NEWS

Davisville filmmaker banking on horror fans’ goodwill

THE UNDEAD FILES: Filmmaker Justin Decloux is looking to raise $7,000 to produce his new film.
THE UNDEAD FILES: Filmmaker Justin Decloux is looking to raise $7,000 through Indiegogo to produce his new film. His deadline is July 3.

The discovery of the original Dawn of the Dead led writer-filmmaker Justin Decloux on his path to creating his new genre flick Impossible Horror — one he’s looking to get help making through crowdfunding.

He sits bespectacled, with greying hair shrouding his true age, 27, in a Davisville cafe sharing a tale of deceit that helped solidify his fascination with the genre: renting Peter Jackson’s horror serving, Dead Alive, when he was still underage.

And it was in a George A. Romero classic that he caught his film-making affliction.

Dawn of the Dead … was where I fell in love with horror movies,” he admits. “That’s the first movie that made me want to make movies.”

Admitting he is also “a big scaredy cat” who “jumps at a good jump scare” when watching certain horror movies, he says he strives to bring “a jump in your seat and also that kind of leave the theatre, ‘Ooh, that was disturbing'” sense to his own work.

Impossible Horror, an 80-minute feature film, is about two young women, starving for creative inspiration, who come across bizarre screams in the middle of the night. The ladies come across a Lovecraftian beastie that sends them to brink of insanity — much like H.P.’s famous novella, At the Mountains of Madness.

Decloux and his girlfriend producer Emily Milling are setting their sights on horror aficionados to fund the project. In order to do that, crowdfunding website Indiegogo is being tapped to drum up interest. Their target is to raise $7,000 by July 3.

“Indiegogo is mostly because Kickstarter is very cut and dry,” the Davisviller says. “When I go in I’m a very conservative person in terms of what the success will be.

“You can’t go in with $3,500 to help make a feature film. People are going to be, ‘You’re not going to make a feature film for $3,500. Indiegogo gives you that flexible funding.”

This is not Decloux’s first rodeo. He made Teddy Bomb a year ago — for next to nothing — which is why he’s trying reach those outside his network for funding.

“When you look at [Teddy Bomb], it looks like there was no money [behind it],” he says, with a laugh. “I would like to get beyond that.”

Also part of the new project is Danforth resident April Etmanski, making the film a double-barrelled female lead production.

When Decloux’s not making unsettling, gory horror, he’s making industrial films through his company, Canmake Productions. As for whether this will be his film-making repose, he’s defiant.

“No, definitely not,” he says, with a laugh. “I’m going to make them until somebody says, ‘No more’ and they take me away.”