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Habitual

A fistful of drug-popping ravers take a heavy dose of something new and unusual that leads to a hellish trip to an underground party at an abandoned asylum in Salem, Massachusetts. Plans to dance and get wasted all night drastically morph into chaotic hallucinations; as the plot unfolds, the characters fall deeper into a metaphorical mind-bending hole. Filmed at real abandoned hospitals in New England, ​The asylum's hallways and stairwells spell captivity for the young partygoers, who eventually spiral into horrifying paradoxes, blurring the line between nightmares and reality.

  • Johnny Hickey
    Director
    Oxy Morons
  • Johnny Hickey
    Writer
    Oxy Morons
  • Scott Michelson
    Producer
    300, Wolverine, X Files
  • Chris "CT" Tamburello
    Key Cast
    "The Blight"
    MTV's The Challenge
  • Project Type:
    Feature
  • Genres:
    Horror, Psychological Thriller, crime
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 29 minutes 19 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 4, 2020
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    4K RED
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Johnny Hickey

Johnny Hickey is an actor and filmmaker from Boston, Massachusetts. His films are violent, real, and gritty, portraying America’s drug epidemic from various dark perspectives.
A one-time street bandit from Charlestown, these days Johnny is a celebrated filmmaker, actor, and anti-drug crusader. Early on in his career, he was a field producer for Vanguard correspondent Mariana Van Zeller on "The Oxycontin Express," a Current TV special which took home a Peabody Award for its investigation of opiate subculture in Boston. Hickey knew that world extremely well, and has used it as a centerpiece in much of his work up to this point.
Johnny’s feature-length debut, the 2013 opioid tragedy Oxy Morons, had a successful two-month test screening at Showcase Cinemas in New England, where it placed second in the theater's box-office sales in its first week of showing against more than a dozen studio films. The movie subsequently had a successful eighteen-month run on Netflix, getting more than 200,000 views, and is currently available on Amazon Prime, Xfinity On Demand, and Comcast Cable TV, reaching more than 30 million people nationwide.
Following Oxy Morons, Johnny directed fight choreography for the 2018 MMA action film Blood Circus, which he also helped produce and starred in. With his partners from Sugar Studios in Los Angeles, he recently completed his second feature film, the subterranean rave thriller Habitual, which stars longtime MTV favorite Chris "CT" Tamburello. Johnny is also in pre-production with VFX Executive Producer Scott Michelson for his next project, Shopper, written by Greg Meadows.
When he’s not creating films for the big screen, Johnny also directs web and television commercials and collaborates with the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism on his Film Intervening Getting High Team (F.I.G.H.T.) project, which produces videos about the opioid crisis with people in recovery as well as media makers whose friends and family members struggle with addiction.

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Director Statement

Habitual is a mind-bending tale tooled to entertain and also impact the metastasizing, ever-changing drug crisis in this country. As was the case with my first film, I feel that it’s important for people to experience this epidemic through brutal psychological horror on screen. It’s not always easy to watch, but it’s a lot easier than learning the hard way, as so many people close to me have through the years.