This is a really interesting pilot, and though I have some notes on plot and structure, I'm conscious of the fact that this is supposedly a true story, based on the caveat you put at the beginning - therefore, I will give you those notes but won't be as much a stickler for these two things as I tend to be. Overall, very well-written, full of interesting characters, good dialogue, and good heightening of stakes. I'm curious to find out how Red's journey, and confronting of his past, turn out - and I like Finn and love where the story leaves him at the end (when Red sent him hunting, my gut turned thinking about how dangerous it would be for him in light of location, era, and his own naivete.) If I could some up my review - great beginning, great ending, the middle could use some work. NOTES ON STRUCTURE - I like Red a lot, but unsure what his ultimate motivation is in this story. You have a great teaser where he confronts a demon from his past and exacts some revenge, but then the rest of the story finds him reacting to everything around him, rather than driving the action. I know this is supposed to be a true story, and this didn't terribly distract from my enjoyment of the script, but was nonetheless something of a weakness in it. You have a lot of work to do when writing a pilot - the main thing being establishing an engine for the rest of the show. Right now, I feel like Red wants to cash these bonds, and find someone named Jackson, but both seem a little uncompelling (especially since Red said he didn't even need money ... so why rob a stagecoach to begin with?) Red had a good line in his explanation to Finn, where he said that the rich got rich off the backs of slaves, and therefore, he considers their money his, which is good. I would lean heavier into that. If he has a strong vendetta against rich white people for the exploitation of black slaves, just run hard with that. At present, his motivation seems a little willy-nilly. He gets revenge, a green-as-all-hell kid (WHO WORKS FOR THE SHERIFF) tries to entice him into robbing a stagecoach and he's immediately on board despite very obvious red flags. The plot meandered in the middle as a consequence. Red not having clear motivation, and the action now being driven mainly by Finn, flashbacks are employed several times to keep us engaged and curious about Red, but ultimately feel a little heavy-handed. Flashbacks are a great tool, but overutilized in place of plot development, they can be cumbersome and tedious. Also, I'm curious why Red didn't just kill Francis and everyone in the stagecoach - since we're told this is what he used to do all the time, and since they knew his name, and since his name getting out meant that vengeful white folk and the law would be after him. I know Red is our protagonist, and we have to like him, but him sparing everyone seems completely arbitrary if his personality is one of a cold-blooded killer. He has everything to lose by letting them live, and yet he does. I presume because you need Francis to live because of his KKK subplot, and you need the world to know he is still alive, but I feel like there is a way to have both of those happen as a consequence of Red failing at a specific goal. Like someone rides up, sees the robbery, high tails it, Red gives chase, trying to shoot the rubber necker down - meanwhile, Finn is freaking out because now he's in charge of the hostages. This is where he starts dropping Red's name, Francis overpowers Finn, gets his gun back, Finn escapes, but manages to take the bonds with him -- just saying there are other ways to do this without calling Red's character into question. NOTES ON FORMATTING - Formatting is mostly good - but you really overutilize camera direction and acting direction. It's necessary to use both sometimes, whatever a screenwriting teacher might say to the contrary, but it felt like every line of action had an acting note or a camera note (and occasionally, music note), and that was incredibly distracting. I sympathize - I imagine you're something of a director as well - and you really want the reader to see it how you're seeing it. I get it, and there are ways to do this in a script much more subtley - but also, readers want to direct what they are reading. It's what helps them get into the writing and what keeps them there longer. The more you can let the reader be the director of your writing, the better. If you absolutely must direct a sequence in the writing, employ more discovery. As is, much of the action is written as a description of what things look like, and then we focus on what the subject of the scene is, and the dialogue starts. Try to arrange this in a way that the reader's minds eye is directed to what it needs to see, when it needs to see it. That will make it pop. I should say you actually did this really well in a few sections like this one: CLOSE on an old oak tree... a gust of wind blows a branch off it's trunk... Descending down onto an ash fire pit - Embers still burning. Beyond the fire pit sits a middle-aged black stranger, dressed in a buckskin coat. The man is alone, no horse, no snow shoes, but him and a .45 peacemaker Here you employed great discovery - The dead oak tree (it's winter, things are dead) losing a branch which falls into a FIREPLACE (oh, there's a camp) to Red sitting there alone (who's this guy... getting interested) and he has a gun with him (oh man, I want to see where this goes.) OTHER NOTES: 1. I would recommend reading your script through again. There are a few major formatting errors and a lot of misspellings. I think 'your' is used in place of 'you're' in every single instance throughout your script. 2. In the scene where Red drops off Mr. King to the sheriff, suddenly there is a character named Jackson. Was this supposed to be Finn or James? 3. “Wonders” is used instead of “wanders” in multiple places in the script. 4. On page 57 there is a line - “the rock implodes.” Consider revising. A rock wouldn’t "implode" from what you’re describing. I don't mean to be Spock about this, but it would be physically impossible. Please let me know when you have another draft and I'd love to check that out!

