Every year Panic Fest brings in a stellar selection of World Premiere films and this year in person attendees got to be the first to lay eyes on the latest form Black Fawn Films, ‘It Feeds’.
Synopsis:
After a young girl bursts into their home psychiatry practice claiming an entity is feeding on her, Jordan and her clairvoyant mother must find a way to stop the force before the girl is taken completely.
The cast includes Ashley Green (‘Twilight’), Shawn Ashmore (‘X-Men’), and Juno Rinaldi (‘Workin’ Moms’).
We were lucky enough to be able to sit down with writer/Director Chad Archibald to talk about the film:
DRC: You wrote this film in addition to directing it, how did the story come together and what were your inspirations
It took, I think, five years between the last movie that I wrote and directed and this one. I had lost both my parents in between, and I was going through a lot. I started writing this, and it was a struggle at first, and then one day it just clicked and after that, I think I wrote it in seven days. It’s not easy, it’s a stressful thing when you’re sitting by yourself. Am I wasting my time? Is this garbage? Is this ever going to be seen?
But yeah, I think the big thing for me is we read a lot of scripts, and we write a lot of scripts. Writing in horror, there’s always this idea of what’s the creature? What’s its backstory? Is it a Wikipedia page that we find? Is it based on real life? Is it something that you make up? How do you be different when there’s so many movies coming out? And really sometimes it’s not about being different it’s just about what works for you. And I think for me, it was just that it clicked in my head that I was like – both my parents died of cancer, and I was with them for their final days. And the idea was just that what if this creature was just like cancer? It was just a parasite, and it doesn’t need a huge backstory.
It just feeds. That’s its only mission. That’s the only thing it does.
And it’s not that I wanted that to come across in the movie, but for me, it made it make sense. And that’s why even, you know, the creature’s lair is almost like a giant tumor. And again, it’s like, not that people would ever really connect that, but for me, it helped me write the script and give it motivation.
DRC: So in a way this was like an outlet for you?
Yeah, I mean, I think it was an outlet. That’s what kind of got it going. But what I loved about it is that I’ve always wanted to do – you know, I love Nightmare on Elm Street. I love The Cell. I’ve always wanted to make something scary.
We’ve done a ton of films over the years, I think we’ve done 35, and I don’t know if we’ve really made something that scares the shit out of people. So that was part of the goal with this one, but also that, you know, as soon as you break that idea as a writer of being like, hey, we can go into other worlds. Now you can do whatever the hell you want. So I wanted to bury something. You know, I wanted to do, like, Event Horizon. I wanted to do, you know, all these different kinds of things that just suddenly started feeling right, not forced, but like right putting them in this.
DRC: This film has a lot of great sets and locations, how did those come together?
Yeah, I mean, as far as locations, it was, you know, we did try to, on a limited budget, create these kind of fantasy worlds. We built a lot of sets, and they were all crammed in this tiny little warehouse in Hamilton. So we had, like, Agatha’s kitchen was, you know, one wall away from the house in Jordan’s mind. Part of that house under the stairwell was Randall’s hallway that goes to his basement. The coach’s office was right beside that.
And then we had the grave set right beside that. But you couldn’t move in this place. Everything was done very close together. And then next to it, in the other warehouse, we had the cave set for the finale, the creature’s lair.
DRC: What were some of the challenges with this film?
We wrote this movie and we got it financed and all of a sudden, this actor’s strike was coming up, and we were like, there’s only a chance. Any time you get money for a movie, you just got to make it, because money disappears. And this is the biggest budget that we’ve ever had, even though, you know, it’s still not that big.
We casted Ashley (Greene), we casted Ellie (O’Brien), I think, within a week of them being on set. And, you know, learning all their lines, wardrobe fitting, all the wardrobe was custom as well. It was all made by our designer, Madi (Styles).
And, yeah, got them all ready, built these sets. I mean, we were still painting sets as we were shooting, as we went through it. We were all just working so hard, because we knew that if we didn’t wrap on time, all of a sudden, we wouldn’t be able to use Ashley or Shawn (Ashmore). Like, they’d just be done, and we’d have to wait, I don’t know, a year or whatever until we could shoot again.
