All Reviews

Mind of the Beholder is an intense, gritty, imaginative, roller coaster ride. A pretty sweet roller coaster ride, not one of those broken down lame ones. The serial killer genre always is strong, but with some interesting choices, and exploiting your premise you’ve got something really good here.
I usually don’t spend much time on strengths, but I feel compelled.

Your writing is very strong, very visceral, rarely a wasted spot of prose. You are obviously seasoned, researched, and make choices that makes your writing feel fresh. In particular I enjoyed your meet the team sequence. In few pages you were able to give an accurate sense of who they are (in an entertaining way) and explain their value to this team.

The second act was particularly strong. Your psychics used their powers and continued to reveal the story and it continued to gain momentum as the deaths got more personal. You also did each of your characters the service of giving each of them their own unique voice and drive. You excelled with set-ups and pay-offs. There were nuggets all throughout this script that you reach back and used. I applaud you for that.

Now, with all that I feel I need to offer something to help improve your work. There are a few things, but these will admittedly more picky and I hope you can use them when you tackle another draft.

When Sera is made to go to the shrink around page 20, I thought something about it was a bit off. I can’t imagine her thinking that going to the shrink is useful in any way. For me it feels wedge, but I know you want to, in an authentic way, explore her past. Perhaps with more resistance from her, (because it makes sense Ito wants to do this) it will feel more real. It’s early in the story, but there could be more of an ultimatum so she has to make the choice to stay as opposed to going along with it. For someone with her gifts, I’d think she’d be less cooperative – that’s really my main idea.

The second story question I had was the build up to the date. You even address it in the screenplay. After the death of [name withheld] this seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind. For me it’s a step to take, but honestly to take care of the beats, characters and plot the way that you did, you’ll have a make a fudge or two. I’m sure you have thought about it, but perhaps there’s another way to do the same thing – more authentically.

The only character that I had much of an issue with was Ichiro and it’s minor. He’s definitely the comic relief and he works. My only question is why would someone with his gift, be a TV personality. He’s obviously gregarious and it works to balance the group, but I just wasn’t completely sold with how everything made sense with them like the other characters.

Now, maintaining the nameless Killer throughout the whole story was a creative choice. I assumed you go this route because you really didn’t build any suspects. You built your story around stopping the killer instead of who’s the killer and I think you probably made the right choice. However I will admit when I read through and saw Ito’s brother name come up in the fight with Ito, I was like “Oh, shat!” when I realized this was simply a device, I’ll admit I was a little letdown.

Now here’s the world’s most obvious note. Creatively you choice to put this story in Japan with predominantly Japanese characters. First, I applaud you for the balls of that choice. I’ll also admit when I saw that was the way it was going, I felt a little intimidated. Mainly because I don’t know much about Japanese culture. For me, ignorant, it seemed like you did this well. You obviously put time into all your other research so I’m sure the same works here.

Now, I’m just not sure who American Hollywood does with stories that take place in other countries stocked with characters of that race. The other thing, at least it seemed this way to me was Japan was not really used. This story could have taken place anywhere. I guess I would caution/encourage you to think about a.) Putting it in the US so you may have a better market to sell it or b.) utilize Japan more as your set piece. In another way, either make it a story that HAS to be in Japan that takes advantage of what that means OR reconsider the purpose of it being in Japan.

Trust me, I like the choice you made. I’m just trying to give you some food for thought.

Even less important. I’m not drawn to your title. After reading it, get it, but there might be a better more high concept title lying around somewhere.

My page by page notes always end up being bad and little, but here they are

Rikki needs caps 25

31 Looks like you did a find and replace on Rikki, but didn’t keep the CASE LOCKED. been there.

93 The Killer reaches into her Call ** should be cell

104 capitalize ito.