Director: Preston DeFrancis
Writers: Preston DeFrancis, Trysta A. Bissett
Producer: Rebecca Stone, Aaron Galligan-Stierle and David Hendleman

Starring: Marcienne Dwyer, Matt Dellapina, Eva Hamilton, John Odom, Chris Hill, Cameron Gordon, Sam Ashdown

Director Statement: 

The first time I heard about Blackout, the extreme haunted experience selling out night after night in Los Angeles and New York, I felt a little tingle at the back of my neck. That thrill of something forbidden, of something that was maybe just over an imaginary personal boundary. There wasn’t much information out there about it – mostly second- and third-hand whispers and conjecture. “You will be bound and gagged.” “They do really fucked-up shit.” “Their goal is to ruin you.”

What sort of person would volunteer – literally pay money to someone – and say, “I want you to ruin me!”

A lot of people, it turns out. Blackout gave way to The Great Horror Campout, The Tension Experience, and many others. The curiosity and attendance at these events seems to grow every October. It’s that time of year when legions of us horror fans are seeking something that will really scare us – frighten us the way movies did when we were kids, but fail to do now that we are adults and know we’re safe once the credits roll. Here was something that promised to truly scare us. And maybe even scar us.

That’s when inspiration struck me and my longtime screenwriting partner, Trysta. What if just a few people paid to re-live a “teens go camping” slasher movie, a la FRIDAY THE 13TH? We created the fictional event Slasher Sleepout: part escape room, part camping trip, part haunted house. But then, deep in the woods, cut off from technology… what if something went wrong?

That hook was enough to get us started. But what put us over the edge between “This is a cool idea” and “We have to make this movie” was when we created the character of Alex, our female protagonist. While she may appear to be the Virginal Heroine on the surface, just beneath is a deeply troubled woman trying her best to escape the mistakes of her past; a complicated, three-dimensional person, put in a situation far outside her comfort zone and forced to adapt. Maybe the thing that goes wrong at Slasher Sleepout is her.

While you are not likely to find many bigger FRIDAY THE 13TH fans than me, that paradigm was just a starting point. Our goal was to make something smarter, edgier, more character-based, but also an entertaining ride. We studied the structure of David Fincher’s THE GAME, the grounded style of Adam Wingard’s A HORRIBLE WAY TO DIE, and the personal, intimate work David Robert Mitchell did with his female protagonist in IT FOLLOWS.

Our small cast and crew descended upon Muskegon, Michigan for 15 grueling days of shooting, deep in the woods and on the shores of Lake Michigan. With us was my longtime creative producing partner, Aaron; my now-wife and our producer, Becca; executive producer, David; Marcienne, who bravely took on the challenge of playing Alex, both on land and underwater; a cast assembled from Los Angeles, New York, and local Michigan actors; and our director of photography, Jesse. We committed our vision to celluloid (er, digital), which was further brought to life in Post by our sound designer Josh and the music of our composer Holly.

What began four years ago as a tingle in the back of my neck is now a feature film for you to enjoy. If we’ve done our jobs, you’ll know at the end why we had to call it RUIN ME.