For the most part, I really enjoyed this read. My two favorite ideas at play were: 1. A group of thieves using tented houses as their marks. 2. The thieves deciding to mete vigilante justice against people who are presumably harming children. With the twist, of course, that it isn't actually people harming the children, but a scary infestation of some mysterious super bug with the ability to possess and devour people almost like the cordyceps in The Last Of Us, except the hosts retain much of their cognitive ability after infection, like The World's End, except instead of robots it's bug people. I liked David as a character and thought his motivation for being extra aggressive towards the child killer was really awesome. Great motivation all around. I would have liked a little more of a stark difference between him and Don personality-wise. They seemed really similar, almost indiscernible for much of the script. Also, when the creepy stuff starts happening, it seems Ryan and David are taking turns being fully panicked and level-headed in just a couple of pages, which felt a little jarring. The dialogue felt pretty natural and this script was a quick read overall, with really good page economy and good flow from scene to scene. In terms of structure, I think the story overall had a very natural and good flow with a decent escalation of action from start to finish. I think it's a bit short for a feature -and the stakes take a really big jump midway through the script but they never really heighten again from there. The same clicking and hissing, the same threats, the same bodies being dragged into dark places. I feel like you could space out Ryan and Don getting infected and it will buy you a little time to really make the threat scarier as we're dragged deeper into the story. As is, they both get possessed at the same time and the story immediately becomes about David, and the scenes kind of just feel the same after this. Ryan says they should feed the guy to "them" and David reacts violently. Then Don mentions feeding "them" and David reacts violently. There wasn't a ton of "but, therefore" going on after the middle. It felt more like "this and then this and then this." Also missing from the story was a solid midpoint sequence - wherein the protagonist(s) has the opportunity to leave the situation, but they cross that threshold into the point of no return. There was a conversation at one point where Ryan, Don, and David were arguing about how to leave the house (I honestly don't know why they didn't just break a window and cut through the tent) but it never really felt like anything was trapping them there. There was enough creepy shit and injuries going on at that point that I feel like everyone would very much just be in "get the fuck outta here" mode, but I never got the feeling of 'urgency to leave' or 'it is impossible to leave.' A quick solution to this would be if the characters are at odds about leaving. The skull flies out of the closet at David and he's very much in "let's get the fuck outta here" mode, but Ryan and Don have a solid reason why they should stay and investigate what's happening further. Whatever choice they make, they pay the price for it. I want to see David try something and have it seriously backfire on him. He tries to light the cacoon on fire at one point, but it doesn't work. That's great, except how can his act of aggression towards the cacoon now escalate the horror of the story? What new threat can appear as a consequence? Maybe there are more infected people in the walls who are beyond infected to where they don't even look human anymore and they kind of rush him and trap him. Therefore, now he has to figure out a way to deal with that. I'm not saying do this specifically, but just illustrating building a staircase of dramatic tension that gets higher and higher with each character choice. Also, I really liked the idea that the guy they were beating up wasn't really killing the kids. That's what it felt like when we saw him sobbing in the house, and the duct tape over his mouth was a great mechanism to prevent this misunderstanding from being swiftly cleared up. Ryan even tried to feed him to the bugs at some point which added to this - but when it turned out he actually was killing the kids, but felt remorseful about it, I felt like this took away a little from the story. If he is actually killing the kids, we really need to know why. If he feels bad, what is it about feeding these creatures that is so important to him? Why is he doing it at all? That question must be answered, otherwise, his presence in the house, and how we should feel about how he's being tortured by these three burglars becomes really nebulous. There wasn't a lot of resolution at the end of the story. We don't know what the bugs are, why the one guy is helping them, and who those agents are in the van. A lot of questions get raised at the end which leaves a feeling that nothing was really paid off. Think of plot points as narrative debt you will have to pay off later. Adding brand new characters at the very end of an already unpaid off story, adding nebulous dialogue that raises more questions, creates more narrative debt, and sucks the fun out of the story. Random question - if David went to prison for murdering and butchering the guy who raped, murdered, and butchered his daughter - how is he not in prison for life? Overall, I feel like you have a very natural storytelling sense, and with a couple of rewrites focusing on heightening the horror through a goal and consequence lens, this story could definitely sell. It's low-budget, single-location, and a lot of fun. Great job.

