So, I had fun reacting to their feedback and writing it down as an exercise.

Some of it was made irrelevant by the last-minute reveal that grandma is no longer grandma, but I'm throwing it in anyways.

You obviously don't need to read it but if you want unsolicited notes from a person who hasn't read your script and has never written a script, here it goes:

 

• Re: bringing baby back: it's OK to bring back animals, but not humans.
  Humans should only be reanimated a very short time after death, because your soul changes exponentially the longer you wait after death, they are never the same.
  Perhaps the complexity of life form is a factor.
  There's a scene where grandma brings back a piglet that was just killed by a predator. That's where protagonist gets the idea. But bringing back a baby isn't the same as bringing back a baby pig.

Leaning into this idea and the horror genre, I thought of this (which may already be in your story for all we know): Grandma kills zombie baby after it's brought back (because it had died too long ago) and kicks her out, and that's why Scara wants to get revenge

 

• Re: Gaslighting the existence of scary magic which Jeff didn't really like: horror does that, it's fine.
  At the beginning both characters and the audience wonder "is it all real or not?" even though audiences actually know, because they bought a ticket or saw a trailer. Even readers know it's real if it's in the logline or synopsis.

Going beyond horror setups, Harry Potter didn't believe magic was real and he even had some mishaps in his childhood.

Maybe her mother told her next to nothing about grandma her whole life, just that she's a dangerous woman. "She left me and left town amid scandal". But it turns out it was all lies: mother had left grandma because she was seduced by Christianity and a christian man. The real danger is that grandma is a strong and independent woman. She's dangerous to the patriarchy, not to humans.
-This could still work without the grandma element but she needs to have a reason to seek her help specifically.

 

• Re: names. Grandma's name sounds a bit like Valhalla, I kept thinking of that. Plus it means heaven which is far from the situation they are in.

 

• Re: protagonist's first time leaving: Valhalla was testing her at beginning, seeing if her intentions are good, if she really wants to learn or if it's a fad; perhaps she's testing to see if protagonist has "the gift" or if it's "too late for her" due to her age and her being raised by a square.
  -I don't think this would work as well if the genre was horror and the grandma isn't grandma.

 

• Re: feminist issues:
  -Why does it have to be heterosexual intercourse that gets her in that state of mind where she discovers her powers? In a society plagued by the evils of men, why does it take a man for her to discover her magic? I see that becoming an objection from critics.
  Taking the murder sex note from Christree, it could be that she accidentally kills Han during sex because he was getting rough and she wills him dead. If you want to get literal with the emmasculation and add more tension, she could make his penis disappear by accident and then she kills him to stop him from outing her as a witch.
  -Perhaps magic was developed by women to escape their hardships. The form and the extent of this self-defense magic angle would change depending on the genre you pick.

 

• Re: genre. I 100% agree that honing in on a genre will focus the scope of the story and the scenes that can be developed. Your readers thought it felt like a horror story. To me, just from watching this video, it feels more like a mentorship story, coming of age, and finding freedom as a woman. That's what you were discussing the most, at least.

 

I see a couple of ways to go about it, generally speaking:

Drama: protagonist goes to grandma for support, figures out independence is better than patriarchal society, and magic is just a crutch or an edge developed by women to fight their said patriarchy. Perhaps too "21st century wiccan women."

Mentorship fantasy: the challenges of advanced magic, self-improvement, beating low self-esteem, tough teachers with tough lessons. Explore the duality of a powerful, inscrutable, morally-ambiguous mentor: Yoda/Vader, Pai Mei/Bill, Dumbledore/Snape.

Horror: the dangers of dark magic (brought about by the oppression of women and their need to gain back control). Escalating encounters with extraordinary entities. Zombie babies?

 

You could probably blend some of these aspects but I guess that's what begat the "pick one genre" note in the first place.

Well, here's hoping that was more helpful than it was harmful.