Alice in Underland by The White Rabbit

A captured Alice must help assassinate the queen to gain her freedom, but why Alice?

Short Psychological Horror based on Alice in Wonderland

Apologies, the link,is broken. I will not be able to fix it until tonight.

Title page worries me, as the comma after "Based on" is totally unnecessary.

Here we go...

Well...the rhyming is interesting and not an easy thing to do, but as a script, it has no place, and (add rhyming word with "do").   ;D ;D ;D ;D

I'm sorry, but this is all delivery and as is, does not a script make.  It shows true talent, but is something, I just can't take.

I'm bowing out early, only the 2nd time, but I hope there are others who'll give this it's time.

Sorry..no grade

I have to agree with Jeff on this one. Although it shows immense talent and it is fun to read, it's not a script, it's poetry distorted to look like a script.

A hell of a lot of work must have gone into this so I commend you on that but it a pass from me.

Scripts are used to make films, that is their purpose. If you want to have rhyming dialogue that's fine but rhyming in action serves no purpose other than to delight the reader, which in terms of a script is not the purpose. Yes you want to enjoy reading it but it's a blueprint for a script not a poem.

Rhyming aside the story packs no real punch.
I thought Alice was gonna start off as "Boxing Helena" having her arms and legs cut off... but no.

SPOILER
A slight twist at the end, could have been more horrific throughout considering you chopped the Queen's head off.

Definitely ambitious, and I couldn't even begin fathom how many times you ran around the house smashing your head for that perfect rhyme... unless it comes naturally to you.

If memory serves me, the Caterpillar blew out smoke letters from his Hookah; U? who R U? Would have been cool if he showed up and spelled it out for us, as it stands, I got lost in the poetic translation. I think it's safe to say... Disney was a whack job. The original story (Lewis Carroll) had its merit, but it was the surreal translation onto screen that we all remember, which makes visualizing this script even more enjoyable.

You kept me engaged simply because of the effort you put into this and, I would have even given you a consider if the poetic verse didn't weave between dialog and action sequences. Excellent effort though.

Two things spring to mind straight off the bat:

Your opening needs a Narrator so that all that lovely rhyming verse/description is put to good use, otherwise it's wasted - don't know why I'm the first to note this.

Narrator. That's essential to this.

Also, your first slug: DECREPIT ROOM, not decrepid.
Ditch 'from the malice'

That holds her mouth
Lack of apostrophes - she's here, she's here...

What is it me, can you see my
thong?
;D Made me chuckle.

Apostrophe again - think I know who wrote this, won't spill it yet.
Let's do this I say.

'As he tokes from a bong' ?! Trying to figure out if that's just too silly/bizarre or a stroke of genius. :)

Well, it is Alice In Underland, or is that 'funderland'?

Anyway, moving along:

Question mark after 'Who goes there?'

Ha, throwing in a bit of Shakespeare now.
You really are not so fond of punctuation, are you?


'deceive, Is it my daughter I can...'
Full stop after 'deceive'.

Little bit of an anticlimax you've made that final line. Beef it up with them all saying that last line for the colourful visual that it should be (you've got me speaking in riddles now) - the Soldier, Tweedledum & Tweedledee, The Mad Hatter, & Cheshire Cat. And some other characters for visual effect maybe... There are many. Did Rick just mention a clever one?** Yep.

Finally, this second to last line I thought a little lacking: '
'Because now you’re queen, and this
land you can clean.'

'Clean'? Hmm, na.

'Because now we deem you Queen, and you will reign supreme, our dream!'

All of them get down on one knee.

We salute you, our red Queen!

Something like that. Just don't let it dwindle away to nothing at the end.

You did a great job I thought. How well it would actually translate to screen - (perhaps animation)  I don't know...unless you're in with Tim Burton.  ;D

Oh, and it could do with a bit more of a second act, Queenie was a bit too easy to find & kill - T&T had no lines, (just spoken of), and more horror maybe.

Commendable effort. Well done.

** I'm not up with Alice, always found the story bizarre, but I know she has many fans.

Interesting read and as the above posters have said its pretty much a poem. But the question is can it be filmed? IMO yes because its still a script despite being rhythmic , with action beats and dialogue and a plot.

Like the other shorts its hard to say the payoffs weak due to the short amount of time and space to make this story.