This is a first 15 review, so I'll give my overall impression, and then specific notes by page that I made. I like the concept of a serial killer who kills people for not passing along spammy chain emails. That's super fun. The small cast so far seem interconnected, which will be helpful for paying everything off later. There are some formatting and grammatical errors throughout, so maybe run a spell check or just read through it slowly to point the ones out that you missed (I included some below.) Interesting to have the first character killed off in the first 15 pages. This definitely feels like a grindhouse type B-Movie slasher, and I'm honestly compelled to find out what happens next. and if Coleman ever catches this killer from his past. Plus, does Jessica ever end up throwing that party? I guess I'll have to read more to find out. NOTES BY PAGE: Page 3 - the title card says “CHAIN LETTER” instead of “CHAIN LINK.” Was this an accident? Page 3 - Should be “lawn chair” not “lawn chain.” Page 3 - Are Jennifer’s parents just now finding out that they have to be out of town for the rest of the week, or is this just the first moment they decided to tell her? With dialogue like this, you could always assume the character being told the information already knows, and it can be used to highlight a bit of their characterization. For instance, the Dad can say something to the affect of, “Okay, Jennifer. We’re hitting the road.” She doesn’t respond. “You have the number for the hotel if you need anything. And plenty of food.” She still doesn’t respond. The mom walks out. “Jennifer, say goodbye to your father.” Jennifer says something snarky. I’m not saying do this exactly, but do you see what I’m getting at? Explaining to a character what they should know is going on already is essentially just explaining to the audience what you think the audience should know. But the audience aren’t dummies. Give them just enough, and use responses or lack of responses as material for showcasing characterization. Page 7 - Should be “anything that can be hacked,” not “any that can be hacked.” I’m also a little confused here about Coleman. Is he a beat cop or a detective? He wears a police uniform, and locked up a common criminal, and is at the top of the list of people who would bust Jessica’s party, implying beat cop. But he has a file cabinet of cases he’s worked on, and one in particular that he never solved, implying detective. He’s got to be one or the other. These two things are mutually exclusive. Page 11 - Should be “did you delete it” not “did you deleted it.”

There are a lot of good ideas in The Face You Wear, though the execution comes across as messy in a plot that meanders between timelines that the writer wants us to think are connected, but by the end of the story, raise the question of why time travel was even necessary to introduce as it became totally inconsequential to the immediate conflict the characters faced at the top of the story. The Face You Wear takes place in the 2040s, where racism in the United States has become so bad, black people are hunted down and summarily executed by white mobs (though Black people still own houses in this timeline, raising questions as to why racism has suddenly become so caustic and violent again and so immediately.) The main character, Kevin, acts as bait for the mob while his family escapes - then uses a serum that allows him to generate a wormhole and disappear (presumably to the past, but unclear as there are three timelines.) Kevin is apparently a scientist who has invented a serum that can increase the gravitational mass of an object, allowing him to generate wormholes, or even black holes simply by consuming his elixir. In a flashback to the 2030s, Kevin and his wife fight about his plan to use the serum to travel back to the past in order to stop racism so his family can live a peaceful life. This is where the problems with the story really start to show. For starters, the flashback to the 2030s implies that racism has been violently caustic for over ten years from the point where the story begins. Why then, did this family continue to live in the deep south when a violent white mob could have presumably attacked and killed them at any time? Also, if Kevin has the power to generate wormholes, why not just teleport his family to a place without hyper-violent racism? Why use it for time travel at all? There is also a line about how they don't know the past. Why don't they know the past? That's a pretty incredible detail. It needs an explanation. Was there a massive event that erased everyone's memory of systemic racism? Something