Grimmfest’s Grim Tidings from Remington Smith of ‘Landlord’

Premiering today at Grimmfest, LandLord makes its haunting debut to an audience hungry for bold, socially charged horror – and writer-director Remington Smith delivers exactly that. A blend of gothic mythology and modern grit, the film introduces a fresh spin on the vampire legend, one rooted in real-world injustice, poverty, and the parasitic systems hiding in plain sight.

Set in a sweltering, dilapidated apartment complex, LandLord follows a mysterious bounty hunter and a vengeful orphan boy as they square off against a bloodsucking landlord who doesn’t need permission to enter – because he already owns the place. Shot with a raw, neo-realist lens and grounded by emotional weight, the film mixes Southern gothic with social horror, and features standout performances from newcomers Adama Abramson and Cohen James Cooper.

For Remington Smith, a Louisville-based filmmaker, professor and documentarian, LandLord is a fiercely personal debut. Drawing on his own experiences with housing insecurity, his academic grounding in film, and a lifelong obsession with horror, Smith has crafted a feature that feels as much like a reckoning as it does a resurrection of the genre’s power to punch up.

We caught up with Smith ahead of the premiere to talk vampire landlords, horror as resistance, and why The Monster Squad left an early and lasting bite…

Remington Smith, writer-director of ‘Landlord’

Tell us why you are at Grimmfest

I have been a horror fan ever since I was a kid and so I feel very blessed to have our world premiere of my first feature, LandLord, at one of the biggest genre festivals in the UK. I haven’t seen it yet with a general audience, so I’m excited to see it with a crowd and talk with people about it.

How did you get into horror?

My dad showed me The Monster Squad when I was like 5, so seeing kids tackle this life and death battle with monsters, plus Stan Winston’s creature effects – it blew me away. From there I saw Predator, Aliens, Terminator 2 and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. I was fascinated with how these worlds were made, but it wasn’t until late in college I made a short zombie film with some friends on a lark. The structure and story conventions of horror were in my blood, so it made it fun to play in this playground I knew so well and try to do something I hadn’t seen done before. And that’s exactly the same way I ended up coming up with the idea for LandLord.

What scares you the most?

Honestly, the news, haha. Ever since I was a kid, I was more wound up about news I shouldn’t have been consuming more than horror. That’s definitely continued into adulthood.

Who or what is your favourite horror character?

Man, that’s tough, not just favorite horror movie, but character? Ripley from Aliens has always been close to my heart. Also, Kiefer Sutherland as David in The Lost Boys. Iconic.

What is the grimmest thing you have ever seen?

Pick a headline. It feels like you really have to work at it to find signs that things will be better in the future, not worse. But if nothing else, horror films teach us how to keep fighting, even in the darkest of times.

Landlord trailer