Guelph filmmakers are taking over the independent horror scene

There must be something in the water

When thinking of Guelph, horror movies are not generally the first things that come to mind, but for filmmakers Chad Archibald and Gabriel Carrer, Guelph provides the perfect backdrop for their twisted tales.

While representing Black Fawn Films and Latefox Pictures respectively, together the two also have a hand in running Black Fawn Distribution and have been key collaborators since the very beginning of their film careers.

Just returning from a busy weekend at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and Horror-Rama, Archibald and Carrer sat down with The Ontarion to explain how it all started.

While watching the critically condemned Jason X, the pair thought that if a movie like that could be made, there was no reason why they couldn’t make a movie too. Archibald had a degree in multimedia design from Humber College and Carrer was a graduate from the University of Guelph’s theatre program, but neither had any formal or technical film training.

“We got Screenwriting for Dummies—that yellow book—and that’s what we learned from,” Carrer confessed.

“We were just clueless. We were going to make it in a week or something like that and it took years to actually make this first film,” added Archibald. “But back then, because it was so rare to make a movie in Guelph, there was so much support. There were so many people who wanted to help out.”

Carrer recalled filming a scene from their first film, Desperate Souls, transforming U of G’s Massey Hall into a makeshift orphanage.

“We ended up filming there and no one told us that we couldn’t. We had extension cords running into the building and it was like 1:00 a.m. and we’re filming inside this building,” explained Carrer.

“We had 20 people there and we cleared everything out of the place. We had like 20 beds or something like that and all these kids pretending to be orphans,” added Archibald, noting that they now know to abide by permits and bylaws when filming on location.

After making “a million mistakes” the first time around, they were told to go back and re-do quite a bit of work on the film, which was eventually picked up by Lionsgate and Alliance Atlantis. The trailer for Desperate Souls even appeared on the Saw DVD, which made the rookie filmmakers a little too excited and a little too ambitious with their next film.

At that time, while film technology was becoming more accessible for independent creators and more and more films were being made, video rental stores were also starting to close down, and the big distributors stopped buying low-budget films. Their second film, Kill, was not released until six years later and Archibald’s name ended up being misspelled on the cover.

“It says Chad Archivald,” he laughed.

Both filmmakers have since gone on to build up a bit of a cult following and have had their films premiere at major festivals all across the globe, all the way from Canada to Australia.

Just this month, Black Fawn Films’ Let Her Out and Bed of the Dead screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival, and a third film, The Sublet, will be closing the Blood in the Snow festival in November.

In 2015, Archibald’s body horror film Bite stirred up a bit of controversy at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal after a number of audience members got sick or passed out during the screening. When the word got out, hardcore horror fans had to see for themselves what all the fuss was  about. The official trailer for Bite now has over one million views on YouTube.

“Our little town of Guelph has been put on the map for horror,” said Archibald, noting that a lot of their films continue to use Guelph as a primary filming location. “We shot The Sublet and Bite just on York Road and [there are Guelph landscapes] throughout both these films.”

Carrer’s latest release with Latefox Pictures, The Demolisher, also features notable Guelph locations, turning the downtown strip into a gritty backdrop for the film’s revenge plot.

Both filmmakers agreed that the number one thing that makes a good horror film is not a huge budget or special effects, but the concept.

“The lines have been blurred now,” said Carrer. “I feel like some people might think of indie film how it was 10 or 15 years ago where the quality wasn’t there.”

“Everything is so cheap now—we’re filming our movies on the same cameras that they shot The Hobbit on,” said Archibald. “The concept is now where your movie is going to stand apart.”

Unlike most popular movie genres that rely on big-name actors, horror fans are more likely to support a film based on the concept. Coming up with an original story, however, proves to be very difficult in today’s over-saturated film landscape.

“It’s the biggest challenge of anything,” Archibald admitted.

“Making the movies isn’t actually that insane. The most stressful, challenging part is just coming up with concepts that haven’t been done.”

Fans first, Archibald and Carrer traced back to their earliest memories of watching horror movies growing up. While Archibald remembers making DIY Freddy Kruger gloves out of paper and straws from the game KerPlunk, Carrer recalls renting The Exorcist at a sleepover and making crucifixes out of Lego for protection through the night.

For Carrer, these early experiences of watching scary movies help to keep the horror industry alive and thriving: “I think it almost goes down to the experience of watching a horror movie way back, […] B-grade stuff that your parents won’t let you watch. What do you do? You go over to your friend’s house and get your friends together to watch with no one knowing, so it starts like a club.”

Archibald and Carrer have created their own kind of club within the local filmmaking community that continues to terrify and inspire a new crop of horror fanatics.

Photo by Dana Bellamy.