Waaaaahoooooooo!
Greetings, you potion-brewing witches. The hour for spilling blood is upon us! I’ve done the hard work of decapitating a hundred-plus potential loglines so that only the eight best remain in the crimson-soaked moonlight. Now don your spookiest Halloween attire and choose which four loglines are your tricks, and which cherished logline is your treat.
By the way, if anyone wants to reward me for all my hard work, my favorite Halloween candy is Reeses Peanut Butter Cups. If all goes well, I will be spread eagle on the floor of my abode, too sick to move after inhaling an ungodly number of these incantations. Thank you in advance.
If my uber spooky language is too coded for you, THIS is Logline Showdown. A bunch of writers sent in their loglines. I picked the best eight. It’s now up to you to choose your favorite. Simply read all the loglines and log your vote by writing it in a comment.
If you have extra time, it’s helpful to writers if you explain why you passed over their logline, as well as why you liked the one you picked. As fun as these showdowns are, they’re ultimately about helping everyone become better writers by learning which concepts work and why.
Don’t worry if you missed this month’s showdown. We do a logline showdown every month so you can still enter in November or December. I’ll be announcing the theme of the next showdown in the newsletter which should hit your inboxes by the 27th. Just four TERRIFYING days before Halloween. If you want to get on the newsletter mailing list, send me an e-mail at Carsonreeves1@gmail.com.
Good luck to this month’s contestants. Voting closes at 11:59pm Pacific Time this Sunday night.
Title: Bacchantes
Genre: Folk Horror
Logline: Two competing brothers from a vintner lineage find themselves entrapped in a secluded vineyard. There, enigmatic women, under the guise of adoration, manipulate and intensify their rivalry, all to crown the brother who survives as the chosen vessel for Bacchus, the god of wine. Set in the misty mountains of Georgia, a country in the Caucasus.
Title: SERIAL KILLER SLUMBER PARTY
Genre: Horror
Logline: A high school outcast attending a Halloween party in a secluded mansion where the guests cosplay as history’s most notorious serial killers finds himself under attack when a real killer begins taking out the guests one by one.
Title: Sus
Genre: Thriller
Logline: A washed-up former child star who once played an iconic scream queen battles a psychopathic killer while filming Stalk Slash Repeat, a throwback horror movie intended to revive her career.
Title: Scaring Shelley
Genre: Horror
Logline: Up-and-coming, untrained actress Shelley Duvall flies to England to star in eccentric and obsessive Stanley Kubrick’s, “The Shining”. What starts as a potentially career-making role turns into a fight for sanity as a despotic Kubrick gaslights and emotionally tortures Shelley until her on-camera fear is justifiably and frighteningly real.
Title: Surrogate
Genre: Sci-Fi/Thriller
Logline: With the promise of a huge payday, a penniless woman agrees to be a surrogate mother for a renowned physician, only to discover she’s the first test subject of a diabolical medical experiment to raise the dead.
Title: Id
Genre: Horror
Logline: A burnt-out, aging novelist finds the inspiration to write again with an antique typewriter only to learn that every evil subconscious thought he writes on it comes to life.
Title: The Feast
Genre: Horror/Dark Comedy
Logline: When an orphaned social worker finally gets to meet her boyfriend’s wealthy meatpacking family at their annual reunion, she discovers that she and the other guests aren’t there for a feast, they are the feast, and must band together to try and survive the night as they’re hunted by famished vampires.
Title: LAST TO LIVE
Genre: Horror
Logline: When six influencers perform a stunt that inadvertently kills the daughter of a cartel boss, he forces them to undertake a deadly series of their own YouTube challenges. SAW meets MR BEAST
DEALS DEALS DEALS! – This weekend, I’m offering a $150 discount on both my feature script consultations and pilot script consultations. I’m also offering a 3-pack of logline consultations for just $50! If you’re interested, e-mail me at carsonreeves1@gmail.com and mention this article!