In the time it takes to "put your face on", someone else has ripped it off.

We’ve been working on this project for the last four years now. As with any form of life, it has evolved and grown, and so have we. We initially wanted to create a smart horror movie, but over time it has turned into something much bigger.

As audience members we are repeatedly exposed to hollow, intelligence-insulting horror films. We watch wealthy, well-endowed, sexually-attractive, one-dimensional characters blunder their way through predictable circumstances, only to be subjected to violent, unrealistic, exploitative gore, now considered to be “the money shot” within the genre. Pretty soon we just wish our so-called hero/heroine would hurry up and die. All too often we leave the theatre feeling our money and time has been wasted. Although sadly these films are both a reflection and cause of the times we live in, where much of western culture is consumed by commercialism, fear-mongering, and stupidity, we, as filmmakers, want to show the other side of the coin. For every movement there is a counter-movement and this is ours.

The films that we consider the classics scared but also inspired us. They weren’t about the gore, they were about the challenge. The characters are just regular people put in an extreme situation of life or death. How would the characters survive this horrific event? What would they do? How would it change them as people? Great horror films, strangely enough, can give people hope. They present the idea that overcoming fear and pain can make an individual stronger. The person that never gives up, even in the bleakest of times, no matter what the odds, becomes the hero.

Humans are capable of acts of brutal violence. No real surprise, we’re predatory animals, and we’re genetically predisposed to kill things with our bare hands in order to eat them, or at least prevent them from eating us. We came from a world of fear and blood, and those urges are still there. However, humans are also capable not only of acts of extreme altruism, but of solidarity in the face of a common enemy, in this case, death. The lethal aspect of our nature is constantly depicted in horror movies, where people are routinely butchered for pleasure. The flip-side, our ability to come together in a time of crisis, the lengths to which we’ll go in order to survive, and the extremes we can be pushed to and how we cope with them, is sorely lacking in all but a few of today’s films.

Ok, so that’s the goal: create an inspirational horror film. But it’s not a simple task. In order to reach our audience, we must find out what makes them tick, which means we must find out what makes human beings tick. So we embarked on a journey into the human sciences in order to make us better filmmakers (and it’s just really cool shit to know). After reading stacks of literature, watching numerous documentaries and a lot of YouTube videos, we think we’re ready.

Creating an empathic connection between our characters and our audience is key. It's a fact that humans only truly care for a limited number of people. How else could we function in a world where over 50 million people die every year? If you reacted to each death the way you do to that of a loved one, you'd be in perpetual grief, and probably die of the emotional stress. So when an audience watches a movie, they aren't initially going to care about the the characters untill they're given a very good reason to do so.

Our target audience is the intelligent horror movie fan. The first step to creating a character that an audience will actually care about is to make them relatable.To us, that’s the Average Jane/Joe - people that don’t bother putting on makeup before going to the grocery store, wait as patiently as possible in the rain/snow for the always-late public transit - people you might hang out with. People like us, or perhaps yourself. Our goal is to make our characters feel like real people, not some fictional, glossy, Hollywoodized illusion.

The second part of the connection is intelligence. The moment you hear an audience member yell “Don’t go in there, that’s so stupid!”, you’ve lost them. They no longer care about the characters, and are just waiting out the inevitable slaughter. When characters are smart and the situation is plausible, it deepens the connection. Now, not only can you relate to them but you admire them and want them to survive. If you were to be dropped into the events of the movie, these are the people you’d want to be with, as they’re the ones most likely to live. As we enter the “Age of Endarkenment”, now is the time to start using our brains instead of our guts, unless all we want to see is both spilling out in an endless spray of blood.

We believe we’re on to something. Watch the Deadfall Short Film in the Gallery, and decide for yourself.