I'll give this a B

Well, well, well.

I have not read any reviews yet, but I suspect the reviewers will slay,
however I'll add my penny, and bravo I say!

When I first began reading I almost stopped. The first sentence is horrible and sounds like English is the second language of the writer.. How can a room be caught in plight?

But, happily I did read on. And what you did here was very creative and should be applauded for an OWC. You will be shredded by the usual suspects, but take heart, you have an independent spirit which will enable you to stand tall.

Of course, rhyming in action lines is pretty much wasted in script. And yet it does showcase talent in a unique way, displays an original and daring voice,

And the story is not at all bad. For an OWC it's quite decent. Making Alice the queen's daughter who is unwittingly pulled into a conspiracy is a clever idea.

How bout the script long poem? Did the writer pull it off? Yeah, pretty much.

So I say bravo!

Oh, shes is she's. Not sure what the poetic demands would be that would require the punctuation to be dropped.

I admire this script for its ambition. However, it's not that wise to do a screenplay entirely in rhyme. Though the reader will find this clever, most people don't read scripts. The main test is whether or not this can be turned into a film. Unfortunately, the story is simplistic and the rhyming is inconsistent. Moments where description and dialogue rhyme with each other will be lost on anyone watching the film without reading the script, and many of the rhymes are incredibly forced.

There are some clever touches, but this is a bit gimmicky...

I have to agree with most that has been said. I don't get why you put the rhymes into ACTION LINES. There's enough weird creatures/characteres in Alice in Wonderland which could have been used to speak those rhymes and it would have been much better. But in action lines, I think this makes no sense. In the film, we wouldn't get to see/hear any of those rhymes. And when characters finally begin to speak, they speak normally? Why?

Lots of potential here but the execution doesn't work at all.

I enjoyeed it for a few pages but the rhyming really became dragged on for me. I really couldn't keep up with it.

The story was good from what I read but I struggled to read this fully.

I could appreciate the rhyme and think you could have all the rhyming - I'm talking about the action lines - said aloud on screen. You shouldn't loose it. So, I think in the rewrite you could have Narrator say all those lines. And explain the actions to the reader without the rhyming - just this and that - the Narrator is supposed to tell us what they do anyway.

The rhyming part works greatly for me. The story doesn't though - I mean Alice killing the Queen is nice. Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat make her - that's great as well.
I think you could explain Mad Hatter's motivation. Why he wants the Queen killed? He says something about cleaning the area - I don't understand that.

Cheshire Cat - what's his purpose in here? You could do as well without him. I wish you keep him though, so I think you could come up with the reason to have him in.

And Alice agreed to the kill way too fast for me.

Really nice work though.

Good title.

Oh, that style is exhausting to follow, right away. The rhymes in action completely distract me from the plot that I should see. I try to ignore them but can't. You over-challenge ME here. I'm an ESL speaker probably part of the problem.

You spend a lot of work on it; I'm sure, though this isn't the right medium when it comes to the usage of rhymes in descriptions imo.

The curious thing is that all "legit" rhymes in the dialogues read and felt perfectly fitting while those in the action lines I had massive, massive problems with.

Very interesting attempt but, as in previous comments, it would not film coherently. Perhaps, if the story was narrated and produced like an old Dr. Seuss animation, it may be successful.

Aside from a few writing and formatting slips, it was a very valiant attempt.

This was one of the more interesting attempts. Hats off to you writer, piecing it together with all of the rhymes must have taken a good bit of time, so as far as creativity goes you're up there.

However, the work itself is pretty simple, a slight twist at the end but it's just a little bit too straightforward for me. Also there's some typos hidden in there that need a bit of tidying, but they aren't so troublesome that they ruin the work.

To be honest, I really don't know what to go with here. It's not going to be a recommend, and the lack of substance has me leaning towards a pass, but just for the creativity and effort you've put in I'm tempted to go with a consider. Will have to come back to this at voting time.

I saw some complaints about this one getting panned without real feedback but it's really hard to come up with anything other than "good job taking chances, nice effort".

I can tell you what doesn't work. The characters don't have much personality. The Mad Hatter would normally seem insane because he's rhyming... but they're all rhyming so it blends together without allowing for any distinction among them. The plot is very basic yet still hard to follow. Of course, these things are to be expected considering you have to rhyme every sentence. It's actually a miracle you pulled off anything remotely coherent character and story-wise. Definitely suggests a very high level of skill and great deal of effort applied.

