Chuck Medeiros I think a lot of the bad reviews here were written by people expecting a straight horror flick. I know their rebuttal will be that they were expecting a 'good movie' but to each his own. This is more of a psychological drama. There is a palpable state of tension throughout as we really don't know where the the main character's hallucinations are going to take him. It kept me watching so I gave it a higher mark than most.

joestank15 Final Draft - A screenwriter (James Van Der Beek) locks himself into his apartment and succumbs to psychosis in an attempt to write a horror script. Not a terrible premise, but the execution is awful. This feels like a first year direction and writing job, and probably is. The director jump cuts the hell out of everything. It's meant to be disorienting. What it IS is annoying. So much so that small chunks of film are incoherent. The writing is predictable, and doesn't use follow through on most of the ideas it offers (bag of oranges). It's like they ran out of time and slap-dashed it together for the Toronto Film Festival.This film is not jaw-droppingly "oh my god it's so bad it's good" bad. It's boring bad, and irritates you for a long time afterward. James Van Der Beek is not a terrible actor, and keeps the ship barely above water. But he's too normal for the kind of psychosis the film tries to offer. He is merely a withdrawn guy who one day sees people and hallucinates things, then decides to act mildly deranged. Cause follows effect. Maybe there's something in the water. Now Darryn Lucio, who plays his "friend", is a terrible actor. He shares the likeness of Chris O'Donald and is even more annoying, a superhuman achievement.The atmosphere the film provides is good (dull gray and somber), but as it's the only thing the film achieves it means nothing. This film wants to be Jacob's Ladder or The Machinist. It isn't even Secret Window. It's the preppy girl in class deciding to turn goth.Not irksomely terrible, but the sheer stupidity of it will ebb at you. I've already put more thought into this critique than the filmmakers did for this.D

dschmeding First of all... "Final Draft" is not really a horror movie even the burnt creepy clown on the cover and in the trailer might suggest that. If you are in for some classic Clown-Horror kills this might be way wrong for you. The movie is really slow paced and basically just taking place in about 3-5 locations. It deals with a writer named Paul who dreams of an idea for a horror movie script which a friend of him rushes him to finish on a tight deadline of 18 days to get a movie deal for it on a meeting he arranged. The main actor played by Dawsons Creeks James van der Beek is a rather introvert guy and I think James captures his psychological dilemma very well. To deal with his writers block and finish the script without distractions he lets his friend lock him in his apartment for the 2 weeks. From here everything plays in a large, dark and rather empty apartment in a creepy industrial building where Paul hacks on his keyboard desperately trying to finish his story. When he mixes in too much of his personal experiences reality and his story begin to meld together. Beside the main actor I really liked the editing and little use of music which made the movie interesting. Its often hard to grasp whats real and whats imagination since the editing is strongly jumping in time, inter-cutting other sequences and lagging in sound. I think there are some real cool ideas in the script in how the characters Paul puts in his script to be killed by the clown for how they made his life harder start appearing in his apartment and talking to him typing their demise on his keyboard.While Punchy the clown rather acts on the sidelines he delivers his punches in a raw and untypical fashion. Final Draft could really be a great movie if it didn't stretch so much. Its really way to slow and could have been way tighter. There are so many fresh ideas in the script and editing its a shame that the suspense wears off after a while. If you like psychological Movies with horror and drama elements you sure should give this a try even if the movie has its flaws... especially the sound mixing which is way too low in the dialog and the unexplained cuts to events outside the apartment and not related to Pauls script or history put me off a bit.

Panterken For anyone who's about to watch this, keep in mind that it's a low-budget indie-film. Don't expect spectacular locations, spectacular plot twists or spectacular acting. The movie moves forward pretty slow and it takes a long time before anything actually happens. I also have a problem with the dialog, which lacks a lot of subtlety. What's wrong with letting the viewers figure out for themselves what's meant by certain lines...Still, the film was enjoyable and I have no problem recommending it to friends. Seeing how there are so few decent horror films out there, this deserves some credit. I felt a bit let down by the last half hour, but that part of the movie does score well on unpredictability.To sum it up: a decent psychological horror movie with okay performances and some intense scenes. Worth the watch if you don't mind a slow pace.6/10