Horror Favourites – Nathan Faudree

Terror Films has scheduled SITE 13, a Lovecraftian horror movie filmed over the course of 17 years, for a digital release this summer. Luckily we didn’t have to wait that long to talk to director, writer and actor Nathan Faudree.

When Dr. Nathan Marsh wakes up in a mental institution from a 10 year catatonic state he has to watch the tapes from his last expedition to learn what eldritch horrors he has unleashed on the world. Using found footage shot in 2003 as flashback material for a present day story featuring a recurring character, SITE 13 crafts two films from two time periods into one movie that explores, myth, legacy, and madness over the course of more than a decade.

Says writer/director/star Nathan Faudree, “Filmed over the course of 17 years, SITE 13 is a Lovecraftian Cosmic Horror film that truly proves evil never dies. Begun as a found footage film in 2003 under the direction of Tony Urban, the mostly improvised movie was filmed and then due to Urban’s retirement, shelved.

Flash forward 13 years and I was still haunted by the work that everyone had done for the film. I contacted Tony with an interesting idea. Let me write and film a present-day portion of the movie and use the old footage as a kind of flashback material. He quickly agreed, happy to give the film a new life. I set about crafting a script that incorporated the footage into a present-day story.

The present-day portion was filmed over the course of a week in the Syracuse area using an incredible crop of regional theatre talent and the crew from WatchWorks Studios led by Chris Steinberger and Megan Piechowicz.

For post-production, indie horror star Alan Rowe Kelly was brought on as a Producer and editor giving the film a whole new scope with his invaluable storytelling skills. A couple additional days of photography and three more years of crafting two films into one has led to a truly unique film experience, where two films became an entirely new story.”

Below Nathan Faudree goes into detail about his favorite horror film:

“Picking a favorite horror movie is a maddening prospect for any fan of the genre. I usually break it into genre categories or time periods or how a movie affected me and what the lessons that I learned from it would be. Evil Dead 2 taught me the joy of horror movies. Nightmare on Elm Street part 3 taught me about the mythology, Banshee Chapter taught me that I could make a scary horror movie.

But Candyman is the movie that continuously haunts me. Candyman taught me that just because a movie was horror doesn’t mean that it can’t tackle weighty philosophical concepts and still be genuinely entertaining and scary. Because Candyman, beyond being an amazing adaptation of the Clive Barker short story The Forbidden, is a film that embraces the idea of storytelling and how it affects our lives for better or in this case for evil.

It’s about how our stories define us, individually and as a culture and how those stories can come back to haunt us. The stories that we tell and the stories that we believe in have a profound impact on our lives, our cultures, our politics and how we relate to each other.

And Candyman embraces all of that. Looking at the ideas behind Urban Legends and how these myths translate into our modern lives was a fascinating topic for any movie, let alone a horror movie and for the first twenty minutes I almost forgot that it was a horror movie that I was watching. And then Tony Todd’s voice echoed through the theatre calling the Virginia Madsen’s character name. “Helen”. And yep. I knew then, things were about to get worse. And I am convinced that the incredible Philip Glass soundtrack is literally a haunted piece of music. There are ghosts in those notes.

Every time I revisit the movie I discover new layers, new ideas, new thoughts and whenever I am feeling stuck, or uninspired, I come back to Candyman and I am reminded of what an artful, thoughtful piece it is. And late at night when I pass by the mirror in our foyer, I don’t look in the mirror. And I definitely don’t say his name five times. Candyman, Candyman, Candy…. Yeah, I’m good.”

Katie Gibson and Leila Dean also star in the unnerving horror film, due July 28 on digital platforms.