Exclusive: Writer And Director Damon Rickard Talks ‘Never Have I Ever’

Filmmaker Damon Rickard recently ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund his upcoming feature debut, a psychological horror film called Never Have I Ever.

The film’s plot will focus on a desperate screenwriter named Sam, who resorts to drastic measures after he loses everything he cares about throughout the course of a single day. And the talented cast will include Andrew-Lee Potts, Beatrice Fletcher, Johnny Vivash, Amber Doig-Thorne, Poppy Anne Williams, and Graham Skipper. We were lucky enough to be able to interview Rickard about Never Have I Ever, and he offered us some very intriguing details about the upcoming project.

Rickard has also directed a number of acclaimed horror shorts, including The Package, Dissociative, Stolen, and The Tour. And since he is a lifelong FrightFest attendee, he was commissioned to helm a hilarious short called Turn Off Your Bloody Phone: Séance, which played at the festival in 2022. Needless to say, Rickard clearly has plenty of impressive horror credentials to his name, so his upcoming feature is clearly in safe hands.

Although it does not yet have a firm release date, we can expect Never Have I Ever to arrive on our screens at some point in the near future. Until then, you can enjoy reading our exclusive interview with Rickard about the film below.

Love Horror: What will Never Have I Ever film entail?

Damon Rickard: The film will follow our lead character Sam (Andrew-Lee Potts), in the lead up to Christmas, who is having a really bad day. He is clearly struggling with some sort of grief, but then strange things start happening to him. They start with something small when he loses his wallet, but gradually the day gets worse and weirder. This bout of unfortunate events doesn’t seem to be letting up when a chance encounter sends his day spiralling in a direction he could never have anticipated. Can’t say much more than that as I don’t want to give things away. It’s going to be a bit of a meld of genres where you might think you’re watching one genre and then realise it’s actually something else entirely.

Love Horror: Can you talk about how the idea for Never Have I Ever came about?

Damon Rickard: It really came about from a conversation I had in The Phoenix Arts Club during FrightFest 2022. We’d seen a couple of films in a row that day which contained the game called “Never Have I Ever”. And someone mentioned it would be interesting to have an escalating version of it, like in the film Cheap Thrills. Which, if you haven’t seen, then you should get on that! I liked the idea a lot but couldn’t think of how to make a feature film from it. However, the general premise of the game stuck with me, and I started to see more of a way to create a story about colliding worlds, where the butterfly effect really has an impact on the audience. So, it became the vehicle for the narrative.

Love Horror: How does it feel to be making your feature debut?

Damon Rickard: It feels incredible. For years people have been telling me I need to make a feature. And I’ve finally taken that leap, and I am doing it! It also feels incredibly nerve-wracking. I have got so much to do in such little time. It’s going to be a mammoth task, but I’ve pulled off shoots which on the page should have needed more time to film, so I’m incredibly confident of getting this done in the short time we have available to us to shoot. Having created a variety of shorts in a variety of ways has helped me learn how to shoot fast, as well as how to make sure it looks top-notch too. So, I feel like I have grounded myself very well by spending my time in short filmmaking. But it’s time to put all that to the test!

Love Horror: And I understand that you have a great cast onboard?

Damon Rickard: I am so excited about my cast. Andrew is a fantastic actor and has so much experience. I can’t wait to work with him and learn from him. We’ve also got some great up and comers who will be names to watch out for in the indie horror scene. Although one has already been in quite the smash hit – Amber Doig-Thorne, who was in Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey. My female lead, Beatrice Fletcher is an unsung talent and I really hope this can give her the role to showcase herself and get the recognition she deserves. And I have also got a couple of seasoned pros like Johnny Vivash, who just seems to be in everything at the moment.

Love Horror: What do you hope horror fans will take away from Never Have I Ever?

Damon Rickard: There’s going to be a fair few themes in the film. So, I hope they take away some of what I am trying to say with the piece. Whilst it’s supposed to be entertainment, and I’m not going to pretend it’ll be highbrow arthouse genre filmmaking that A24 would pick up, it still has something to say. The films I have written on my own have all had an element of that to them. I like to play with people’s expectations and see how they judge characters and maybe turn that judgement on its head. I find human nature in that way to be so intriguing. We can very easily make a call on a situation or a person with very limited information and it becomes hard to shake the opinion once you have formed it – we don’t like to admit we were wrong.

We’ll share more news on the release of Never Have I Ever as it comes.