else? Simply saying that characters can't remember their past raises more questions then it answers. Kevin ends up traveling back to the mid-1950s, during the early era of the Civil Rights Movement, where he observes first-hand the prejudice his people faced in the past, befriending local activists, and becoming entangled in their lives and struggles. Meanwhile, Kevin's daughter is still in the future, being hunted by someone named Don, whom she ends up defeating very easily (more on this later.) Kevin becomes a fervent member of the civil rights movement, composes a letter to his daughter in the future, and sends it through the wormhole. The main problem with the story as a whole is that Kevin traveling back to the past had zero bearings on the conflict he and his family faced in the future. Kevin went back in time to participate in the civil rights movement, which was already happening. Meanwhile, his daughter is still being hunted in the future. Essentially, Kevin travels from one horribly racist timeline to another, and his actions in both have zero consequence for the other, making the medium of time travel here, unfortunately, completely pointless. WHAT I LIKED: I liked the idea of doing a time travel story to the civil rights era. It continues to be an incredibly topical subject in the US today, and an important cultural lesson we shouldn't soon forget about. NOTES: There are major formatting problems with this script. Sometimes a title is written as dialogue, sometimes dialogue is written as action, sometimes action as dialogue. the problems are on almost every page. Please read your script before you submit it anywhere and ask for feedback. The most polished version you can possibly produce of your script is what you should ask people to read. If you wrote a first draft, but didn't check for formatting, spelling, or other mistakes ahead of time, you are asking a lot of readers - basically saying "I didn't care enough to proofread my script, but please care enough to read the whole thing anyway." This is huge. In Hollywood, a script with any mistake on the first five pages is thrown in the trash. Doesn't matter how good it is. If you don't want that kind of treatment for your hard work, put in the extra work to polish it and make it the best you possibly can. The use of constant exposition in this story didn't serve it very well. Kevin explains to the audience almost everything, and the scenes feel disconnected from the exposition throughout the entire script. We see a white mob rushing a black family's house, and Kevin immediately starts talking about time travel and wormholes, and his invention - none of which solve the central problem of the story (racism) or even the immediate problem of the story (Kevin's family escaping from racism.) On page 11 - "Kaylee stares at Maree for a good two minutes." For two whole minutes? Really? Set a timer for 120 seconds right now and see how long that feels. Imagine that on screen. That would take so long to play out. On page 12 - Kevin freaks out that he may have ruined the timeline by wearing a sweater to the past -- why didn’t he think it would mess up the timeline if he saved the woman from the white guy bullying her? And then again when he threatens the candy store owner for throwing out Merlin? If the concern about a disrupted timeline exists, it needs to be consistent, and naturally, a higher-stakes situation would yield a more dramatic disruption of space-time than simply wearing the wrong clothes. On using Denny’s - if you’re going to include a known franchise in a period script, you have to do a little research. In 1955 there were no Denny’s. The pilot restaurants called “Danny’s Donuts” were starting to branch out across CA, but there weren’t any in Texas and it would be years until the franchise was rebranded as Denny’s. This is an easy fix though. You could just call the place “Sam’s Diner” or something like that. Even from that little amount of info, the audience gets its a local diner in the deep south. Page 21 - Don was really walking for a full hour? And laughing loud enough to give his targets plenty of warning? Where is the tension or the stakes here? If it takes him that long to walk from the train to the house, and he feels comfortable enough to laugh so loud that his targets can hear him, they can presumably get away very easily. Page 23 - Kevin really saw the clerk messing with Jean’s coffee and didn’t immediately suspect something was up? I don’t buy it. The clerk is a racist asshole who is out to get Jean. If he’s messing with Jean’s coffee, then, OF COURSE, he would think he was trying to hurt him!

