Sunday 22 January 2017

From Script to Screen: Online Greenlight Review - 23/01/17

ogr fsts by Polly Gwinnett on Scribd

1 comment:

  1. OGR 23/01/2016

    Hi Polly,

    I don't think this is going to work; there's too much to establish: 1) that the serial killer is called The Brain Surgeon and collects brains (how will the audience know he's a serial killer called 'The Brain Surgeon). 2: That the joke-shop is a front for his crimes and also includes a hall of mirrors and 3) That the serial killer discovers the ID of the Victim (how - by going through his wallet before he kills him, but after he's lured him into the hall of mirrors?) 4) The back-story of the serial killer's dead daughter - a flash-back, which shows him, presumably in his life before becoming a serial killer, did the daughter's accident give rise to his killer instinct, and if so, why does he collect brains?) 5) So the ending is the killer has a change of heart - but what about all is other victims? Are we meant to feel sympathy for him, because your audience won't - he's been collecting people's brains!

    The components that work for me are: a man is collecting brains and using a joke-shop as a lure: if the joke-shop is a lure that should have a relationship to the type of victims/specimens he's particularly interested in: so children's brains, I'd assume logically. So why is he interested in children's brains - is he a surgeon desperate to acquire the secret of eternal youth (hence the brains of young people) and if he's so worried about 'eternal youth' - why? Is it something to do with someone who is terrified of growing old - of someone who, when they look in a mirror, only see the creeping signs of age and decay? Maybe, in a proper Frankenstein-way, this brain surgeon is collecting brains to forever preserve the beauty of someone else - his beloved. For me, this stats to make sense of everything - the brain surgeon, the joke shop and the mirror: the joke shop gives you youth and childhood, and the mirror gives you vanity and appearance. This isn't a story yet, because it seems to me that a story this dark needs some kind of 'comeuppance' for the brain surgeon, some kind of punishment; if it's the brain surgeon that is drinking the elixir of youth (made of brains) to stay forever young and handsome, then perhaps a child escapes and destroys his machine or whatever, or his syringes of 'youth dew' - and we have a Dorian Gray-style grisly end, with the brain surgeon, who might be a 100 years old really, rotting away to dust before our very eyes...

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