So it was a fun shoot. It was a very fast-paced episode.There was actually a time where we had two cameras going. We had one filming Cynthia coming into the house with one team, and then we had the other one was filming Agatha’s kitchen scene. So we had two monitors there, and I was standing there being like, Action! Cut! Action! So it was a lot. It was a lot to go through.
Credit: Black Fawn FilmsDRC: With the character Agatha you were able to inject a bit of humor into the story, what made you want to add that element?
I think the best horror movies are often ones where you can have fun while you watch them. There’s a lot of dark themes in this one. And I think, you know, writing Agatha, even at script phase, everyone was like, Agatha’s the best. I just want to see an Agatha movie. But, I mean, the hard part was actually just finding it tonally, so that you can kind of get some humor in there, but also it isn’t, like, so comedic that it feels ridiculous or relieves so much tension. There were so many lines that Agatha has that we actually cut out because she ad-libs a ton.
It’s like, that’s too funny. Like, it just, like, broke the tone too much. But we’ll put them on the Blu-ray.
DRC: This story is really built on relationships, talk to me about how you built those out.
There are two parent and child relationships in this and I just really like the idea and the concept that they’re all good people. They’ve just gotten into this situation.
Like, I love Randall because, you know, he’s a good dad, and he’s just a normal person. And, you know, a year ago, he would never imagine he’s doing what he’s doing right now, but what would you do to save your daughter kind of thing. And same with Cynthia, it’s just creating that dynamic that she will not look inside her because she’s afraid of what she’s going to see, and she just cannot beat that.
And in the end, like, what is she willing to do and sacrifice, including herself, to save her child. So, I mean, so much of it just came out organically, I guess. Um, but yeah, I know, I even fell in love with them when I was writing them.
Agatha as well. I mean, I think, I was, I definitely, like, first season of Yellowjackets, I love Christina Ricci, and I loved, you know, that she had a lot of humor and stuff. So, I definitely loved to vibe with her. So, there was a little bit of that in Agatha, for sure.
DRC: The creature design was really well done and very scary how did you zero in on what you wanted it to look like?
Yeah, I mean, as far as creature design goes, a creature as played by Brooklyn Marshall, go look her up on Instagram. She’s beautiful. She’s a dancer. She does, like, glamour, beauty, photo shoots. She’s awesome, amazing. And the contrast between that creature and her is so awesome. I actually, through the entire set, never saw her as herself. I only saw her when she came on set. She was always in the makeup room. I just, you know, I forgot what she even looked like until the end.
With the design we had a lot of arguments, a lot of back and forth and we actually did her in full makeup with a couple of different designs. It wasn’t until the last one that we were like “this is it.” And so much of it was just, you know, the idea that we wanted this creature to be thin and kind of sunken eyes because it’s hungry. It’s starving. And all it wants to do is eat. So, that was a big part of it. Just making that kind of make sense.
DRC: Was there anything you wanted to put into the film but couldn’t due to time or budget constraints?
Yeah, absolutely. I wrote it. And we had to go into production so quickly that, you know, all the producers have been like, you know, we’ve got to tone this down. We can’t do this with our money. Then we were shooting. And I was like, “how do we do everything?”
There was actually, whenever she goes into the creature’s mind, there’s this cave near my house. It’s like a cave that kind of is a crack in the earth. It’s so awesome. And I really wanted her to wake up kind of in this crack and walk through this forest where you’re seeing all these rotten people that have been kind of eaten by this creature. And then she goes into this tunnel that has all these tentacles come out of it. And then she kind of goes through and comes into the lair.
I was heartbroken, I fought so hard for that. So hard for that. And then as production said “no, what if something happens?”
‘It Feeds’ made it’s World Premiere at Panic Fest on Friday, March 28th, 2025. You can check out the trailer here.
Credit: Black Fawn Films
