A Killer Concept by Greg Thomson - Short, Black Comedy, Parody - A writer turns his murderous intentions on his family. 5 pages - pdf, format 8)

::SPOILERS::

John's an asshole.

I don't like assholes.  Especially ones who murder their wife, daughter, and neighbor for no good reason.

Now if the wife was a cheatin' whore, and the daughter was pawning John's prized stamp collection in order to hire a hitman to kill John so she could get the insurance money, then I could see a reason to chop her up and put her in the freezer, and plow an ax into her neck, respectively.  But when a 20-year-old daughter "skips along" and says "Daddy?", only to get an ax buried in neck, I'm not on board with that.

Furthermore, there wasn't much "comedy" in this black comedy.  The only semi-chuckle elicited was when John changed his mind about playing Xbox with A.J.

You could have shown John open up the freezer, and upon seeing his wife's corpse hacked to pieces, he freaks out, but suddenly stops when he sees that there actually IS one more frozen pizza left.  He then moves his wife's head to the side and grabs the extra pepperoni and closes the freezer.

There are a few spots where I found this to be over written as well:
"...and inhabitant of this shack, replete with balck turtle-neck sweater and horn-rimmed glasses..."
"...thick arterial ooze from the lush white carpet."

Nothing major but it seemed a little excessive for me.

On the plus side, it was a quick read and easy to visualize.

Jordan

Nomad,

Thanks for taking a look.

As for your objections, to each their own. But I should probably make it clear that this one was written with tongue firmly in cheek. It was just an exercise in writing a fast-paced little pulpy short, parodic of those over-wrought psycho-writer movies.

I'm aware that there's not much in the way of story, I only uploaded it because I thought it had some decent moves in it. Nothing but a display of technique really.

Greg, this was okay but I'm not sure it should be classed as 'comedy' even though it's a black comedy I still think it feels more straight out horror.  The 20 year old daughter
skipping does show some comedy but not enough for me lol.

I see you say 'each to their own' and you're kind of right, some people find horror funny if it's played over the top, which I guess this is so...

Anyway, as a strange little tale, it's enjoyable enough.

Hi Greg

Few thoughts - just my opinion of course...

I got the pulpy angle from the voiceover, could sort of hear it like an old detective movie.

In this short a short I don't think we need too much back story, but there's no real reason given or hinted at as to why... not sure on that aspect.

As noted above I think there is more opportunity for humour here, maybe stuffing his daughter into a small fridge, telling his neighbour they'll have to call out for food as his freezer is on the fritz - that sort of thing.

On the neighbour, didn't ring true for me for a 50 and a 40 year old man to be having an Xbox playdate... maybe invites him over for poker with the boys or similar?

Overall, I can see where you were going but I guess I want more humour, black as possible of course.

Anthony

Alffy - It's true that the over-the-top-ness of it is what seems funny to me. The daughter skipping along etc... it's all so ridiculous and harsh that I can't help but be amused by it. (I even used the American vernacular - Mom, Chad etc - as I thought it made it all the more saccharine)

Anthony - I was waiting for someone objecting to the xbox thing, yet the person this story is based on (a good writer friend of mine, with loving family), regularly plays xbox with his adult neighbour. Not that that is justification for using it in the script, of course. If it detracted from the script in any way then I'd certainly reconsider using it.

As for the humor, I was going for a very minimalist script, where a quick camera shot takes the place of an entire scene, for example:

- the quick cut to the freezer, and what's in it.
- the quick cuts to the driveway, where John dumps his trash...

Overall, this was just a little writing exercise, but I'm grateful for the responses so far. Thanks guys.