First, I just want to say how awesome it is that you've even finished a script with such a high concept. Most writers never make it past the first fifty pages, but you have written over 120, which is amazing. Do not let my rating deter you - keep sharpening your writing skills, give this a good rewrite, and keep getting feedback until you have something truly undeniable. "Writing is re-writing," as they say, so keep going. Second, my review will focus exclusively on the story, and the character development, with a few minor notes here and there on proper formatting. If I make a note on dialogue, it will specifically pertain to how that dialogue is coming across from a larger storytelling perspective and what it is conveying about the character, though I will refrain from getting too into the weeds here. WHAT I LIKED: I liked the concept of a female wrestler of Indian descent becoming a superhero. This is a really unique premise and I feel like it has a lot of potential in future re-writes. The conflict that Rani faces in her everyday life (parents wanting her to get married, not being to make rent, etc) provide a really clear picture of who she is and of her cultural background. Plus, she was a very charming character in general. The idea of having an estranged father who is somehow connected to the prime antagonistic force in the story is really cool. There is an implied tension with this - that Rani doesn't want to enter an arranged marriage because, as a child, she watched her parents have a very explosive falling out, in addition to wanting her freedom and possibly being exclusively attracted to women. WHAT NEEDS WORK: PLOT - The plot is riddled with coincidences and miracles, wherein any hope of a dramatically tense scene is negated by villains making very obvious and careless mistakes, or the protagonists being so clever and skilled that they overcome every obstacle with complete ease. Bank robbers run out of bullets just shooting at the bank ceiling, allowing a seemingly normal girl to chase them down and engage in a fistfight with them. Do not take it so easy on your main characters. Rani is super strong which is her advantage, but obviously not bullet-proof, so this gives you an opportunity to write real tension when she is up against two opponents with guns. How does she overcome this obstacle? Make it HARD on your characters because that will keep the audience interested. If the robbers are just idiots - drop their guns, or spend their bullets firing them into the ceiling, then Rani has such an easy path to victory it's boring. Who cares if she wins if it comes as a consequence of her enemies being too stupid to save their bullets? Rani is able to get into a top-secret base with zero obstacles. The receptionist asks for her ID and then changes her mind (?) This would NEVER HAPPEN in real life - especially if you consider that at this point Rani is dressed in a wrestling costume. Who would let someone like that into a secret base. Again, the script suffers here from too much convenience, too little tension. You need Rani in the base, so she gets in the base easily. That's boring for the audience. The biggest miracle/coincidence of all is in the opening, where a meteor lands in Rani's backyard so quietly, no one hears it. Then it gives her super strength and we never address the meteor, or why it had the ability to give her powers, ever again. Rani explains to Amanda and Clive that the meteor made her strong, but the opening of the movie is so fundamentally disconnected from the rest of the story, it basically serves as an excuse for Rani to be such a badass - which sadly, takes away from her character a little bit. Also, just a side-note, but no one would ever buy tupperware at a party "in the hood." Why would they? They're going there to party. They don't want to carry around tupperware with them for the rest of the night. Maybe one or two people in a highly unlikely scenario might, but enough people for Rani to make $700 in less than an hour? That just feels like another too-convenient device to get Rani her rent, thus solving her rent problem so we don't have to think about it anymore. Rani catches the killer at the party, and he decides to just kill himself ... I mean, why? So that the scene could be over? It just came out of left field. He murdered someone and crashed that party for a reason. Having an overpowered Rani chase him was something he wasn't anticipating. So how does he try to overcome this obstacle? How does Rani? If you can answer that question in a dynamic way that pits not only their strength but their wits against each other, then you have an interesting scene. But because the guy just kills himself, it makes everything he did before seem totally random - which also makes the act of Rani chasing him down feel like it was pointless. Not only can Rani fly a plane, but she can also walk into an airforce hanger, and just hijack a miltary plane with ZERO CONSEQUENCES. I don't think I need to say much more on this as it follows the theme I've been setting. Too much convenience. When you structure a plot, think about 'goal' and 'obstacle.' Rani needs rent - but she is fired from her job as a wrestler - therefore she has to find another way to make money (PRO TIP - make the thing she has to do to make money something difficult for her, or something she doesn't want to do. Then we sympathize with her.) You started this out okay, but then having her meet Amanda, learn about Amanda's tupperware business, immediately get hired by Amanda, and immediately sell the exact amount of tupperware to cover her rent is just lazy writing. And then at the end of the movie, Roman is about to deliver the finishing blow, but decides to touch Rani with his hand - giving her the opportunity to break it and beat him. Too easy, too easy, too easy. Clive pretends to tie his shoelace and then pulls out A BAZOOKA?? Where was he hiding that thing?? FORMAT - Your formatting is 85% good, with a few exceptions. 