About This Movie

The movie was inspired by a story my roommate improvised to a group of young campers while telling stories around the fire. It involved unsuspecting people going to sleep, like any other night, and waking up in an endless forest, chased by a a bird-like humanoid creature, who's motives nobody truly knows. This past year, I was bit by the analog horror bug that's currently running rampant on the internet with projects like Backrooms, The Mandela Catalogue, and Local 58, so I thought this might make for a fun fall project. The movie was shot on real 8mm tape in the Freetown-Fall River State Forest with a crew of four.

In the spirit of using your surroundings to your advantage, another compelling factor to make this was where I'm currently living, which is dead center in an area called the Bridgewater Triangle. I have to imagine it's probably been mentioned on the Travel Channel or some other outlet for spooky programming, but for those who aren't familiar, it's a hub for paranormal activity in New England, stretching across various towns in southeastern Massachusetts. Over the course of hundreds of years, there have been numerous reports of cult activity, UFO's, poltergeists, and cryptids like giant serpents and thunderbirds. In truth, I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of paranormal experiences I've had during my time here, but I will say that scouting in the state forest by myself for half a day became extremely unsettling very quickly. It made for some great locations for filming!

A big inspiration for the Harrow's appearance was the Legend of Zelda game Majora's Mask. While it's not an outright horror game, it's one of my favorite creepy games of all time. Skull Kid is a personal favorite character design of mine, and a part of the game I find especially interesting is the finale sequence inside the moon, where the chaotic build-up unexpectedly turns to a quiet scene on a sunny hilltop, where masked people run around a tree. It's so bizarre and quietly unsettling, and I thought this would be a cool opportunity to pay a sort of homage to that with the use of masks and the matching outfits. If you've played the game, a couple shots in this movie may be familiar.

Because we recorded on an 8mm camcorder, we had to use digital capture software to be able to edit the footage into a movie file. The process of doing this actually gave us lots of weird artifacts that enhanced the distorted analog look in a cool way. The only shot in the movie that isn't analog is when the hiker jumps into the river, for which we used a digital "crash cam" that I felt more comfortable throwing off a cliff. I had to swim out to retrieve it, and despite my efforts, water got into the protective rigging and I had to dry the camera out for two weeks. Luckily, it survived and we salvaged the footage.

BTS Photography by Kat Holm