I have no idea why I did this...or even if it's anything more than just an exercise in futility and deliberate avoidance of PS...but I pulled out an old short script I'd written to polish up. It's called I Watch You, and is a story told from the POV of a stalker obsessed with a young couple about to have a baby. It was already pretty dark, but I made it darker. I dug into it as deep as I could. And cleaned up the through line, a bit.
Now instead of 2 murders, there are 4...and I think the first one is a real shock. But it intensifies the story a lot, considering that it's uncalled for except in the narrator's mind. It'll be interesting to get a response to this.
I'm doing it because that horror site -- 13 Horror -- is having a horror script competition for both feature and short. I sent them Killing Moon just to see if they really are into horror or if they're the usual poseurs; I Watch You is in the same vein. "Let's see just how serious you really are."
It's got sex. It's got violence. It's got innocent people getting offed in cruel ways. It went from 14 pages to 18, and I used the French-Dutch version of The Vanishing as my template.
That movie scared the crap out of me, because it's something that really could happen. Silly shit like Silence of the Lambs and Friday the 13th and Halloween and Scream and the like are nothing but roller-coaster rides meant to thrill more than chill, because none of them even begin to approach reality.
But when you watch a gentle man who's done something good wonder if he can do something just as bad...and set about testing himself in a way that is both methodical and clumsy...even as he learns from each mistake he makes in his plan...its very quietness and adaptablility added to the fear. What was worse is, the ending was perfect...and scarred me for life.
That's what I want I Watch You to do.
Now instead of 2 murders, there are 4...and I think the first one is a real shock. But it intensifies the story a lot, considering that it's uncalled for except in the narrator's mind. It'll be interesting to get a response to this.
I'm doing it because that horror site -- 13 Horror -- is having a horror script competition for both feature and short. I sent them Killing Moon just to see if they really are into horror or if they're the usual poseurs; I Watch You is in the same vein. "Let's see just how serious you really are."
It's got sex. It's got violence. It's got innocent people getting offed in cruel ways. It went from 14 pages to 18, and I used the French-Dutch version of The Vanishing as my template.
That movie scared the crap out of me, because it's something that really could happen. Silly shit like Silence of the Lambs and Friday the 13th and Halloween and Scream and the like are nothing but roller-coaster rides meant to thrill more than chill, because none of them even begin to approach reality.
But when you watch a gentle man who's done something good wonder if he can do something just as bad...and set about testing himself in a way that is both methodical and clumsy...even as he learns from each mistake he makes in his plan...its very quietness and adaptablility added to the fear. What was worse is, the ending was perfect...and scarred me for life.
That's what I want I Watch You to do.
No comments:
Post a Comment