Loves Me Not by James Whale and Boris Karloff - Short, Horror - A hopeless romantic desperately searches for the perfect girlfriend. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

Well things got suddenly very dark. Was sitting here with my family. Good that I didn't read it out loud.

Thanks for this little creepy  "love" story ;)

I liked this one. When I first saw the page length I wondered how you can make a love story with one of the deadly sins as a theme and make it work. Everything I thought up seemed impossible to boil to under 10 pages, but you did it and it works.

This is a good horror story you have here.  When he kept repeating " She loves me not" I could almost hear some creepy music playing.

Good work.

Well this was creative and gory.

It reminds of Human Centipede and Jeepers creepers at the end.

Good entry, kept me intrigued :)

Page 1.   Perhaps use a different word to describe the houses rather than various. Something that will paint a better picture of the neighborhood?

Not quite sure what the first visuals add to this. The neighborhood and the garbage truck. Why not start with the restaurant?

I know, I think, what you're doing here, but I think there are too many repetitive turns. Maybe cut a couple of the scenes, so it doesn't seem that way.

I'm sure I'm just a dense old person, but after having read this twice, I still don't quite get the garbage truck significance.

Anyway, I love that you're not afraid to take a a very dark turn, I just think it needs a rewrite to bring it to its full potential.  :)

These are always tough for me because horror and gore are just not my thing.

The opening with the garbage truck - not sure I get it - a lot of real estate setting this up with very little payoff.

I don't really know anything about Victor's life - confused to whether or not the first lady in the house was his wife (why else would he be in the house in the morning at the table). Was he rich or poor? Is he a mechanic or a professor? etc. There needs to be some more work on setting his bearings - who is he?

Okay - thought the love me - love me not thing was a chilling device - cicely done.

So, I think people who enjoy horror will love this. I don't - but I appreciate the effort in the genre - I think you will score well since my tastes are really not in line with most folks.

Nice work - just give me more on Victor.

Creepy stuff for sure.  I enjoyed how you told the story using essentially two lines of repeated dialog.  That's a unique technique.  Nice job.

That was hmm disturbing to say the least.

It's a very neat script, a good horror. Very terrifying at that.

It got a little repetitive for me in the middle - but that's due to the way you decided to tell the story - no dialog, no appropriate character development etc.
Which is great in it's own way btw - the fact you chose to do it that way and managed, I mean.

Nice story

I love grisly horror so this was right up my street! I was thinking early on in the story "is this guy gonna make his own human sex doll out of all these women?" And so i had a great big smile on my face come the end! Reminded me straight away of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. And yes, i too loved the idea of only having two bits of dialogue. Couldn't fault it, well done. Would love to see more of this genre!  

Nice little story packed into 5 pages.
Congrats,
Cindy

Dark and giritty, and I guess kinda a love story ;-)

I can't quite say I enjoyed it but it worked for me.

At this length it's a little one dimensional so I'd consider expanding it a little.

Writer

Bloody loved it. A serial killer born from constant rejection by women, hateful and driven to create his own girlfriend that will "love" him.

The V.O saying way more than the words used, the repetition of the garbage truck and the reveal of him disposing of the unwanted body parts that way was great.

Also liked how you circled back to the dates from the opening, to show that afterwards, they were victims.

Chef's kiss from me

I like the simple, gruesome structure of this. I expect that some horror filmmaker will scoop this up.

I was expecting some sort of complication, like a woman loving this weirdo back. What if he got stuck on "She loves me," and he couldn't get the woman to "She loves me not"? That might drive him over the edge--but he's already there.

Almost a perfect script, but I have two complaints.
First, you introduced too many victims which may confuse the reader and also be too much when casting. And I don't see why is it necessary to have those you mentioned even though he was compiling a Frankenstein girlfriend.
Second, you didn't setup the twist properly for maximum effect. You make us sympathize more with Vector. Show how the dates were mean to him and rejected him for no fair reason. This will mislead us and make us root for him. Which will make the twist even more powerful.

Smart use of simple voice over instead of dialogue. It doesn't matter what's said, all that matters is his dashed hope. I get the sense that these were all first dates or approaching strangers, so I imagine they all picked up on something off about him, and rightfully so.

That's where I have an issue with this. It drops us right into the base fear women have about dating men. Reject a man and he might rape or kill you. I'm not a fan of perpetuating stereotypes, but in this case it seems there's something clearly wrong with him so the victims were all correct to turn him down and they still died for it. If the ending wasn't so horribly tragic it wouldn't work for me, but it does. The payoff is worth being unsettled.

The victims and the end result don't match up though. Too many women were introduced, it should have been kept to what was needed for that Frankenstein "perfect woman." The return to each of those women after being rejected to show him murdering them works well, it should have been kept to only those women. Emo chick, soccer mom, college girl muddied the waters and broke the flow.

I like dark and disturbing. Wrath is evident. The love story isn't really there, it's more the pursuit of love with a twisted solution to the problem, but I'm fine with it.

Dark and disturbing, but well executed. I keep entertaining myself with my review puns.  ;D
A very aptly named lead character is Victor with shades of American Psycho and  Silence of the Lambs.

Ginger (30) a thick and gorgeous redhead.
Thick?

denies his advance.
rejects his advances, perhaps?

To quote Margaret Atwood (sort of...)

'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.'

The actual genesis of the quote is a bit more complicated than that but it sums up this short.
As did Rene, perfectly.

I keep wondering what might have happened had one of the women not rejected him.

I did start to get a little mixed up with how many women there were by the end.
Streamlining might help.

I don't know... It's gruesome and horrible and there's a strange fascination (like a car crash) with the endless portrayal of women (particularly on film, but sadly in real life too) as victims of horrible violent crimes committed by men. Might have been nice to see one of these women get away and point the finger at him in the end.

But then that would have defeated the simplicity with this plot.

Might have been different to reverse the sexes for a change too?

Just thinking out loud...  ;D
It's written well, but I have no inclination to watch it, or my proposed gender-reversed version.

Horror is not my favorite genre but those who like gore will love this because it does have plenty of blood and guts and mutilations.  

What might have made it better though is to give us some back story, however brief, of your protagonist  so we'll know why he's so obsessed with the phrase "she loves me/she loves me not."  I was actually waiting to see either (1) a woman that did love him although then we wouldn't have seen what he did to them, or (2) a female saying "he loves me not" and kills him.  

Regardless, you've written a good short horror.  Congrats!

Now that one was dark, really like the way you twisted an innocent game of removing petals from a flower to this absolute horror show. Was overall decently written and was really creative with your dialogue.

It got a bit repetitious with your second act and I think with that much gore, it might suffer from diminishing returns by the reveal.

This was a great entry that i think adhered to the challenge, good  job writer and good luck.

-cheers

Okay, you two. I just read it for the third time. The garbage truck thing, I still don't get, but since you explained it to me, perhaps making that a little more clear in the rewrite. I read all the comments and I'm not sure everyone else got the significance of it either.

Either way, people liked it, so congrats again. :)

Thanks for all the reads and reviews. Really happy most of you really enjoyed this one. I had a lot of fun writing this with Sean. :)

Pia, thanks for giving the script multiple chances. Sorry it still wasn't for you.