Glimmer
jamesmichaelPenpusher
When three friends go missing on a camping trip in a forest rumored to be haunted, the two left behind discover clues that lead them to a safe deposit box containing video tapes? showing exactly what happened to their friends.
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I agree with Steven, With their friends missing you would think they would go back into the woods with a search party, not to a bank.
It’s obvious there is a story logic that is not represented in the logline.
For instance you could start with:
“10 years after their friends disappeared during a camping trip, two buddies begins receiving clues…”
You go on from their telling us the stakes are and who or what is standing in their way.
The logline is clunky as it currently is written. More importantly, there are bad and unnecessary elements in this story that seriously undermine the whole concept’s dramatic potential. Most notably: Why are the two follow-up investigators being lead to a box of videos instead of into the forest itself? The forest holds the danger, right? Not the bank branch.
Furthermore, having the forest already rumoured to be haunted actually subtracts from the story, rather than adds anything. Far more gripping for the audience would be if the hidden menace is not telegraphed at all. “Silence of the Lambs” proved that the best form of horror is implied rather than shown.
Similarly, the videos – even if they are never shown to the audience – cheapen dramatic tension rather than enhance it. A far more effective way to invoke fear and dread would be for the two friends to discover individual body parts of their friends, in the forest, at various stages of their search.
Even by the schlock standards of horror plotting, this concept is poor and unexciting.
Steven Fernandez (Judge)