Aperture rejection

Yesterday I submitted my video pitch for Personal Demons to Aperture through GreenlightMyMovie.com.

Here is what they had to say:

"Response: This is a pass for us, because; Needs a higher concept (missing
irony/wow factor…).

Comment: There is nothing truly unique about the villain in this story, not
even his name. At least give the demon some kind of name to make it stand
out from the rest. Additionally, I don't know enough about the lore of the
demon, it's history, why it was damned to hell or what people in the past
have done to try and combat it or even what our characters can do to defeat
it. I would recommend spending sometime developing the demon in a separate
document, give him a backstory, a set of rules and weaknesses. You, the
writer, knowing exactly what the characters are getting themselves into is
paramount when it comes to this kind of thing, it allows you to inject
themes and motifs into your story to make it richer. ."

Here is my rebuttal:

Okay, first off: when I Google agents/agencies/producers/production companies I am submitting my query letter to and they don't have a strong web presence (meaning a website as well as social media), I kinda don't bother with them.
Why?
Well, if you're that hard to find for me... you're going to be hard to find for anyone else... and if you're that shrouded in the digital ether, how then are you going to be visible enough to sell my work, promote my work and generally help me build my career.

Makes sense, right?

See, Aperture has a Wikipedia page and a Facebook page, but no website...

Hmmmmm.

Looking at their IMDB page they don't have that impressive of a résumé.

But, anyhow, back to my rebuttal.

Their comment of: "Needs a higher concept (missing
irony/wow factor…)" seems like kind of a personal jab (though I could be taking this too personal... in fact I probably am)... especially since all they have to go on is a 10 minute video pitch.

Then their comments of: "There is nothing truly unique about the villain in this story, not
even his name. At least give the demon some kind of name to make it stand
out from the rest."
My thing is: why give the demon a name (spoiler alert: the demon is defeated at the end of the script)? It's not a character that is going to reoccur and be conjured up again and again (like Pumpkinhead).
I mean, did they give the creature in Alien a name (it wasn't until much later that its species was dubbed a "xenomorph")?
Did the creature in Predator have a name (though everyone would eventually dub it "Predator", even though that was just the title of the first film)?
I mean, even the demon in The Exorcist has a name (Pazuzu), but who knows that, aside from horror aficionados?
I really think this is just a flimsy complaint.


Then there's their comment of: "Additionally, I don't know enough about the lore of the
demon, it's history, why it was damned to hell or what people in the past
have done to try and combat it or even what our characters can do to defeat
it."
My rebuttal: Okay, I'm sure, but when you over explain things in a horror film, you bog down the story and you peel away the mystery of the piece, thus draining it of much of its impact and ability to terrorize.
To me, unexplained is much scarier.
Do we need to know Cthulhu's entire history?
No!
Lovecraft never gave it to us and we don't need to know it!
On the subject of Lovecraft, do we know what the green goo is in Herbert West's re-animation agent? 
Nope.
And we don't need to, either.
We just know it re-animates the dead and that they're not the same when they come back as when they lived.
Do we know the full story of the alien race that sent the DNA transmission for Ben Kingsley to create Sil in Species?
No!
And we don't need to!
That the aliens are behind the scenes, nefarious and malevolent is enough for us!
Explaining their whole culture, race and origins just humanizes them (which they are not), puts a face on them and breaks down their potential for scaring us.
It was only in the second Predator film that we began to get a sense of the alien creature's culture and traditions.
But if we'd only been left with the first film, well, I'm sure people would have been content with the fact that the creature was just a hunter from space who loved to kill other predatory creatures (even human mercenaries).
And as for the "xenomorphs" I spoke of earlier... We didn't know their origins for 4 films (6 if you count the terrible-to-mediocre Aliens vs. Predator films) and now that Ridley Scott is trying to spell out the Xenomorph's origins (in Prometheus and Covenant) I am not really pleased. Can't it just be enough that this species is a dangerous, threatening, fierce force of intergalactic nature that is parasitic, ravenous and murderous?
Can't it just be an evil species from some dark corner of the universe?
And I realize that all of the examples I've given are horror films with sci-fi mixed intro them, but even if you get back into straight horror...
Again, we don't know any of the information, that they requested I include, about Pazuzu in The Exorcist. And that is perhaps the most (commercially and critically... plus Oscar accolades) horror film ever made!
As for, say, Halloween (Carpenter, not Zombie): it was scarier (in Carpenter's version) when we didn't know anything about Michael Myers... why he did what he did... how he was able to do what he did (what made him The Shape), etc.
Zombie (many would say) screwed it all up by making Michael Myers human and giving him this long, tormented backstory. 
I just think (and I feel many would agree with me), that in horror you need a bit of mystery if you're going to have a successfully scary film.
 

Then their comment of: "I would recommend spending sometime developing the demon in a separate document, give him a backstory, a set of rules and weaknesses. You, the
writer, knowing exactly what the characters are getting themselves into is
paramount when it comes to this kind of thing, it allows you to inject
themes and motifs into your story to make it richer. ."

Now, I'm not going to put much stock into what they say here because, well, they didn't actually read the script. If they did, then they'd know the "rules" and what the demon's "weaknesses" are and what "the characters are getting themselves into". If they'd read the script, they'd also know about all the "rich" "themes and motifs" that I've injected into the story... but they haven't read the script. They are just going off of a ten minute video pitch.
So, just like I told my friend Brian, when he told me how terrible he thought my favorite horror film (Stephen Norrington's Death Machine) was and that he couldn't even finish it... he stopped halfway through it: I don't respect your opinion because you didn't have all the information when you formed it.