How to improve it? I have no idea. Maybe you shouldn't even try for a traditional story structure. Having an actual plot seems like an exercise in futility. Perhaps you can just have some special arrangement of seemingly random scenes that combined with the poetic descriptions creates some new meaning. Maybe the action descriptions are telling one story and the dialogue another and-- oh dear god, I have no what I'm talking about. What is the Matrix? Ahh! Okay, I give up.

Sorry, this is so out of my depth. I don't even know anything about poetry. It really is an impressive attempt and very creative.

Follow the white rabbit.

I enjoyed the writing.  As you can see, if something is different, people are either going to hate it or love it.  I'd say if you like writing it that way, then keep on doing it.  It made it more enjoyable for me.  

There didn't seem to be any horror to the story.  I think it could have worked better if the Mad Hatter actually was trying to do something to Alice, rather than just being an idiot.

Overall I did enjoy the read.  It was different, and creative, so I can appreciate that.  

Nolan  

I enjoyed the writing and appreciate the sheer effort that went into making all this rhyme. It certainly suited the Alice in Wonderland theme and it also made the script stand out a mile, even if it was not for the usual reasons.

It may be worth entering this into a few competitions, just to see if it catches the the eye of a judge looking for something different.

As it is, the vast majority of the wonderful witty poetry would be lost in translation. Once the novelty wore off (around page 4) I started skimming and breathed a sigh of relief to discover it was only 6 pages.

It may be worth revisiting this and reversing it so the poetry comes across as a VO and you can then focus on the story and characters.

As it is, an A for effort but a pass for me.

-Mark

That must have taken some effort. Well done for something different.

Alas for me it made the read damn hard and story wise, there wasn't a huge amount.

But you know what, we will probably all remember this one.

Aww, man! I had just pinned this on you, Bill; a sequel to "Elevator Most Belonging."

Anyway, the script read fine. Yes, the rhymes would get lost in translation, so I recommend a narrator. I could totally see this done in the style of Pushing Daisies, with Jim Dale narrating.

One of my favorites so far. But you might need to tighten up the horror. A+

So there's obvious talent on display here, but I have to admit the rhyming makes it hard to concentrate on the story. Perhaps if it where only in the dialogue, which makes me realize that the most unique part of your script would translate very awkwardly to film, as the dialogue would spend half its time rhyming and half its time not.

As much as I'd love to give this a consider for the style alone, I have to ask, “Consider for what?” It's pretty much all it can be already.

I'm torn on this one... it's an admirable attempt and certainly different but as it stands it's not a script.

Someone mentioned the idea of a Narrator... that could really work for this and get some of the best rhyming actually into the film itself.

So I think well done for trying, but re-think how it's delivered.

Anthony

Writer,

I enjoyed this. Just the fact this was told in rhyme is creepy enough, and personally, I always found Alice In Wonderland creepy anyway. I'll likely give you a consider for originality. You told a story that was fairly easy to follow, has a moment of horror -- I'd say it meets the requirement. Points lost for: sometimes it seems like you struggled to find a line that rhymes, and there were other times your sentences ran on a tad long and could've easily been shortened. Other than that, for sure, one of the more memorable scripts in this OWC. Very original, good work!

Steve

Props on the rhyming. It was a fun idea, and I can only imagine how much effort it took to put together in a week's time. For the most part, it doesn't detract from the story or the overall clarity. As the script goes on, though, it does cease to flow (in a lyrical sense). Not sure if it's the lack of uniformity or using too many words in one passage and too few the next. Perhaps a mix of both.

As for the plot itself, not much happens at all. I mean, the concept is straightforward enough and has a decent potential for conflict, but it seems like you spend more time setting up the rhyming scheme and faking out the reader by making them think the Hatter's gonna torture Alice or something. I like the idea behind the twist that the Queen is Alice's mother, but the execution is a little rushed and, as a result, clunky. Also, between the Tim Burton flick and American McGee's Alice (the quintessential Alice in Wonderland horror treatment), the plot couldn't have been more obvious. I have to wonder how many times it's been done before.

Still, I suppose these characters are always fun to revisit in just how distinct and memorable they are. Decent enough. Congrats on entering.