I saw “The Shining” when I was 8, I saw Hitchcock when I was 8, and it spiraled out of there. I was a big fan when I was little of the “Goosebumps” books and “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” and got into more adult horror at a fairly young age. Where did your creative spark first come from, and why do you think you gravitate toward horror? You list among your influences experimental filmmakers like Maya Deren and Stan Brakhage. And if I made something that would appeal to a broader audience, I’d maybe be losing some of that.” “People send me incredibly personal, and it’s been amazing. “Sometimes the price that you pay in making a polarizing movie is that that’s the only way you can get the super personal in there,” said Ball. And most of all: “Make the movie you want to make, not the movie that you think others want to see.” Crowdfund using platforms like Seed&Spark. Plan preproduction “like you’re traversing Everest.” Find like-minded collaborators. His tips for making a viral horror hit for just $15,000? Don’t be mean. At 1 hour and 40 minutes, its grainy long takes and shadowy images of hallways, rooms and staticky televisions reward patient moviegoers with a portal to their earliest childhood nightmares as seen from the perspective of 4-year-old Kevin (played by Lucas Paul) and his 6-year-old sister, Kaylee (Dali Rose Tetreault), characters inspired by Ball and his own sister. Unlike its genre forebears (think microbudget megahits “The Blair Witch Project” or “Paranormal Activity”), “Skinamarink” takes an immersive approach less concerned with plot turns than avant-garde sensory evocation. Good luck to the Hollywood execs who are surely scrambling to replicate the singular “Skinamarink” phenomenon, though. Someone got a ‘Skinamarink’ tattoo, and I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ Then I took a step back and I remembered, this is this person’s relationship to something you did, but it’s not you. “I had to delete my Instagram because I was getting so many messages. Still, the fervor of “Skinamarink” fandom has led Ball to scale back his social media presence. “Everything that a filmmaker dreams that would happen to them, except for winning an Oscar, has happened to me in the span of just a couple of months,” he said ahead of a special screening Thursday night at the Ace Hotel. It’s no wonder that the Edmonton, Alberta-based Ball, in Los Angeles for the first time this week to screen his viral horror hit, is still processing the roller coaster ride that landed him here. In a strategic move, IFC Films shifted its theatrical release from October to January, and the outsize reactions to the film have only strengthened “Skinamarink‘s” must-see mystique. It premiered last summer at film festivals only to be leaked online in the fall, leaving Ball “panicked and terrified,” then was discovered and hailed on TikTok, Reddit and other social media platforms as one of the scariest movies ever made. And, love it or hate it, polarizing reactions have made writer-director Kyle Edward Ball’s experimental debut feature - in which two young siblings wake up in the middle of the night to find their father gone, the doors and windows missing and a malevolent entity in the shadows - cinema’s latest word-of-mouth sensation.Ĭrowdfunded and filmed over seven days in Ball’s childhood home, the film’s unlikely journey to box office success has not been without stumbles. “ Skinamarink,” the runaway success story of the moment, is at once the stuff of literal nightmares and every indie filmmaker’s dream: a $15,000 chiller that’s earned $1.8 million in theaters in a matter of weeks.
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