S3 E13: What Lurks Beneath Appalachia? | Dark Hollow Director Daniel Byers

What happens when something buried beneath Appalachia refuses to stay buried?

Writer and director Daniel Byers enters the Mirror Room to discuss his horror film Dark Hollow—a creature feature rooted in Appalachian darkness, family, transformation and the things that may be better left underground.

Growing up in West Virginia, Daniel was surrounded by cryptid lore, from Bigfoot to Mothman. He shares how that tradition influenced the creation of Dark Hollow's monster and takes us behind the scenes of filming inside a real coal mine, where the cast and crew experienced tight spaces, cold temperatures and moments of complete darkness.

Daniel also reveals how his team brought the creature from his imagination to the screen using practical effects layered with CGI, and we venture beyond filmmaking into his own encounters with the supernatural, cultural beliefs, fear of transformation, moral darkness and what he believes may—or may not—be waiting beyond what we can explain.

🎬 Dark Hollow is written and directed by Daniel Byers and distributed by Brainstorm Media. Available now to rent digitally. Watch Now on Prime Video
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/0G8ZCULZ45P9LKL0D0NJZDYGNR

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🪞 Prefer to watch? Watch the full Mirror Room conversation on the Haunted House FearFest® YouTube channel under the Looks Creepy Cool Podcast playlist.

Daniel Byers
Website: danielbyers.com
Instagram: @danielabyers

Dark Hollow
Instagram: @darkhollowfilms
TikTok: @dark.hollow.film
Distributor: @brainstormmediaofficial

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:01

What happens when the thing keeping a community alive is also slowly killing it? In Dark Hollow, a struggling Appalachian community is already being suffocated by coal, illness, and desperation when something far more terrifying begins to emerge from beneath the mountain. But what frightened me about this film wasn't only the creature lurking underground, it was what desperation can make people do when they feel like they have nowhere left to go. My guest tonight is Daniel Byers, writer and director of Dark Hollow. I watched the film ahead of our conversation, and from the cinematography and sweeping landscapes to the creature effects, score, and quieter moments with this family, there is a lot hiding underneath this story. So tonight, we're going beneath the surface, and we're going to find out what he put down there. Daniel Byers, welcome to the mirror room. Hi Daniel, welcome to the mirror room. Did anything follow you in here?

SPEAKER_00 1:11

I sure hope not, Renee.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Oh, well, it's because I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad you're worthy to enter the mirror room. And if anything did follow you in here, I hope it stays on your side of the reflection.

SPEAKER_00 1:25

Yeah. We'll try not to we'll try not to introduce any uh screen demons into the conversation. Um let's keep this uh corporeal, practical effects only, things that can trouble, trouble physical reality, not uh not go into the electrics space and jump out of your monitor.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Oh well, I love it. So before we delve into the interview, folks, I want to remind our house guests the mirror room isn't about jump scares, it's about reflection. It's where we step back from the finished work and explore the experiences, fears, inspirations, and defining moments that shape the person behind the performances. So, Daniel, um one thing I want to ask you is um is um before we talk about Dark Hollow, I want to know something about the person who created it. So, what scared you as a child that some part of you still believes might be real?

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Oh, well, I grew up in West Virginia, which is where the uh film is also set in the Appalachian Mountains, and we love cryptids in West Virginia. You've probably heard of Bigfoot and Mothman. We have some you probably haven't heard of, like Vegetable Man, who sounds very silly, but is actually uh pretty horrifying. And uh so we we love our cryptids. I've heard we have the highest level of cryptids per capita of any state in the nation, which maybe isn't that hard because we have a lot of spooky places and deep forests and not a big population. So uh I don't know if that's an apocryphal fact or not, but regardless, I think coming into this film, it was really important to me to create something in that tradition, uh the tradition of the Appalachian cryptid. So that's what we did. We made a an original monster and a new monster for the movie.

SPEAKER_02 3:20

Oh, so that's where the inspiration came from. So um, is there a superstition then? I guess you don't believe in, but still wouldn't risk breaking.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

Ooh, good question. Good question. A superstition I don't believe in, but actually do believe in.

