If Dreams Could Kill by Marvin K. Perkins - Short, Horror - Ron Peeples is in a terrible car accident. Texting while driving is never a good idea. He has a horrific nightmare where he dies and goes to hell. Fortunately, he wakes up in a hospital bed with his tearful wife clutching his hand. He is relieved it was only a dream. Or was it?   6 pages - pdf, format 8)

Marvin, had a read through this since I saw your original draft in the work in progress section. This is better but still could be improved. First off though I'd suggest changing your logline to something that doesn't give away every detail that happens in your story. Entice people to read your script by hinting as to what happens, not giving them a blow-by-blow account of it.

I see you have a beginning this time, good job. Look at some of your punctuation though as it is out of place. For example you don't need a comma in 'His Blackberry, chirps.'

For the text message you have it formatted incorrectly, it looks like Allyson is speaking which is not the case. What you can do is use an INSERT and mention the text message that way.

When Ron is in the car crash this is a chance for you to use your own personal style to describe the car crash to us and make it sound real. 'A car coming from Ron's left crashes into his...' is incredibly generic and lifeless and has little impact. Use your words to make us feel the impact of the crash.

You still don't have your scene headings formatted properly. You need to have a space before and after the dash when telling us the time. So it should be
EXT. WOODS - NIGHT
and not
EXT.WOODS-NIGHT

You don't need to fade out and fade in again when he appears in the coffin. Try to leave out all of the camera directions and just focus on the story.

When Ron is in the coffin talking why is it a voice over and not simply him speaking?
On page 3 you have 'Ron tries to get up but he is trapped, buried alive, in a
wooden coffin.' We already know he is in a wooden coffin so why are you telling us this again?

You should CAP Allyson's name when you introduce her in the hospital.

Scene header INT-HELL-NGHT is way off, seriously you need to focus on the basics here mate and get this stuff sorted in your scripts.

Two Henchmen should be CAPPED.

'Humans, men and women...' Do you really need to have humans when you are telling us they are men and women?

You don't really make good use of the devil character here, make him sound fierce and frightening and introduce him in your script with a name at least.

Lose the 'sudden close up' and 'from an unknown POV' and just tell us what we see on screen.

Ok back in the hospital and I see you have the devil and name him this time, but you should have done that when we first see him. Also how does he snatch him into hell? Where is the abyss he jumps from? You need to be specific about what we see visually on screen. Just saying 'he snatches him into hell' is really vague and doesn't tell us what actually happens.

I don't think your ending works here either. He goes right back to hell and his head is in a glass box again. What is the purpose of this? It goes backwards to something that has already happened and doesn't finish on any sort of climax or pose any questions for us to answer.

Normally in these sorts of stories where the character thinks it was a dream we see something from the dream back in reality so it is hinted at that it wasn't a dream after all. What you have done is very explicit though and is overkill. IMO it would be more effective if Ron is in the hospital and one of the doctors checks on him and as he turns to leave we see that the doctor has a tail coming out of his coat. Or something like this to indicate the doctor is really the devil and Ron wasn't dreaming at all. It creates more anticipation and leaves things unanswered which is a better note to end on than what you currently have. Just my opinion though and others may diasgree.

Overall it has improved since you first draft but still needs some work.

Cheers,
Tim.

Trojan thanks again for your comments and suggestions. Of couse the problem with going into too much detail, say on the car accident ,is I have a five page limit on the script for the contest I am entering.  I see what you mean. I'll see what I can do without going over my limit.  Thanks again.  Marvin.

Hi,

This is my first review so hope you're cool with that. So here goes.....

I think some of your imagery is excellent and pretty disturbing (that's a good thing!) The piece in the coffin, in particular, is very easy to picture in one's head. The action has a sharpness about it which in turn gives it a harshness perfectly aligned to the hellish environment you are creating. The part where the rat takes out a chunk of the guy's cheek is a good example.

There's a good flow through the story, which is easy to follow and I think essential to a short like this. The structure of the piece works for me and it's quite clear when you're flitting between dream and real-life.

On the negative side I have to agree with the Reviewer above with regards to the ending (in fact I agree with the Reviewer above on all his/her comments!) It is perhaps a personal thing, but my favourite shorts are always those who pack a punch at the end. Unfortunately, whilst I think you're trying to achieve this, it doesn't work. I would humbly suggest three reasons for this: first (and easiest to correct) the logline alludes to the twist; secondly, the dialogue in the build-up 'lights a path' too easy too follow (personally I would suggest you attempt to blindside the reader with a 'red-herring' or two); and thirdly, a story of a dream, then 'wake-up' and then dream is actually real is a relatively common technique in film.

If you take on board the other Reviewers comments and can create a more powerful, surprising ending, I think you'll have a good piece of work.

I do hope my comments are useful. Good luck.

Thorton, thanks for your review. Glad to be your first. I actually did post another ending and some other changes in the WIP section.  Thanks again, Marvin.

Hey Marvin, I'm not going into the technicals because they are easily correctable. I'm only to focus more on the story.

My overall impression is there is a lack of direction in the short. It feels like Ron is enduring a lot of horrifying but random incidents.

I don't want to change your intention of the story you want to tell, but I think your story can be stronger (and leaves the audience anticipated) if you have Ron going through different challenges in Hell in order to come back alive. Therefore, the scene in the middle where Ron wakes up is not needed and can be saved until the end.

I also agreed with Trojan about having a more subtler ending. Having the devil tail coming out of the doctor is a very nice touch.

Good luck with it!