1. Characters repeat multiple times without any other character dialogue or action to break up the repeats. Don't do this. Instead, combine everything they say into one line of dialogue, or you can break up what they say with action or parentheticals. 2. You use the term CLOSE ON UP a few times. Just say CLOSE UP for close-ups. 3. Try to employ discovery when writing scene headings and action. For instance - your opening reads like this: "The night in the sky looks beautiful, luminous, as there is not a single cloud. The small stars out-twinkle the larger one, with the full moon looks as quite close. Looks like a picture. The unusual activity occurs a minute later, with a shooting star-like figure heading onwards into Earth. The layer uncrusts and rusts slowly disappear, turning into a meteroite." This can be simplified significantly. Here's an example: "A beautiful, cloudless night sky. The full moon punctuates a picturesque ocean of shining stars. One of the stars, growing brighter, appears to be moving. A METEORITE. CLOSE ON - The meteorite burns on its descent to Earth, casting off chunks of its outer layers that disintegrate middair -- " You don't have to write it the way I wrote it, but I'm trying to demonstrate discovery. Very little time is spent describing what everything looks like before we draw the reader's (and audience's ) attention to the story element they must now pay attention to. THE METEOR. 4. Not sure if this is a format thing, but there are a few instances where characters speak to themselves out loud while in a public place. Think about how weird that would look in real life, and find a more clever way to visually communicate what you are trying to communicate. For example - when Rani goes to the coffee shop in Act One - she says aloud that she needs to find a job. You could accomplish this more easily if she's at a coffee shop, looking through the classified section of the newspaper (because this takes place in '95) and seeing how all the jobs look terrible or don't pay very much. 5. More of a setting note, but the idea that the San Diego city government manually raises rent is just not reality. Landlords and rental companies control their renting prices based on current market values. City Council would not have the power to raise rent almost 100% - nor would they have the motivation to do this because, if they did, it would dissuade people from moving to SD which means less money for the city. In the extremely unlikely scenario where a city council does do this, it wouldn't take effect right away. It might even take a year. By making it the government's fault, you also avoid having a good scene of conflict with the landlord. If the landlord is able to raise rent mid-month, he needs two things to make this believable: 1. A compelling means - maybe he rents a slum and his tenents live somewhat off the grid and don't want to be noticed, so they have no legal recourse if he tries to screw them over. 2. A character-based motivation - maybe this guy is just an asshole. Maybe he's racist. Maybe he's trying to raise rent to get Rani to sleep with him in order that rent stays at a low price. Any of these options show what Rani is up against, adding to her conflict, and making her more sympathetic. CHARACTERS - All of the characters have issues with motivation, or sometimes do things that are completely against their interest for the sake of forcing conflict on them. First example - Rani is fired from her wrestling job so she can't make rent. Later in the script, you say that the manager is corrupt, which would be a good source of conflict BUT you ruin this by making Rani do something so out of character it becomes incredibly confusing. Why does she bite her opponent? She is super strong! She doesn't need to do something like that. And her doing it makes her unsympathetic towards us. She's not being mistreated, she actually deserved to be fired. So why should we now care if she can't pay her rent? Something to think about. Clive is the worst secret agent ever. He meets Rani, immediately reveals he's a secret agent, then tells her all his secrets. To cap it off, he agrees to take her to his secret base. I feel like this is pretty self-explanatory as to why it doesn't work. Too easy, and why the hell would a secret agent ever do this? Roman's motivation and plan are both very confusing and weird. He was bullied as a child so he wants to be powerful so he funds the creation of a chemical that can destroy cells and also a mech suit. It takes him 18 years to semi-accomplish this goal, but the missing piece is the information Dev has. So instead of immediately kidnapping Dev and torturing the information out of him, he blows up Dev's house with Dev inside. After Dev miraculously survives, then he has some of his men interrogate him. Only when Dev doesn't talk, does Roman actually kidnap him. I'm sorry, but this makes no sense at all. How would Roman know that Dev would survive an explosion? The chances of that are so rare. Also, Dev never gives him the formula, so how does he complete the chemical at the end? Also, what was he planning to actually do with the chemical? Threaten the world with it, or unleash it on the world? Is he a supervillain or just a power-hungry rich guy living in a volcano? These details matter.