SPEAKER_02 3:37

Is that yeah, I guess you can answer it either or yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

So I'm not sure that I believe in ghosts, but I have also experienced a ghost. So uh it's it's a little bit in that liminal space there where you're like, I have had this experience that I can't explain. Um, but I'm also not sure. I literally believe in the physical manifestation of the spirit after death. Um, but I did, uh I was a documentary filmmaker for many years before becoming a uh a fiction director. And at one point I was on trek in Nepal, way out in the middle of nowhere, on as it would happen, Halloween, which doesn't mean anything over there, right? They don't celebrate it, they have their own holidays. Uh, but it was on Halloween, and uh we slept over in a glacier valley, and in the middle of the night, I uh I had this experience of of seeing this shadow. I got up to look at the stars and come back to my tent, and this human-sized shadow flew across the ground, sort of from my headlamp and into the tent. And I thought it was an animal, you know, I thought it was a pika. They have these cute little uh rabbit-like animals up there called pikas, uh, and they're pretty big. So I I literally went in and stripped all my clothing out of the bags and threw it everywhere. Nothing. And then the next day, one of our guides told us that he had heard women like singing in this high-pitched nasally voice, like ying, ying, ying, ying, ying, to him from outside the tent walls. And he got so scared he went in and slept with uh one of the other guides because uh because he was terrified. And we went to where he had heard those sounds and we found a fresh grave of somebody who had, we were really remote. We were three weeks away uh over land from the nearest town. And if you die out there, there's no way to get the body out, right? You can't uh you can't carry them out. It's it's too difficult because you have to carry your supplies. So somebody had been uh a body had recently been interred in a little cave there in the steppe grass. So a very spooky kind of experience and and one that I I shared in a phenomenological experience of uh and at the same time, I'm not sure I believe in ghosts. So I don't know. Does that answer your question?

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, it really does. I think what goes through my mind is that, like, gosh, so how did you get through the rest of the night? Did you just stay up outside your tent? You didn't go back to sleep.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

Well, up there, there's avalanches that are kind of constantly rolling down the mountainside. So it's like thunder all night long. And you hear these rocks kind of crumbling, and and you're close to these slopes, and so you're always kind of wondering, well, is the next one gonna land on top of me? And the wind is whipping all night long. It really does play tricks on the mind, and it really does feel like at times something's out there walking around, moving around the tent. But um, I don't know, you walk for 14 hours at uh 15,000 feet of elevation, you'll sleep through anything. So wasn't an issue.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Even through ghosts. Wow. Okay, well, Daniel, I want to descend into the darkness with you. Um, so for everyone, deep uh Dark Hollow, uh, it's when a nightmarish nightmarish monster emerges from the depths of an of the Appalachian coal mine. A young mother must hunt down the creature to protect her home and save her family. So, starting off is Jesse and the mind. So there's a chain door underground in your movie. It's when, you know, sort of like in the first couple of minutes opening up and something is behind it. Jesse hears it, gets out, and eventually goes back. Have you ever ignored your own instinct telling you not to do something?

SPEAKER_00 7:16

Well, I I can't remember who said this, but um, horror is the only genre where people run towards danger instead of away from it. And uh and I and I think in sort of uh cornier horror movies, I'm not gonna say bad horror movies because I don't think that there's any such distinction between like high art and low art. I think it's just is it is it like a fun time or not? Are you are you entertained or aren't you? But I think in cornier horror movies, people do that for no reason, right? It's almost this like death drive, right? And it's and it's it's it it's necessary for the plot. So people move down the dark stairs into the basement. They just keep going. But I think in less corny horror movies, and I think this was important to me in my movie, there's something uh very real that is compelling you, that is giving you the conviction to move towards the darkness. And so every character in this movie had a reason to be going deeper into that coal mine. And yes, we shot in a real coal mine underground for three days in order to make this film. So we got a taste of just how dark, spooky, quiet, and cold it is down in these mile-deep, seven, eight mile deep mineshafts. Um, uh literally ourselves as the cast and crew. Uh, but yeah, Jesse's down there looking for coal. And that's because uh the movie's events uh take place around the coal mining boom of the 1990s to the early 2000s, and uh all of the tensions that arose in communities as they were trying to decide whether they were gonna sell to the coal company uh or whether they were going to hold on to their generational land. And uh and then later on, when the protagonist goes down into the mine, well, no spoilers, but she has her reasons as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah, and we'll we'll get to that in a minute. But I first like you actually filmed inside the coal mine. So, like, how did you film in those tight corners? And gosh, I just I don't like secluded, tight areas. Like I get very claustrophobic. I probably shouldn't be telling my fears publicly, um, being a festival owner. But um, you know, how did you manage to do that?

