Good review by Richiev.

I disagree with paulsavarese. His version is merely an inciting incident and although one could easily imagine a story from there, it still feels incomplete and there are too many options.

I would rather go for:

“When a school janitor finds out a student is trying to kill him with voodoo, he must get the doll and stop the spell.”

Does the janitor find out about the voodoo BEFORE he finds the student? Because here is another potential approach: FIRST he needs to find out which student it is and THEN stop him/her. If the student is a formidable adversary (which s/he should be), it is possible to turn this into two distinct stages.

Finally, whey is the janitor the target? I suspect the janitor has a character defect that he needs to overcome. Perhaps we can include a hint of this character journey in the logline as well.

It is great to have a simple story – but it can’t be simplistic…

I like to understand which part of the story a logline reveals. Here, it sounds like “he is forced to pick a side” may only be the end of Act One. Without a proper understanding of what happens when, the reader may be mislead in terms of what type of story it will be. This can be fixed by rewording and cutting.

There’s also a lot of detail about what I believe is the Inciting Incident (the first sentence). Can you trim/cut this?

Ultimately the question is: what makes up the core of this story. It seems that “he befriends a little girl who helps him survive” will take a long time and therefore makes up the second act. Then, at the end of Act Two he “sees the effects of the war”, i.e. he has learned. Then the climax is when he picks the side. If this is the structure, I believe it can be sound. But the survival story in Act Two is still fairly generic. I would rather see a specific problem. Most war movies have a specific goal running through Act Two.

Once it is clear how the story plays out, this logline can be trimmed to one sentence. I’m keen to work on this with you next month! 🙂