still a Flashback? If so, you've totally fucked things up by not formatting your Flashback properly.
"Carla shuffles out the house, the present in one hand,a glass of wine in the other. Slumps down into a chair." - The writing is getting stilted, missing little words here and there, sentences missing subjects. I really dislike this kind of writing.
It will be very difficult to unwrap that present while she's holding a glass of wine, you know?
"Inside, the first page reads;" - since you're using an insert, this line isn't necessary.
The wrylie, "to herself" is obviously not needed. Carla is alone. Who else would she be speaking to?
Again, this Flashback is not properly formatted - you should learn how to do it as it makes the read so easy.
Page 5 - Why is Jones yelling? I never understand when peeps use "!?"
"We made vow..." - "a vow"
"games console" - ? Why plural?
Page 9 - when you transition from an INT scene to an EXT scene, you have to have a new full Slug.
"A gentle winds blows." - "wind"
"You made me a promise Frank." - You always have to offset a name with a comma in dialogue.
Page 11 - Lots and lots of mistakes here - too many to note, but obviously written in a mad rush?
"Carla pushes Frank backwards into the fire." - It didn't seem like Frank's back was to the fire, and he hasn't been able to move.
Page 12 - And once again, we have the dreaded Slug, "FRONT DOOR".
Dialogue on Page 12 is absolutely terrible.
"What can she do?" - I have no idea, why don't you just tell us?
The end. Well, it's not for me, sadly, but it ain't half bad either. Writing is ok at times and bad at others. Same with dialogue, sometimes just fine, other times terrible. Flashbacks are a mess and rally, this was a big mistake to even use them here. Starting at the Suburban Estate was also a mistake. The structure doesn't work here, and what we're left with is a very forgettable script.