The DemonHuntr Series: One Year On

Short intro

Some of my avid readers may remember a little post I wrote a year ago today, introducing you to DemonHuntr: a series that focuses on "a friendship between two men, one gay and one straight, who play the roles of mediums [...] they use the 'DemonHuntr app' (hence the name) and go on to solve mysteries and fight the supernatural". If you'd like to go back and read the article, click here.

On the anniversary of this post, I wanted to go back to the spooky stories, the queer characters and the man behind it all, Tim O'Leary. Tim was nice enough to let me interview him, so that we might better understand how far DemonHuntr has come in a year and what we can expect from the series in the future.

How has the process of making the show been? Have you encountered any new aspects of the industry that were new to you?

"So, it turns out film-making is really difficult and expensive. I know, it's crazy right?

 This wasn't the first time on a set for anyone involved, but there were a lot of firsts - particularly for our original production team (myself, my husband, Robert Rice and our good friends, Zach Nycum and James Stanley) because it was our first time producing anything, just us without any outside help.

 Usually, when a production team is up to bat the first time, they'll make a short film or a proof of concept or something like that. But not us! Nope, in our infinite wisdom, we thought it would be a grand idea to make a series that originally consisted of six episodes, which is essentially six, short films in a row.

 Unfortunately, even demons are no match for a global pandemic, so we had to stop before our sixth episode was completed. Our plan now is to release the first five episodes (which does work narratively as a season) and then film the sixth episode as soon as possible, and release it as a bonus episode, sort of a coda to the season.

 As for the process, it's long and gruelling and exhausting, but hot damn do I love it. Our very first rehearsal was actually a fight rehearsal, so I had our two, lead actors and two stunt people whom they fight in the show all together in the gym and it was awesome. I have a background in fight choreography, and Zach and James and I had worked out the choreo ahead of time. Then with our other stunt coordinator (Christian Chan), we taught everyone the moves. 

 That was the first time I saw what our lead characters really looked like when they moved [...] it also made me tear up because the overwhelming majority of the people in the room were LGBTQ, and it was just so physical and heroic - not what most people are expecting from a queer series. It was so damn beautiful and exciting to watch."

What has been one of the highlights of filming so far?

"There've been so many that it's hard to pin down just one. I'm a big action fan, so getting the footage back from the editors of the fight scenes cut together has been insanely awesome. Watching stunt people get transformed into blue-skinned demons on the first day of shooting - I will never forget that for as long as I live because I love creature effects in movies, and getting to actually direct something with creatures in it made me giggle like a 5-year old.

 But if I had to pick one, it would be this: DemonHuntr happened because Rob and I had Zach and James over one day just to hang out and we were in our pool, casually talking about what we wanted to accomplish in Hollywood. And we realised that what we all wanted was to make a queer horror project that was funny and action-packed and sexy.

 And then...we did it. I'm not going to lie - it was incredibly difficult and there were many times I wanted to call it quits. But we did it, we got through it [...] with the help of a lot of people along the way. Making something out of nothing with your spouse and close friends is a phenomenal feeling. We all leaned on each other a lot [...] but we raised the money and then we did it! And the fact that we were four, queer people doing this was the icing on the cake. I'll always be proud of that."

You once stated that the show "takes place in a world where absolutely everyone is accepted for who they are": has it been difficult executing art that focuses on acceptance of sexuality and race during the Black Lives Matter movement?

"That's a good question and a difficult one to answer. As we're talking about this, the Supreme Court just ruled that you can't be fired for being LGBTQ anywhere in [America]. And while that's amazing, it's impossible to feel celebratory in any way because our black friends and family are still being murdered by police with impunity. And while we're all taking part in Black Lives Matter marches and signing petitions and having those uncomfortable conversations with close-minded, white people, it's never enough. This is the issue of our time (though it's long, long overdue) and it needs to be fixed now.

 Artistically, there are a lot of avenues you can take to approach this issue. DemonHuntr does take place in an alternate universe where racism and homophobia and sexism don't exist because I wanted to making something aspirational. That's the lane I thought I could write the best in.

