You’ve got your bloody fangs out. Savoring the sweet succulent flesh of a fresh batch of Halloween Showdown enchiladas. This time with a twist! OOOH-OOOH-AH-AH-AH! Short stories ARE ALSO ELIGIBLE FOR THE MADNESS. Hollywood keeps buying these things. Well, Scriptshadow has finally listened. The controversy surrounding this decision has been PLAGUING the comments for months. I’ve had to ban at least two hundred people! That’s how dramatic this showdown is going to be.
I also received tons of entries. Too many entries that had to do with people getting in cars/staying at houses/getting jobs and then realizing someone else at that location was secretly a demon or a monster. That was literally every 6 out every 10 entries. I was trying to find stuff that had a little more creativity to it. I only have one caveat for complaining in the comments for picking one of the below entries over yours. Please make your argument with plenty of Halloween puns. Thank you.
If you haven’t trick or treated at the Amateur Showdown house before, here’s how the pumpkin is carved. Read as much of each screenplay/story as you can, then vote for your favorite in the Comments Section. Voting closes on Sunday night, 11:59pm Pacific Time. Winner gets a revieboo next Friday. If you have ideas on what the next Amateur Showdown genre should be, let me know in the comments.
One last thing. A shout out to Magnus, who EASILY had the best concept of all the entries. His script was titled Shalloween and here’s the logline – When all the hottest girls in a small town get slaughtered by a masked serial killer, a social media influencer obsesses over why she’s not hot enough to murder, and starts looking for an alternate explanation for the killings. How great is that? The problem? First two pages I read were not good. Maybe you guys can get in there and help him out. Basically, my advice is ‘write the script.’ Stop trying to be clever. It’s a good premise so it doesn’t need you to dress it up with a whole fancy way of telling the story.
Six entries this month. GOOD LUCK!
Title: Deep
Genre: Horror/Thriller (Screenplay)
Logline: Trapped on a remote North Dakota farm in the middle of a bone-chilling winter storm, a deaf 12-year old girl must try to survive her murderous foster parents, who’ve been influenced to kill by a mysterious radio signal from deep space.
Why You Should Read: Deep came about from my desire to write a story putting the most vulnerable type of person in the most terrifying situation I could imagine. A very early draft of Deep made this year’s Page Quarterfinals. After feedback, it’s since gone through a strenuous rewrite. At 87 pages, and tightly structured, it’s a lean, electrifying read. Looking forward to any critiques from the Scriptshadow Community.
Title: An Innocent Bloodbath
Genre: Period Horror (Screenplay)
Logline: Obsessed with beauty and terrified of aging, the recently widowed Countess Elizabeth Bathory will stop at nothing to preserve her perfect skin, leaving the servants in her castle absolutely horrified.
Why you should read: The story of Elizabeth Bathroy is terrifying, and she is perhaps the most notorious serial killer in history. What makes it even more unnerving, is that her victims were all young women. To date, I’ve yet to see a depiction of Elizabeth Bathory that I felt was true to the original story. Sure, Daughters of Darkness was great, but it had its own spin on it. I wanted to write a horror film, as close to the original tale as I could. Also, what made it difficult was I didn’t want to write a torture porn flick. This is not an Eli Roth movie. I’m going for atmosphere, the fear of the unknown, the fear of losing your loved ones, the fear of being snatched away in the dark of night never to be seen again, all the while following a mad woman’s quest for eternal beauty.
Title: Good Night’s Sleep
Genre: Horror (Short Story)
Logline: A young woman records herself sleeping one night and discovers a sinister presence is sleeping in her bed each night.
Why You Should Read: You should read this story because it’s a quick, but layered horror story that twists the found footage genre into a classic scary tale that wraps itself up in a nice bow (which is very hard for me to do) and reads almost more like a short film than a literary-language heavy short story.
Title: Fade Out
Genre: Horror/Noir (Short Story Screenplay)
Logline: Los Angeles, 1940 — a man paid to cover up Hollywood scandals must confront a supernatural killer hellbent on revenge.
Why You Should Read: “Fade Out” was born from two fascinations: the slasher subgenre and the sordid secrets of Golden Age Hollywood. Wanting to put a new spin on the tried-and-true “masked killer” formula, I realized I had never seen a period slasher flick before. “LA Confidential” meets “A Nightmare on Elm Street” struck me as a fun premise. Although I had an outline for a feature-length screenplay, I decided that condensing the material into a short story would act as a good “proof of concept.” Thanks for reading!
Title: Dolly
Genre: Horror (Screenplay)
Logline: A lonely teenage boy finds companionship in a sex doll, only to discover that it is possessed by an unsettled soul that will do whatever it takes to keep its young owner’s attention all for itself.
Why You Should Read: I may have dropped “something” when this was conceived of at the onset of quarantine…in the throes of my trip, I unloaded the idea on my roommate – a sex doll comes to life to possess the love of its young owner at all costs…or maybe I just said killer sex doll.
Unlike previous iterations of sex dolls on film – LARS & THE REAL GIRL among others – DOLLY comes at the idea from a strict horror perspective, falling more within the wheelhouse of CARRIE and CHILD’S PLAY. The script explores the darker edge of growing up, especially in the age of instant gratification.
DOLLY was a weirdly cathartic experience for me; it had me exploring moments of growing up, albeit through a hyper-stylized way. It became an exploration of the feelings and urges that sometimes overwhelmed my better judgment. For such a crazy premise, the story drifted into very real territory.
My biggest hope is that you find the fun (maybe even a little bit of heart) within DOLLY and it leaves you with some very memorable set pieces to haunt your thoughts this Halloween season.
I hope you find the above interesting enough to crack open the script. If not, thank you for even the momentary passing thought. I appreciate all notes, good and bad and everything in-between.
Thank you again for giving DOLLY the time of day.
Title: My Compassionate Heart
Genre: Horror (Short Story)
Logline: During Covid lockdown in the UK, a lonely young woman falls in love with the restless ghost of a murdered sailor.
Why You Should Read: I work as a reporter in the UK. If you read the papers and take any notice of bylines, you might even recognize my name, but I’m not going to reveal it here, because the source materials for this document consist of confidential files that were exfiltrated from the Police National Database (PND) during their recent massive (2~4TB) data leak. A small number of these leaked files were sent to me anonymously by an unknown party. As far as possible, I have verified that both the files and their contents are genuine, accurate and true. I have chosen to share this information because I believe that disclosure of the strange events surrounding the disappearance of Vivian Josephine Weaver falls clearly within the wider public interest.
