Nocturnal

'Nocturnal" is an idea I have had floating around in my head for nearly a decade, but was always hesitant about making. In retrospect, and I feel ashamed to admit this, I think I was worried no one would take me serious as a filmmaker if I made a horror movie. Despite loving the genre all my life, I felt many viewers and cinema lovers tend to turn their noses up to horror. When I finally ignored my pretensions and decided to finally make 'Nocturnal', I felt grossly unqualified. So I began to do my "research", essentially devouring every horror movie I came across. What I discovered was not only many classics and obscure gems, but the true value of horror as a genre. The truly great horror movies, in my opinion the likes of Psycho, Halloween, The Thing, The Shining, and The Witch just to name a few, are great because they utilize all the elements of filmmaking. Great direction to build suspense, cinematography and production design to set atmosphere, writing to establish characters we care about and want to see make it out alive, and music to make us feel unnerved. Essentially, I realized something I aways knew but could never admit, truly great horror requires total mastering of the language of cinema. I hope our film is a success in terms of using this language to tell its story. Although the road to completed film was long and bumpy, as is often the case when working with hardly any money, I am so proud of this cast and crew for seeing it through. At the end of the day, I hope when people watch 'Nocturnal' they are on the edge of their seat, are shocked at the twists, maybe just a little repulsed (in a fun way) at the gore, and leave the film wanting to see more. As for me, 'Nocturnal' will always be the film that helped me renew my love for horror and gave me an entirely new respect for it as a genre.