SPEAKER_00 9:20

It was really hard, and especially um, because these are narrow spaces, they're dangerous places to work. There's a lot of sharp rocks and rusted metal. It's wet down there, it's 50 degrees day and night, and it's completely pitch black. And we had also made the decision we wanted to light some of those scenes only with firelight, with a sparkler, you know, and it it makes sense in context of the story that that's the only light that she has, you know, once she's down there. And so there were times when we had to turn off all the practical lights to get ready for the shot, roll camera. And then before she lit that sparkler, we were all in that utter darkness together. And June Schreiner was our lead actor, and she was amazing. You know, she's very, very tough, very brave, and made it through this shoot where we were camping out a lot, where we were on a mountainside for the first half, and then we were down in this coal mine for part of the second half. So uh there was only one time that I think we broke her, and that was down in this mine where we had to turn all these lights off, and she had to do all this complex business uh in the dark, moving around, lighting the thing. And, you know, wow, she she came to me. It was the only time she came to me and she was like, I I just I can't do it. And so um, it was corny, or I thought it was corny, but uh was trying to figure this out. And so I sent her that Dylan Thomas poem, you know, the beautiful one, uh, do not go gently into that good night, rage, rage against the dying of the light. And for whatever it was, you know, we were both really tired. It was towards the end of the shoot. Neither of us had been sleeping very well for weeks because we were working so hard on this indie film, but that did it. You know, it connected on some level with her, and then it was beautiful from there on out, and we were able to finish the scene.

SPEAKER_02 10:59

Wow. Well, I loved Casey. I was like, she, her character, I mean, Casey, the character, was a is a badass before she descended into the cave, and um, she even became more of a badass like when she was in the cave. So Casey doesn't wait at home for someone else to bring her husband back. She knows the darkness is dangerous and she goes toward it anyway. Is there a difference between the darkness Jesse enters and the darkness Casey chooses to enter?

SPEAKER_00 11:30

This is a good question. Well, I think the darkness that Jesse enters might be a moral darkness, you know. He's trapped in this moral decision uh between really honoring his promise to Casey and uh and and doing what he thinks might save his family, you know. So it's a complicated moral place that he's at. Um he has to sort of choose a certain amount of betrayal uh in order to do what he thinks is right. So he has he has a motivation that is ultimately good, but his his methods of going about it perhaps uh take him too far into the darkness um morally and and literally as he goes down into the mine. And I think probably on some level, I I I I never intended um people to think that Casey wasn't aware of that, right? She's not stupid. She probably knows. She probably knows that he has on some level lied to her, betrayed her by doing this, but she loves him. And it's a story about family and land, and it's a story about the conflict that arises in a person when they have to choose, make this impossible choice between uh generational home, which is something that you know, people growing up there like people in a lot of remote places, rural places, uh places where generations have passed, land is part of you. You know, you are part of the fabric of your landscape. And to have to choose between that and your family. And ultimately, again, I don't want to spoil anything, but um, I guess it lands in a place where where no easy choice can be made, and ultimately sacrifice has has to be made.

SPEAKER_02 13:10

Yeah. No, it does. But then I start thinking of Miwa. Like we're we're not spoiling or miwa, I think I pronounced it right miwah. Like I love that character too. And it just seems that like to understand something everyone else like has forgotten, she is amazing, even though she doesn't um, you know, she has doesn't have a more dominant presence, but I feel like when she is on camera, her character, it really speaks for itself. And I thought of like, um, you know, when human beings, you know, like the older generation says, Don't go there, don't do this, but we just still don't listen. So um one thing I want to know is that um has anyone ever warned you about something supernatural that you laughed off or like you ignored, but you secretly remembered, or you pushed through and decided to see what it was about anyway.

