CREEKER

Creeker is my twisted love letter to my home. In many ways, it is the most explicitly personal story I’ve ever written. The land I grew up on has taken care of my family for generations. I was raised on a farm where I could see the house my father grew up in as well as the house his father grew up in from my bedroom window. I’m the first of my family to move away from that land. I always knew I would, but when I finally left North Carolina, I noticed just how much I was connected to the dirt my childhood home stood on. Being away from home for the first time made me realize how growing up on a farm forged a relationship between the land and myself. I knew the history of a random field or tree because my father would tell me its story as we drove by. The land had a face I could recognize — and it looked back at me. It had its own mythos that was deeply intertwined with my family's identity and heritage. My family tree was planted in that dirt. I was formed from that dirt and that country air breathed life into my nostrils. The essence of who I am, how I think, how I feel — my soul was created and shaped by that land. Discovering the intimate relationship I have with that where I’m from made me wonder if it would resent me for leaving it behind. With that in mind, I wrote this story through a Southern Gothic lens. It’s is built on the idea at the core of this genre: that the American South is a haunted place. This land hates you, it hates what you’ve done to it, and it resents you for abandoning it. Creeker is my own personal exploration into the relationship between land and identity in the context of multigenerational farm families. It is a film I desperately needed to make. I didn't exactly understand why when I first began writing the script. But as I wrote and rewrote, it became apparent that this was my way of saying goodbye to my home before I rode off into the sunset to chase my dreams out west. It is also a eulogy for the agrarian way of live. The number of family farms has been in steady decline for years. I won't even recognize my own hometown in ten years. Half the farms in Hoke County have been replaced by cheaply built housing developments or Dollar Generals. I don't know if I am the last of my kind, but I do believe I am a dying breed. That is why I needed to write this story. The only way I knew how to grapple with these feelings was to pour them into a Gothic tale about a girl and a haunted house. Ultimately Creeker is my grand declaration: that no matter how far I stray from home, I will one day return to the land from which I was born. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.