INDIE HORROR’S SECRET SEVEN
The Most Influential Horror Leaders You’ve Never Heard Of
In a crowded industry that sometimes rewards the loudest over the best, these seven leaders behind some of the most influential work of the decade have been quietly determining the direction of independent horror.
TO UNDERSTAND HOW INDIE HORROR’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE COULD remain largely a secret, you first have to understand the nature of indie horror today.
Our current era and all its frenetic noise and new-legends-born-daily has its origins in the indie filmmaking explosion of the late 2000s (specifically November, 2008 – the month the Canon 5D Mark II was released and the fuse was lit).
At that moment, two ingredients combined to become the accelerant that would blow a fan-sized hole in the wall that Hollywood studios had built around filmmaking. First, DSLR cinema-look cameras became inexpensive enough for enterprising indie filmmakers to buy, learn to use and shoot on. And second, internet video hosting on YouTube and later Vimeo democratized sharing indie films with a worldwide audience – especially shorts.
Suddenly, a generation of aspiring filmmakers who’d grown up on VCR horror had access to make and show their own homegrown scary movies. And make them they did: In the resulting new frontier, a massive community/industry grew at a speed we’ve never seen before. Aspiring filmmakers become actual filmmakers. Weekend filmmaking contests cropped up around the world, generating tens of thousands of films. To screen all the new content, the number of film festivals doubled, doubled and doubled again. Horror outlets were started by the dozen to cover them. And social media shared and re-shared it all.
In that crowded Wild West, getting the attention of an audience became a game of “who-has-the-best-gimmick?” Hell: an entire sub-genre of horror was created, where an aging horror star is brought in for a half-day shoot, then lands on the poster as bait to horror lovers, who’d maybe see her or him in the opening scene, or hear them as voiceover.
Finding an angle in the noise was everything – too often even more important than finding a great story, or pushing the genre.
But if you listen closely to that roar, you can single out a handful of voices who have been steering indie horror, and lifting up their colleagues, in ways that are making a lasting difference in the content we see, and in the culture of horror overall.
We at Cinema Runner set out to identify the unsung leaders who have the most influence on the true indie horror community – non-studio, usually non-distributed horror made with sweat equity and brought directly to the fans. To complement our own research, we polled two dozen horror filmmakers, fans, festivals and critics to ask: who do you look up to for the direction of indie horror? (Some, to protect relationships, chose to remain anonymous.)
What will follow each day this week is an examination of what we found in the major indie horror categories: conventions, film festivals, short films, feature films and horror media…
MOST INFLUENTIAL SHORTS FILMMAKER
Jason Tostevin, Hands Off Productions and Nightmares Film Festival
“The most consistently great filmmaker on the circuit today.”
– HorrorHound
There are filmmakers with bigger single hits this decade, but in our conversations, one person came up repeatedly as a kind of indie prophet, with both sustained success over multiple films and for standout leadership in the indie community: Jason Tostevin, founder of Hands Off Productions and, by our measure, quietly the most influential shorts filmmaker working in indie horror.
With his writing and creative partner Randall Greenland and a regular team that includes DP Mike McNeese, Editor Brant Jones and Producer Torin Scott, Tostevin’s films – with hundreds of festival screenings and wins between them – are changing the face of indie horror shorts and elevating horror expectations.
“Jason’s filmmaking explores real-life emotions – horror’s base elements,” Tom Holland’s Terror Time said in a review last year. “He strips down stereotypes and has a keen eye for, and understanding of, the raw truth of horror and all of its moving parts.”
In addition to his reputation as a filmmaker, people consistently brought him up as an evangelist for, and unofficial leader of, indie film, preaching from panels, Q&As and after-screening bar sessions, leading by example to unite filmmakers.
“Most people in this just focus on their own movies, but Jason never does that,” said one feature filmmaker. “Every time he gets a platform, he uses it to lift up other people and get them together and make them better. A lot of people you’d consider big names look to him for advice. He’s kind of our spiritual leader of the right way to do indie film.”
Tostevin’s bona fides include being SVP and Chief of Staff at Gateway Film Center, a top-20 North American art house according to Sundance. GFC is a mecca of indie horror programming, where Tostevin and GFC President Chris Hamel often find and book films straight out of the fest circuit. They also provide screenings for indie horror filmmakers at no cost to them, including world premieres for films like last year’s Plank Face and ABCs of Death 2.5.
Several people talked about how Tostevin’s philosophy also created the community atmosphere at in Columbus, Ohio, which Tostevin created with partner Chris Hamel last year to “inspire horror filmmakers and elevate independent horror.” The fest promotes “#BetterHorror” and dozens of the five-star reviews left for the festival talk about filmmakers coming away feeling like a family.
Also receiving votes: Ryan Spindell (The Babysitter Murders), Jill Gevargizian (The Stylist), Chris McInroy (Death Metal), Brian Lonano (Gwilliam)
