Camp Hell by L - Short - A young boy unleashes a recently discovered animal that puts everyone's life in danger including his own. - pdf, format

As I go:

Hahah well the bullying pretty excellent. Twice by the kids and then one by the counsellor -- perfect.

I can't tell -- are we supposed to know what the animal looks like when Jared first encounters it? It's not really described at all, but it also seems like we can clearly see it.

"Jared finds a push lock" -- Random thought. I think this would have worked way better in the earlier scene. What I'm imagining is:

"JARED
"Whatever you are you're really scary looking..."

Jared sees a push lock on the side of the cage. Moves a hand towards it. Hesitates.

JARED
Just about anyone would be scared of you."

^ Puts that information where it belongs, I think. As I read it.

I just want some small sense of what the animal's like. Reptilian? Mammalian? Other?

Thoughts:

Yeah, this one's pretty much perfect. Classic setup, classic escalation, classic payoff, lotsa violence, all fun. Not much to say, from me. The one thing that bothered me, obviously, was not knowing a little bit more specifically how to imagine the animal.

Great job making me feel sorry for Jared from the beginning. I liked your characters. The writing was great and easy to read. I'm not a big 'monster' fan but I liked this. The last dialogue 'red dots' ...I think could be better. That sounded 'off' but overall this was a great job.

Pretty good intro, but the opening Slug - LAKE - ROAD is a tough one to picture.

Page 3 - A little slow, IMO.  I like how you portray Jared, and I do feel for him, but I think you could have achieved the same with less pages.

Page 4 - "it's" - should be "its".  I think some sort of description of the animal would really help here.

I'm not liking the staccato writing going on.  Very non visual when we need to be able to picture exactly what's going on.

Page 9 - I'm having lots of trouble following along.  The writing is failing here badly, IMO.

Too many characters, too big in scope, too cliche in execution.  I think you had a good setup and idea, but things went south quickly for me.

Good effort for a tough OWC. Thanks for entering.

I liked the "campy" camp horror vibe of this.  And really liked the setting.

With so many named characters I had a hard time connecting.  Maybe more focus on the people you want us to care about would help.

Good idea for the challenge.  You hit all the requirements.  



The writing was good but could be a bit leaner in narrative and some of the dialog.  Just one example:

GREG
Now as you can see the cabins over
there are representing the color
blue and over here we're
representing the color red.

A little leaner and reads smoother I think:

GREG
Now as you can see the cabins over
there represent the color
blue and over here we
represent the color red.

I thought the ending with the three red dots shouldn't have been the end of it.  Sounded like a set up for a gruesome/humorous kill.  How come everyone with the name Dylan is a jerk?  I thought the chipper counselors were great, it would have been better if they really could care less about these kids, blow them off and not remember any of their names.  Put on a front, ya know?  Overall, fun story and entry.

Johnny

80s feel. Monster slasher. 2 things I love... with slight guilt.

Homage. That's a good word. Better than cliche or typical or gratuitous. This one here felt like a 80s slasher flick to me. Tits and ass and buckets of blood. That's what you're selling, that's what I'm buying.

Jared was instantly identified as the class nerd or outcast. I knew then that the bully would die bad.... or good , depending. So ya, stock characters, stock monster, stock gore. Nothing new, but totally delivers. Just pure horror flick fun.

I appreciated the vague description of the creature. Sometimes it's good to leave it to the reader's imagination. I was thinking cinema's 1st were-possum?! I'm alright with that.. an homage to AMERICAN WEREWOLF style transformation.

Make the end reveal more epic. That's the downside. Blue camp needs to discover these werepossums in a different way than pissing. Set-piece it. Make it the point of it all. So many ways to do it, maybe just 1 by 1 realizing they're surrounded. Fucked completely. Then end on kid, curled up in canoe, drifting away who knows where. Just a thought.  I'm pretty sure you're aiming for fun scares so why not end on one. Pee and red dots? Not for me.

Great slasher. Roller coaster fun, once it's going.  Needs some beef for the climax.

That six character intro, this is one of those moments that's made to frustrate the reader.

And then another two characters.

"Ha, ha. You don't get to swim. Ha, ha. Loser." Doesn't read well, I can just imagine Nelson saying this from the Simpsons.

Finished.

Didn't like this, sorry to say. I felt this was all guts and gore with no story. Riddled with too many characters, which is fine I suppose for a monster film. The writing could definitely use some work though, I had trouble getting through the script because of it. Most of it was decent but some lines just didn't come across nicely.

There just wasn't anything separating this from other films. Not my cup of tea.

Grade: D+

This one's got some great stuff and some not so great.

The entire scene when the young kid finds the car and what's in it is pretty darn good - you did great with that and throughout there's some nice writing and suspense, even if no-one seems to really care about the poor dead guy. What killed him if the 'creature' is still locked up in the cage? Did I miss something?

Unfortunately as the story goes on it does appear to be just like any slasher movie and the final scene with 'red dots' in dialogue is just a let down. The image is good and would work on film but if I was the actor I'd demand another line.

