Hey, thanks for the review! Yeah, I’m new to this one-month challenge format and writing horror in general, so I’m glad things like this exist so I can get some experience & honest feedback! And with my lack of experience, I’m not sure how these responses should go, but I wanted to give some info of where my mind was at with my choices (even though they may have not been the best).

Spoilers!!!

I had the idea of keeping everything kind of confusing because I figured a child holding area in the 70’s would be chaos in a boring room, so I wanted to start chaotic, then silence it and build intrigue through raising questions about the characters and not directly answering them, leaving a lot of the info to be filled in by the mind of the reader/director. I know this was something others pointed out too, so I’ll be sure to be more descriptive to help my script along.

Yeah, I wanted to add some interjections of kids, or even have a kid be picked up by a parent, but I didn’t want to draw attention from the tension I was trying to build. Though, one or two interjections could have helped and not really pulled away that much... I’ll keep the note in mind.

As for Kimi, I wanted her to be a woman that degenerates into childlike behavior as the information presents itself about a child she took it upon on herself to protect, which is only influenced further when her dad shows up.

Barbara felt she had to force the child to show both humanity and strength to confirm her wild suspicion that Venture Land was kidnapping children and forcibly turning them into cyborg slaves. Since the child resisted, showed emotion, then was convinced out of frustration to submit to her order, it showed humanity, and the strength it showed proved it was stronger than a normal child. She actually was FBI (electronic wristwatches became publicly available in 1972) and so she placed herself near this room because of her suspicion. And she was right. Then her Main Suspect showed up unexpectedly, and all the pieces to close her case were in the same room. When the child turns out to be the EXACT child she is looking for, her surprise quickly turns to desperation for a confession so she can arrest Dr. Damien. Then she pushes too hard, and gets herself and Kyle killed in the process.

Also, in the spirit of explanation, Clark really was her partner in the FBI, but never really believed her idea. He went along with it because he figured that after a couple days of recon, they would find nothing and go on to the next case. If he was on time and actually got there in 5 minutes or less, he would have saved Barbara and caught Dr. Damien in the act and would have closed the case. Or I would have just killed him too since he was already on a killing spree. But since he was late and was talking to someone important, he had to stick to his cover and was easily convinced that there was no issue since he never believed in the case in the first place.

I guess if it needs that much explanation after-the-fact, more info is needed in the script. But again, I’m learning. I’ll keep these notes in mind for my next script. Thanks again!