Freezer by Jayden Creighton - Short, Horror - A distraught teen finds his way once again in his mothers place of solitude... a freezer. excelling at maths, he has calculated that he has around seven minutes of air left - more then enough time for mummy dearest to let him out.  6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Jayden,

I like the idea for this script.  Kid locked in freezer by his own mother.  Now that's some serious dysfunction.

I did find the way you told it a bit confusing.  It was constantly jumping back and forth in time.  I think maybe a more linear storyline would have worked better here.  Because we keep leaving the freezer, the story loses its momentum and tension.  We want to know how he got in there, but the real story is how Sid is going to get out.  

You never really give Sid that feeling of utter panic and desperation.  He just kinda lays back and assumes his mother is going to let him out again.  I would have liked to have seen him try every way imaginable to get out.  I'm talking bloody knuckles and ripped out fingernails.  For a 16 year old that's not afraid to chop up Fido, Sid just goes down way too easily.

There were a couple of sentences that didn't make sense to me:

"The soft sound of WEEPING transpires in the
background and then seizes."

"He tries to remain calm but
his descent into insanity is inanimate."

Once again, I just think you need to ratchet up the tension, fear and suspense as time runs out on Sid.  

Hey Jayden,

Just finished this script, and like your others, I really enjoyed this one. It was very dark, slightly depressing, but very effective.

I have to disagree with Cam; I thought that the switching back-and-fourth from the past to the present actually worked very well. I've always been a fan of non-linear scripts, and it was effective here. You keep the audience guessing/ trying to work out why he is in the freezer.

However, I agree with everything else that Cam said. Sid's a bit of a bad-a55, so I think that he would have struggled a bit more to try and get out. However, if his mother has locked him in the freezer many times before, but always lets him out, I could see why he would be a bit calmer, and expect to be let out. The two description lines that Cam noted, do indeed sound very odd. I don't know how a director (even if it is you, hehe) would show that a character's "descent into insanity is inanimate". Hell, I don't even know what that means. Also, towards the end of the script when there are the shots of various rooms in the house, you describe them as "empty". Do you mean empty from furniture, or empty from people? I imagined the rooms being totally empty... suggesting that Sid's mother had packed up, and leaving Sid behind.

Now onto more things that I liked in the script. The voice-overs worked very well, also. I loved the line about him being good at maths... Something about it. I dunno', but it sounded awesome.

The flash montages as well were very effective... The first one reminded me of the quick-time scenes in Saw, where the dude struggles to get out of the barbed wire cage he's in.

I know that you plan to direct some of your shorts, so I'm not going to bother telling you not to include camera angles, etc, as that would be totally pointless!

But yeah, I really enjoyed this script. It was very dark, which seems to be your forte. Keep this writing up mate.

Cheers, Toby.