From Twin Peaks to The Ring, horror filmmakers have lengthy been drawn to the Pacific Northwest’s moody, fickle, grey backdrop. It’s a area that may do foggy, wet, and dreary dread, simply as it may be unexpectedly shiny and sunny, making it a malleable setting that may twist your expectations and preserve you delightfully unsettled by way of a whole movie.
No one captures this higher than the proficient filmmakers who name Seattle residence.
For author and director Lael Rogers and editor and producer Megan Leonard, making movies within the Pacific Northwest is crucial to capturing a definite feeling you possibly can’t discover elsewhere. “It feels prefer it exists on this imaginary world,” says Rogers.
Rogers and Leonard each labored on the incisive brief The Influencer and the pleasant Dream Creep, two new native horror shorts which are making a splash this yr.
In The Influencer, movies of a content material creator’s “excellent day” lead us to a wide range of acquainted, snug areas—an condominium, a automotive, a bustling native membership. However then the movie descends right into a gleeful nightmare on a seashore, the place we be taught the darkish secret behind one influencer’s success. A Pacific Northwest shoreline is the proper setting for a scene of a bloody sacrifice, the place screams echo throughout the water’s floor.
Leonard says that pivotal second may solely have been achieved justice in Washington. “That’s Seahurst Park in Burien,” Leonard says. “I had really shot one thing there years in the past, so it was on my radar. We roamed throughout Western Washington, on the lookout for the correct spot. Parks in Seattle, some alpine lakes out east, however all the pieces introduced us again to Burien.”
After making connections with different filmmakers whereas engaged on Influencer, Rogers additionally wound up doing results for author and director Carlos A.F. Lopez’s unsettling native brief Dream Creep. It was known as the “scariest brief on the pageant circuit” by IndieWire because it made the pageant rounds earlier this yr.
The movie facilities on a pair who’re having a restful night time’s sleep till considered one of them begins listening to an eerie voice coming from inside their accomplice’s ear. Chaos and gore ensue as the 2 develop a technique to take away the undesirable customer.
Each movies required a number of experimentation behind the scenes. A number of scouting highway journeys have been required to get the places for The Influencer good, whereas perfecting Dream Creep’s results meant Rogers needed to shove blood up Leonard’s nostril in a pre-shoot check. “We’re at all times like, ‘We’re down, we’ll determine it out,” Leonard says with fun.
They suppose this yr of breakout native horror brief productions can solely result in many extra good issues, together with making a leap towards taking over options of their very own. The one factor they’re not seeking to do? Go away Seattle behind.
“I at all times felt like I used to be simply being cussed not shifting [away from Seattle] as a result of I simply preferred residing right here,” says Rogers. “I’ve by no means been so vindicated. I believe making artwork in a singular place and making artwork in a unique range of locations makes for extra fascinating artwork. The stuff that’s made [in the Pacific Northwest] doesn’t really feel just like the stuff that’s made in different places.”
“I really feel like there’s a convergence of a number of totally different individuals occurring proper now,” provides Leonard. “I believe the neighborhood in Seattle has been very separated from one another—individuals making issues independently of one another. With The Influencer, we introduced a number of new individuals in, and it was a a lot greater manufacturing for us. All of us simply come from a spot of desirous to make motion pictures collectively. Motion pictures that we want and wish to watch.”
The Influencer is accessible to look at on Vimeo. See Dream Creep on the Gig Harbor Movie Competition September 26–29. Tickets can be found at gigharborfilm.org.