 One of my favourite memories was the very first day on set. I was looking around at the cast and crew working together, and I realised that (not by design) there wasn't a single straight, white, cisgender man on set. Anywhere. There were a few that joined later in subsequent days of filming but, in the beginning, it was just us - everyone who'd, at some point, been told that because of the colour of their skin or their gender [...] or sexuality, they weren't good enough. That they were an 'other'. But here we were, a pack of 'others', and we were all making something together. I think that's pretty special."

 

Do you have a favourite character of the show and, if so, what do you like about them?

"Are you trying to get me killed? Have you met actors? The second one of them reads this and doesn't see their name, I'm gonna end up with my head in a box, like at the end of Se7en! No, thank you.

[...] in all seriousness, I actually don't really have a favourite character because my favourite aspect of the show is how all the characters interact with one another. The first season is the story of a group of people slowly becoming a family and you need each character for that. And we have fabulous actors that came in as guest stars, and I fell in love with so many of them and their performances that it would be impossible to single anyone out. Although, I am excited to release it and see which characters resonate with the audience and why. 

 I'm sure there will be a bunch of fan favourites."

When are you estimated to wrap on DemonHuntr and what can we expect from the first episode?

"We're technically wrapped on principle photography for season one since, as I said earlier, COVID put the kibosh on episode six halfway through filming.

 We're in post-production now, which is a very long process. And once that's done, there's determining which distribution platform suits us best. So, it'll be a little while before it's ready to be released."

Finally, what do you hope to achieve by putting your vision out there into the world?

"Money! All the money! Give it to me!

 [...] just kidding, there's no money in indie, gay film. These are three things I hope to achieve.

 One: as I said before, there is definitely a kumbaya aspect to DemonHuntr that I hope people will connect with - the idea that we all matter, everyone's voice deserves to be heard and everyone deserves to see someone who looks and acts like them as a hero on screen.

 Two: to be really frank, I hope it helps to normalise gay sex. The queer characters in our show are allowed to both heroically fight evil and also enjoy sex with no shame. Something that's always bugged me is that the only characters in fiction that are allowed to have full, sexual freedom without judgement are straight, white men. No one has ever slut-shamed James Bond.

 But if a character is a woman, a queer person or a person of colour and they have a similar sex life, there are comments. There's hand wringing about whether this is the kind of representation we truly need. There are complaints about 'having it shoved in our faces' [...] and I resent that not only as a writer but as a gay man. I'm just so over seeing gay characters neutered unless the story they're in is explicitly about sex and relationships - stories like Queer as Folk, Brokeback Mountain and Call Me By Your Name. So I want to do my part to end that stigma as well.

 Finally, three: I'm hoping beyond hope that DemonHuntr finds an audience, so studios with actual budgets and access will see that people are hungry for queer-led genre projects. I want to see queer Avengers. Queer Star Wars. Queer Lord of the Rings.

 [...] those are my biggest hopes."

Final thoughts

As always, it has been an absolute pleasure talking with Tim and, as part of the LGBTQ+ community myself, I look forward to whatever DemonHuntr has to offer post-release. 

If you'd like to keep updated on the series, the actors and the production, you can find more info at their official site as well as their socials: Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

- K

Rustic Revenge: an Exploration of Folk Horror

[Reader disclaimer: spoilers will be discussed].

"Now it's dark, and you seem to have lost him, but you're hopelessly lost yourself; stranded with a murderer. You creep silently through the underbrush, [...] in the distance, a small cottage with a light on. Hope! You move stealthily toward it but your leg, [...] it's caught in a bear trap."

Ironically, Rob Cantor's Shia LaBeouf Live illustrates the core essence of what folk horror is: isolation, wilderness, panic and murder. Kieran Fisher defines 'folk horror' as a wide variety of things, from "folk tales and legends to stories about ghosts, the occult, and deranged communities", that is to say that in folk horror, the scares derive from the nature that surrounds the characters as well as the occupants dwelling within it. However, this is not the same as eco-horror.

Andrew Hurley wrote an article for The Guardian, claiming that a recurring motif of folk horror is that characters are "seduced by the idea that the natural world is where [they'll] find some kind of restoration, enlightenment and, ultimately, peace". I think what's interesting there is that Hurley suggests that, as an audience, we are drawn in by the same temptations but this is where I have to disagree: these films, often b-movies, have a demographic of city-dwellers. A lot of critics claim that this demographic fear nature and the ambiguity of it (after all, it's often depicted as wide, open space, a land of lawlessness, a beautiful yet isolated setting). 