Capably written, just a little cliched, but I loved that scene I mentioned above. Well done.

Libby

Not much to say on this one.  Revenge gone bad.  A good bit of creature/slasher fun with some boobage thrown in for good measure.  Can’t say that I cared much for the characters, but then it’s a pretty straight to the point approach.  Setting felt a tad generic, could of been anywhere really, but other than that the other elements were checked off.

Think the ending just kind of forgot about Jared -- would liked to have gotten an idea of his fate -- him having been the instigator an' all.

Steve.

This was a good OWC effort. I liked the empathy you built up for Jared. That Katie sure has great ideas, I think I'd like to go to camp . . .

I didn't understand how Jared was in the front of the van, nudging the driver? If it's on it's side, he can't get into the front, as he's have to jump up on the side and pull the door up against it's own weight, which he wouldn't be able to do.

In that case, Jared, would be in the back and assuming there was no partition between the cargo area and cabin, the driver would be slumped into the passenger seat . . . may seem minor and pedantic, but details matter when your reader tries to picture the story.

'A look of panic sweeps the two boys.' - sounds awkward.

I like the creature element - but the description reminds me of a mink with red contact lenses and pedicure issues .

If a bite can infect a person, what bit the driver and why wasn't he infected?

Eoin

On one hand it’s a classic Slasher meets Critters meets Zombies thing, kind of a homage to 80’s horror but that’s it.

I started to lose it at the crash scene. The kid didn’t react at all to the dead driver and was more focused on setting up the trap with the mysterious dangerous looking creature and seemed genuinely surprised when it turned out to actually be a mysterious, dangerous creature. “I was only trying to scare him!” That seemed like a spoof of horror rather than real horror.

I then lost caring about everyone and everything and assumed they’d all die and scanned through the rest to confirm they did. Sorry but I struggled with this.

To be honest I think the R Rating stipulation for this challenge has made it difficult for everyone, but then again I suppose that’s why it is a ‘challenge’.  

Sean changes his name to Seth.

If you would have named "Katie", "Kate", you would have had a Superfecta of 4 letter names.  Greg, Seth/Sean, Mark, and Kate.  Try to vary your name choices to make the characters unique.  As they are right now, they're all too similar.  Since Greg is the oldest character, change his name to Gregory.

Do kids still insult each other by calling them "four eyes"?

The dialogue doesn't sound natural.  Kids use contractions like, "it'll" " 'cause" "gonna"
"I guess it will be fun because we're not going to win with him on the team."  
"Ha, ha.  You don't get to swim.  Ha, ha.  Loser."  
"Whatever you are you're really scary looking...Just about anyone would be scared of you."

Why would Jared grip the crate if the creature is hissing at him?  I wouldn't stick my hands anywhere near a wire crate with some unknown creature inside hissing at me.  The crate seems woefully inadequate to secure a creature like this.

There needs to be a little more information about the driver and why he's dead.  Is there a secret government facility near by?  Was the driver shot?  Stabbed?  Heart attack?  Give us something other than, "An explosion of blood".

This is beginning to sound a lot like Creepshow with the crate under the stairs.

Micha flashes the area?  That could mean something other than what you intended.

No need to say that Dylan's blood curdling scream is off screen.

"Cory runs up the side of the small cliff, over the dirt road
and up the side of the hill scared as hell."  Reads awkwardly.

Most people wouldn't be chopping wood at night under minimal light.

I like the visual of the red eyes scurrying down the trees.

It's night, how are we supposed to see a circle of blood in the water?  Have a light on the buoy or a full moon.

I like the visual of the red eyes circling the canoe.

The ending feels out of place.  It should have ended with Jared in the canoe surrounded by the creatures.  Maybe have one of the creatures claw the canoe and now it's slowly sinking.  FADE OUT.

The whole script needs a lot of polish.  It's not an original story but it has the potential to be an entertaining monster short.

Jordan

This was a good read. Quick and nasty  

You introduce a lot of characters in the opening. I’m not sure you need them all named right up front, since most of them are just cannon fodder later on. It also looks like you introduced one character as SEAN only to refer to him as SETH later.

You definitely built up sympathy for Jared and hate for Dylan well, but the other characters are pretty ‘cut and paste’. I’d rework those opening pages a little. Cut down on the amount of characters being introduced. I’d also give Jared a relationship to a character other than Dylan. Maybe have someone stick up for him.

You used the red glowing eyes well. They’re effective in the end, but I still feel like something is missing from the last scene.

Overall it was an enjoyable read and a solid entry. Congrats on getting it in for the challenge.

I liked this one, it kind of had this 80's movie quality to it. Some of the kids chatter felt a bit off but it really didn't bother me. You were able to juggle around quite a few characters in a short piece which is pretty hard to do so congrats on that. I'm a sucker for these kinds of stories so it was nice someone actually did one. Good job on the OWC. One of my favs.