Film Name: Night of the Reaper
Director: Brandon Christensen
Writers: Brandon Christensen, Ryan Christensen
Starring: Jessica Clement, Ryan Robbins, Summer H. Howell, Keegan Connor Tracy, Matty Finochio
College student Deena visits home and is roped into babysitting. The local sheriff is mailed a piece of evidence and is led on a scavenger hunt to reveal the killer of another babysitter.
In a new exclusive interview on Blazing Minds, I had the opportunity to ask Director/Co-Writer Brandon Christensen a few questions about the film ‘Night of the Reaper,’ which will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Sunday, January 25th, at 15:00 hours.
Q. Your film Night of the Reaper has been selected to play at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival. Can you tell us what we can expect?
A. The goal of Night of the Reaper was to make a film in 2025 that has the feelings of something you’d find on the shelves at your local video store in the 80’s and 90’s. It’s an homage to the films I grew up one. But at its core, it’s a new kind of throwback babysitter slasher. It takes what has been done before and spins it on its head to give the audience something new, while feeling familiar.
Q. You co-wrote the script with Ryan Christensen. What were some of your inspirations when writing the script and what was your process for writing together?
A. When A Stranger Calls (1979) was a huge one. That iconic cold open is still, nearly 50 years later, as good as it was back then. There’s something so chilling about a teenager in a strangers house and being
taunted and killed that we wanted to tap into. This script was being worked on for a long time, and slowly unveiling itself as both a love letter to movies like Scream (1996), House of the Devil (2009) and others and bringing our own spin on it.
We’ve written a number of scripts now and the process is usually the same. We’ll deep dive the story together, and iterate the ideas until we have a good idea of the narrative. Then Ryan will write a pass
on it and I’m better at taking something and re-shaping it into what it will need to be and then we continue to pass back and forth and whittle it into the final script. It’s a lot of early work together, and then using Ryan’s insane ability to punch out pages to analyse and figure out if what we built together is actually working.
Q. What were some of your influences for the look and style of the film?
A. Aesthetically, House of the Devil was a huge touchstone for the film. Despite being filmed in the 2000’s, it absolutely nailed the look and feel of an 80’s film. While we weren’t able to shoot on film, we still wanted to capture that feeling. Like it’s a lost film from that era.
A lot of the work was put into location scouting. We didn’t have the budget to build sets or anything, so we had to be diligent to find locations that would do most of the heavy lifting. Scouring the city for houses built in the 60’s that had been mostly untouched. We just didn’t have the money to do it the right way, so it was such a collaborative effort to take what we could get from places like Facebook Marketplace. But I had a good idea of what I wanted it to feel like, and trying to achieve that look was the utmost priority.
Q. Did you make any changes from the original script during filming?
A. The biggest change really just came in how the ‘twist’ is revealed. In the script it was more gradual through the third act. There was no “this is what happened while you weren’t looking” speech by Deena or anything. That was all ADR and editing to create a Gone Girl (2014) type of moment where we pause the movie for a moment and go “okay, here’s what’s really going on” before unleashing the last act of the film. That was the trickiest part – balancing what we show early, with what we show late. It was finetuned until the very end.
Q. What were some of your favourite moments during filming?
A. The best and most memorable day, by far, was shooting the Pat Benatar “Heartbreaker” sequence. We had found this gorgeous location, a different one from the exterior and upstairs of the house, but it had such amazing wood work that we had to use it. So we recreated this era, and we had the rights to both MTV and “Heartbreaker” and it was basically just a music video shoot.
Going into the shoot, we didn’t have the song chosen. Our music supervisor sent us a couple of lists of songs in our budget and when I heard this one, the scene came alive for me. I reached out to Summer H. Howell immediately and told her we are working on getting the rights to this Pat Benatar song and it would open a great opportunity to have Emily sing and dance before getting killed and could really be a fun sequence. She totally ran with it and learned some fun dancing from the 80’s and we had a blast shooting it.
Q. Did you experience any issues during filming?
A. Of course! There’s always a ton of issues filming indies, or any film. Murphy’s Law! We had a freak snowstorm that led to us have to delay call time so I could go to the cemetery and spend 4 hours with a snow blower clearing the space that we were filming. We were locked out of locations for hours waiting to shoot huge sequences, leaving us very little time to shoot.
Indies are a death by a thousand cuts, and we hit every single one of those cuts. But we had a good crew, a good cast, and had good spirits through every set back. At the end of the day we were making a movie and that should be fun regardless of how hard it is. And I strive to make it as fun as possible.
Q. What makes Night of the Reaper stand out as something different in the horror genre?
A. I just really like how it is two different movies, two different experiences if you watch it twice. It really feels intentional the second time in a way that you wouldn’t be able to tell the first time. You can never expect an audience to watch your film once let alone twice, but those who do, I think they’ll be rewarded with a completely new version of the film. There’s so many hints along the way that we worked hard to obscure the first time through and I think that’s a really unique aspect of it.
It’s a film that presents itself as one thing and it’s something completely different, while hopefully still delivering what you expect going in before giving you something new.
Q. What do you hope people take away after watching the film?
A. I just hope they see something that they didn’t expect, and more importantly, enjoy what we tried to do. There’s an element of trying to trick them, and I hope that they can accept that and watch the third act with an open mind. It’s always a risk to try and trick an audience – but the feedback has been super encouraging so far, so I think we made the right call.
Q. Do you have any other projects which you are currently working on?
A. I have a film called BODYCAM coming out early next year, also on Shudder. We have a couple of scripts out now, trying to find financing, and writing another one right now. Just trying to keep the momentum, 2022 through 2024 was very intense as I shot three movies that all kind of leap frogged each other and now I’m in a slower period where I can find the next project and move forward. I’m hoping to be filming something in 2026, I’m dying to get back on set.
Q. If someone was looking to write and direct their own film what advice would you give them?
A. Keep it simple. If it’s your first time making something, keep it manageable, keep it inexpensive. Filmmaking is like any skill. It’s going to take practice, so use that practice cheaply. Allow yourself room to make mistakes, the learning curve is steep. And just keep making stuff, keep trying something new, keep trying to find your own voice and eventually you’ll have a handle on directing and that’s when it’s time to try something longer.
But it all starts by just doing it. Pick up a camera, and find a way to tell a story. Then do it again. And again.
Night of the Reaper will be playing at Horror-on-Sea on Sunday 25th January at 15:00hrs.
You can find out more about Horror-on-Sea and purchase tickets for the Night of the Reaper here
Published in various websites, Philip is a reviewer who is best known for his interviews and media coverage of independent projects including; films, books, theatre and live events. Always on the lookout for something different to cover!