But I believe that what people really fear is the people who inhabit these settings: the villagers, the rustic types, the farmers and fishermen and the less-educated. Because if we look at examples of folk horror, nature is used as a front to lull its victims into a false sense of security: the real horror originates from the characters that already live there. 

The Cottage (2008)

This argument, I think, depends on context. For example, I am from a county called Suffolk (that's in England, for you non-UK folks), renowned for their agriculture and rich history; Ipswich's football team literally has the nickname 'Tractor Boys'. My childhood was largely spent in a village called Somersham which, I kid you not, is just one, long road surrounded by fields, fields and more fields. Therefore the isolation aspect of folk horror evokes no response from me: I was basically raised in a place where mobile signals were scarce, where birds woke you up at 7am and seeing people hack at wheat with a giant scythe was a normality. 

However, non-European countries may view this differently. Films such as The Wicker Man (1973), The Cottage (2008) or Gnaw (2008), all examples of British folk horror, depict those who live in a rural society as 'The Other': they're often shown to be mentally retarded, physically deformed (suggestively through inbreeding) and known to harbour hatred for city-goers and urban dwellers. People in rural areas in horrors films are demonised because their way of life is different from our own.

Midsommar (2019)

Let's take Midsommar (2019) for example (warning: spoilers ahead). The setting is this idyllic, pastoral community in Sweden wherein their traditions are observed and chastised by the American characters, e.g. love charms, ritualistic suicide and chanting. The Hårga are depicted as peaceful yet sinister as they murder each American one-by-one but, if we take into consideration why they die, then you realise that the horror doesn't derive from these rural people being an example of the 'Other', rather they are protecting their community from outsiders that choose to disobey their rules, mock their traditions and endanger them. In essence, they are not the villains: the main characters are.

Simon and Connie insult the Hårga's tradition. Josh violates their trust. Mark literally urinates on a sacred tree and then refuses to understand why the people are angry. Christian is just an absolute d-bag overall and you'll know that if you've seen the film. 

Did they deserve to die for it? Probably not: their outbursts are more suggestive of their ignorance rather than malicious intent. However the horror of Midsommar is in what the characters fail to respect and acknowledge, not in the inherent nature of the rural community. Dani is embraced by nature and by the Hårga because she understands grief, pain and healing through being open-minded and embracing the community's way of life (e.g. baking with the women, dancing for the May Queen title and taking hallucinogenics). 

Kill List (2011)

From what we're shown in folk horror, people who live closer to nature tend to be more spiritually connected to the earth (or at least act as servants to it). Paganism is a largely used motif in folk horror, a religion that worships the elements; it's important to note that there are many different sectors of paganism and that the one we often see in horror relates to eco-centric practise and religious naturalism. 

Folk horror tends to demonise paganism and/or natural worship as something that isolates those involved and keeps them in a cult-like setting, something the urban characters oppose to due to a fear of losing connection to their world. It's a recurrent theme: the mobile doesn't work, there's no public transport, that farmer who's offering to help seems dodgy...anything that can keep them from "escape". The irony in that is that city-life is considerably more claustrophobic and chaotic, whereas rural settings are typically large, spacious areas, so perhaps they don't fear escape as much as they fear the lack of structure and law. 

However, there is nothing sinister to paganism, in the same way that satanism (a popular religion to depict in horror) is perfectly innocent as well. Paganism is pre-Christianity and satanism is attached to it entirely, as the core belief is following Satan, a Christian character: think about it, in every exorcism film, what triumphs evil? Followers of Christ. Priests. Men of God. There is a clear prejudice against non-Christian religions and that's evident throughout horror history (though that's a tangent for another time). 

The Locals (2003)

The point I'm trying to make here, as messily as I may have put it, is that the true horror of this folk sub-genre is not nature: it's humanity. Eco-horror is a separate sub-genre that deals with humanity versus our earth but folk horror deals primarily with the divide in humanity, the rural versus the urban. In folk horror, nature is idyllic and nurturing only to those who are worthy of it, and accept that although humans reign, Mother Nature is still in charge. 

- K