A young couple rents a bug-infested cottage and discovers that there is no escape.
I was a fan of insects before reading Rob Herzog’s newest short, Queen of the Crawlies. Now the only crawlies I can feel are the shivers itching beneath my skin.
Justin and Cora are a couple driving to a cottage that they had rented. Justin claims it to be a romantic getaway, whereas Cora believes he is there to hunt and fish, feeling like a second thought. We open with their SUV seemingly driving erratic, with a blur of trees passing by the windows, and Cora feeling carsick.
However, Cora’s carsickness is soon replaced by a different type of nausea when they arrive at the rather dilapidated cottage, and the hundreds upon thousands of bugs inside, infesting the floors, the walls, the ceiling. I believe the descriptions speak for themselves when it comes to the feeling that spiders are dancing on my skin:
Rob suddenly takes a sharp turn with his storytelling, ultimately making our characters flee the cottage.
It was at this point where I had asked myself, “What’s next?” leaving me eagerly reading more. What could possibly happen to our characters now that they had left the primary location?
As they drive away, we develop a sense of who our characters are, as Rob begins to express the couple’s relationship through a small dialogue exchange. It is very apparent that the two are struggling with each other, and that there is a tension which builds up the further we delve into their conversation. Rob does the strained relationship justice in its subject matter of emotional abuse, involving denial, a true expression of defense, and of course a well-rounded sense of anger.
However, this is only scratching that itchy surface where the creepy crawlies skitter. It seems that by arriving at this cottage, an evil entity has entered this couple’s lives, one that forever haunts whomever it desires. The reader may ask, who, or what, is this evil entity? Why does it reside in this cottage? And most importantly, what does it want?
Take a read and determine the ending with your own thoughts. But if you start to feel like bugs are crawling on you, just keep telling yourself that it’s only your imagination…
BUDGET: Independent. 3 locations (car, cottage, woods), 3 actors (2 male, 1 female)
ABOUT THE WRITER: Rob Herzog is a Chicago-based screenwriter. He has sold several short scripts and won prize money in two small screenwriting contests. His short horror script “Creak and Shriek” was produced in 2019 by Mad Dreamer Entertainment and can be viewed on various platforms. He has a master’s degree in English composition from Northeastern Illinois University. Rob can be reached at: robherzogr (a) hotmail.
Read: QUEEN OF THE CRAWLIES (8-page short horror screenplay)
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*This screenplay may not be used or reproduced for any purpose including educational purposes without the expressed written permission of the author.
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About The Reviewer: Sean Elwood has been writing screenplays since 2004, and telling stories long before then. His published work includes his 2016 anthology AfterLife AfterDeath: Stories for the Dark, his screenplay Grosvenor Arms (Amazon), the bonus short story “It Started With An Itch” in C. S. James’ Twisted Books To Leave You Shook – Book 1: Fright Filter, and most recently his newest feature screenplay Pyre (Amazon).
