*Originally released 3/13/19*
Previously, I had talked about the film Fear, Inc. It was a solid love letter to the genre. I had the pleasure of speaking with Luke Barnett – the writer behind the film.
Hello Luke, Thank you for taking the time to chat about Fear, Inc.
Thanks for the kind review. Glad that you dug it.
What was your introduction to the horror genre?
The first time I really remember being scared from a movie was watching Hitchcock’s “The Birds”. I think my dad and I rented the VHS from Blockbuster. I doubt my mom had any idea. “Scream”, though, was when I really fell in love with the genre. I was hooked.
What is your favorite film?
That’s a near impossible question. That said, I only have one movie tattoo, and that’s from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. So…
Where did the idea for Fear Inc. come from?
I had a friend who was obsessed with haunted house and immersive experiences. He did all the ones here in Los Angeles and was perpetually disappointed. Then he did one called Blackout (they made a doc about it), that was expensive, required you to go through it alone, and sign a waiver. It’s intense.
I saw him a few weeks later and asked how it was. He said “it was better than the others, but I wanted more”. And I thought he was crazy. But what he really wanted was for a company to genuinely make him question whether or not he was in real danger. A company like Fear, inc.
How long did it take to get made?
We made a three minute short film. I think it comes as a bonus with the purchase on iTunes/Amazon/DVD. The short was done for a contest called Bloody Cuts.
The requirements were that the short had to be shot for under $1,000, had to be less than three minutes long, and had to loosely be based around the theme “who’s there”. It got top 5, along with another short called “Lights Out”, which got turned into a much bigger movie.
The short came out at the end of December and I had the first draft of the feature by March. The biggest lesson we learned was to just say “fuck it, we’re going to make this movie” and pick a start date. Once we had a date, everything felt real and it was much easier to get people to take us seriously. We made it as independently as it gets. Credit cards, loans, friends/family investing, etc. We were still raising money when the movie got into Tribeca.
That said, we picked July 27th and I think we started shooting August 3rd.
So not far off from the goal. We were lucky, agents liked the script so they were happy to pitch it to their actor clients. We couldn’t have had a better cast and crew. They were all incredibly easy to work with and went above and beyond for the film.
To answer your initial question thought, the short came out in December, we started shooting in August, and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in April.
What was the initial response when it was first released?
Great! Every screening Tribeca sold out and had amazing audiences. The LA premiere was opening night of Screamfest to a sold out crowd of 450. It’s a total theater movie, in the vein of Scream or Cabin in the Woods, so it makes me sad more people didn’t get to see it in that environment.
Horror-comedy is tricky. We didn’t want to make something overly campy like “Tucker and Dale” (though, I LOVE that film), and we didn’t want to make something slow and moody like a lot of the horror that was coming out at the time.
We wanted to make something like “Scream” that rides a thin line. When “Scream” is funny, it’s really funny, and when it’s scary, it’s really scary. That’s what we went for.
There were of course critics that just aren’t into a movie like this and felt we should have picked one genre or another to lean into, but we made the movie we would want to see, and that feels like a big win.
What has the response been since?
Honestly, the best part of making something is having people find it years later and reach out, or tell their friends about it. It’s incredible. Every day someone new finds it on HULU or iTunes.
Recently, I got a random Facebook friend request from someone I went to elementary school with. She asked if I was the same Luke Barnett who she was in 3rd grade with, then asked if I wrote a movie called “Fear, Inc”. Turns out, it’s her son’s favorite movie. She’d watched it a dozen times with him, but never paid attention to the credits. Saw my name and thought “I wonder if that’s the same guy I knew as a kid”. She asked me if I had anything I could send him.
Even though the movie didn’t become some insane smash hit and I’m not a millionaire from it, it’s kind of incredible to think some thirteen-year-old kid in Virginia has a poster of a movie I wrote on his wall. Just like I had a ‘Scream” poster on my wall.
What advice would you give for future writers?
Read a lot of screenplays. I started doing a thing recently where I committed to reading one great script a week. Various genres.
I’ve read everything from “I, Tony” to “Dumb & Dumber” to “Jurassic Park” and “Nightcrawler”.
It’s already made me a better writer. Also, I can’t advocate strongly enough for making your own stuff.
In 2019, there is no reason not to. Make shorts, make features, just write and make content. Work shitty jobs and spend your money making stuff. It will all pay off if you don’t give yourself an end date.
What are you working on these days?
A film we produced last year, “Painkillers”, came out last month.
It’s a cool, original take on the vampire myth from a great up and coming Taiwanese American director named Roxy Shih and a really talented writer/producer we work with often named Giles Daoust.
We just finished post on a dark crime thriller we’re producing called “Anderson Falls” from an amazing French director named Julien Seri (his last film “Night Fare” is a blast). That one stars Shawn Ashmore from X-Men and Gary Cole from Veep and Office Space. We’re figuring out where that will premiere now.
Next up for me as a writer and my partner as a director is a comedy called “Faith Based”. It’s a passion project for us and I truly cannot wait to get started.
Later this year we’re producing a great little comedy directed by and starring Daniel Stern (“Home Alone”, “City Slickers”).
The grind never stops.
Thank you for your time, Luke.
Thank you.
*Fear, Inc. is available on Hulu, iTunes, Amazon. Available on DVD and Digital.*
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