J. M.

Here's a story that really engages the imagination. Picturing the various characters in my mind as I read, I saw them as Pixar animations. All colorful, obeying the laws of cartoon physics. There's a very good sense of action an motion.

The dog, Bones, was my favorite character. Without giving too much of the plot away, I was impressed by how Bones' personality was established before he had the ability to talk (yep, read it to see why a dog can talk). He has a goofy innocence that was endearing.

The main character, Ella, is a bright young inventor. Her creative genius gets her into trouble, but is also a bond she has with Grandpa, also an inventor. His relationship with her is interesting. He treats her equally as his granddaughter and as a fellow inventor. He understands the importance Ella's inventions have in her life, even though it tends to get her in trouble.

The story involves an alternate universe, tapped into through one of Grampa's inventions. The story reminded me slightly of the TV show "Fringe", with the evil alternates. It also brought "Tron" to mind (the original, good one). This strange universe with different laws of physics, filled with familiar faces.

Some of the plot points get a little dark. Animals are experimented on and live with horrible mutations. Some of the descriptions are lacking, so in my mind I was picturing the failed clone from "Alien Resurrection", begging to be killed. Nothing that can't be fixed up, but it did take me momentarily from a lighthearted romp to a really sad place... but it recovers nicely.

There's a wild, fun story here that would make an entertaining and visually spectacular animated movie, and 3D would not go to waste on it. I could picture it going from 2D to 3D when they enter the alternate universe, the way it goes from black and white to color in "Wizard of Oz".

"Shoot the Dead" reminded me of another great genre-blender of a flick, "From Dusk 'Til Dawn", but instead of the Tarantino effect on the Vampire movie, this is the Guy Ritchie effect on the Zombie movie. With some vampires thrown in. It really is a healthy dose of mythos and genres packed into this baby, and it works, either because of or in spite of it's huge ambition, depending on how you like your action, horror, and crime scrambled. Sprawling and chaotic, yet nice and compact at the same time.

The weakness of the script is it's formatting and descriptions. I, just a guy reading it, wasn't bothered by the formatting - it didn't break the flow of the story for me. But a script-reader for a studio would find it to be a fatal flaw. Putting the rules of screenwriting out of my head, the story was easy to take in.

I'm torn on the huge blocks of description. Much of it is necessary, but can be broken up into sentences rather than the whole thing being packed into a huge paragraph. Some of the descriptions were excessive, but very effective. Probably should lose some of it in a rewrite. It does paint a vivid picture, but the goal is to be as efficient with words as possible. Again, just a guy taking in the story, it worked wonderfully, now it just needs to be bent and twisted into a more traditional screenplay.

Those issues aside, I gotta say that this is an enjoyable trip through a well defined and imagined noir underworld. That beaten down, world-weary narration that I imagine Jason Statham oozing out as Jack. I love the anti-heroes he and Billy turn out to be. Not even any honor among thieves, but yet you root for them to be the best crooks they can be. They are tasked with delivering things of value, and in the process think to themselves "what's so valuable about this, and why should I just hand it over?" I wouldn't trust these guys, but they're true to their characters. Gritty, brutal, and willing to do their worst just so they can say that they're not anyone's lackey.

The action is awesome in this. You know what you don't see alot of in a zombie movie? Hand to hand combat with a zombie. Most zombie movies treat them like an infection, so they fight at a distance with guns or at best bats, shovels, etc. Here, we get zombies gut-punched and beat down. Nice. Of course, there's plenty of shotgun blasts to the zombie noggin to keep things moving along.

The story structure is deceptive in this. Since it's got a hybrid monster/gangster core, it's able to revel in that gangster world for most of the first act, putting a majority of the supernatural elements in the 2nd act. It would have been a mistake to turn it directly into a zombie movie at the moment of inciting incident. With this being a gangster flick first, the structure is rock solid.

Overall, I'd say this is a great premise with a clear vision of how the writer wants it to look, feel, and sound. It's a great blueprint for what's to come, but needs some technical work done to bring it more in line with screenplay standards. But like the protagonists, this gets the job done even if it breaks all the rules.