Previously Viewed by Paul Reynolds - Thriller - A veteran L.A homicide detective is on the trail of a serial killer who recreates scenes from famous Horror movies. 122 pages - pdf, format 8)

I got about six pages in before I stopped, my biggest complaint being your lead character.  We've seen this character dozens of times before -- the hard-drinking, cynical, smart-ass cop with a day's worth of facial hair.  The only thing he's missing is a half-chewed toothpick permanently affixed to the corner of his mouth.  The moment he's introduced -- and especially after he callously kicks last night's lay out of his home -- I completely lost interest in him.  And when you lose interest in the lead character, you lose interest in seeing what he gets involved with.  And when you lose interest in that, you lose interest in your movie.

Also, the opening kill scene is over and done with pretty quickly, don't you think?  Expound upon it.  A thriller should thrill, yes?  

Your premise genuinely interested me.  Being a lifelong and hardcore horror movie fan, I was excited at the prospect of reading your script and figuring out what movies the kill scenes were taken from.  But the opening kill scene and the generic lead character put out that fire pretty quickly.  My suggestion: spice up the opening kill scene and tweak your lead character.  Lose the stereotype and come at him fresh.

Oh, one more thing: I'm assuming you're using Final Draft, due to the appearance of your title page.  When you save an FD document as a PDF but haven't fixed up your title page, that's the one it gives you by default.  In Final Draft, go to Document, select Title Page, insert your info, then X it out.  It's automatically saved, and will appear intact when you select to save the file as PDF.  Just FYI.

Best of luck.  Keep writing.

- Lon

     Paul, I'll have to agree with Lon on some of his points. I read the first ten pages and I'll have to admit the premise grabbed my attention. I was not completely turned off by your main character. He was someone we have seen before, but isn't everybody.

     I agree with Lon that the opening scene could be expanded for full effect. Just my opnion of course. I thought your formatting was good overall. One thing I noticed was twice you introduced a character as a "Man" then you gave him a name the next time he speaks. Why not just use the name of the character when he is first introduced. Just a thought, no biggie.

     I found the first ten pages very interesting. I liked what I read. I will try to read more when I get a chance. Marvin.