SPEAKER_00 13:59

Hmm. Well, Mimaw, um, you know, my my grandmother's not from West Virginia, but uh, but Mimaw is very much based on on my own grandmother, who's also a very uh a very uh a power, she's the she's the um the staunch heart of uh the family unit. And she's held together several generations, I think four generations now at the center of that. She's um so I, you know, I I had that inspiration for her character, even though she's a little different. And and I'm glad you enjoyed her. I I liked her too. I think she was one of my favorite characters to write because uh a lot of her dialogue came straight from uh conversations or accounts of conversations I've had with real people. And uh West Virginians are uh they can be a you know surly lot at times. And a lot of these things you're getting at, like with the supernatural experiences. Uh, you'd expect somebody who was coming up against a cryptid or something supernatural to, you know, freak out, scream, run, you know, it's an impossible thing. And uh my mother works for the Department of Natural Resources and would get calls all the time to come out and look at Bigfoot tracks, you know, because people would find they have sightings of of tracks, these big, you know, ape-like feet. So who knows if they were hoaxes or if they weren't, but she would get these calls, like this is in real life, like pretty often. And she was telling me about uh one of these calls that she went out on and she went and she examined the track because she's a naturalist and a botanist and uh and worked for the department. And she examined it and she thought it was if it was a fake, it was a really convincing one. It looked a lot like a real foot, this uh uh print in the mud. And she was talking to a person who called it in and asking them, well, what happened? And the person said, Well, you know, uh, I saw that stink ape come into my property and I said, get. I went and I got the rake and I said, get, you know. For them, it's it's it's a critter that it's a nuisance, right? They're not they're not hung up on, oh my gosh, it's an impossible cryptid creature. It's like, get off my get off my property. You're you're bothering me, you know. So um, I guess that doesn't really answer your question, but maybe it speaks a little bit to the inspiration behind Mimaw and the kind of toughness that you see in some of these communities I wanted to capture in her. Um and uh in terms of me moving towards some sort of supernatural darkness that I was warned against, um I guess I once crossed a bridge that had been hit by an avalanche, uh, one of those big swinging bridges. Um, and it had uh, you know, the rails had been knocked off.

SPEAKER_02 16:30

Yeah, like Indiana Jones.

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, three feet wide and there were no rails on it. But the alternative was to go like, you know, six hours around. There was no good way across. This was also in Nepal. And uh, you know, so I just crossed it. Um, me and a couple of these guys from Tajikistan, we just kind of balanced and went across because we were tired and didn't want to go all the way around. And uh and I think the I think that like we learned later that that was that was really bad, right? That was sort of the equivalent locally of having like committed some very taboo act. And so uh even though in that circumstance uh they were saying, come, come, not stop, stop. Probably I should have been listening to the better angels of my nature and not done that.

SPEAKER_02 17:20

Uh well, you got through it, thank God.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_02 17:26

Wow. So I want to get into becoming the monster, the body and the transformation. Your creature doesn't just kill people, he it changes them. So what frightens you more, dying or still being conscious while you're becoming something else?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

Right. Uh death or transformation. Uh I think I think transformation's definitely scarier, right? And and a lot of horror plays with the idea of transformation and of uh sort of being between one thing and another. You know, what is a werewolf? It's neither man and nor human. What is a zombie? It's neither alive nor dead. So it challenges this binary uh that we like to hold that makes us feel safe, right? We like to categorize things as humans. We like to put things in boxes, we like because it makes us feel like we can control those things. And the glorious thing about horror, and I think when it's done well, uh, it really is a sublime experience to watch horror, and everybody should watch horror for this reason. But it it challenges those categories. And I think that's good for us, you know. I think it's good for your brain to challenge your categories. And so I would say death is kind of clean, it's kind of binary. Um, but if you think about it, right, like what is more horrifying? A bug that you squash or a bug that you pull one wing and three legs off of and let walk around in a circle on the ground?

SPEAKER_02 18:50

So torturous, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

Yeah, one of these things is definitely worse. And uh and I think that's the thing that maybe horror plays in as a genre that most other genres don't play in. They're like, what is that decline? What is that transformation? What does that decay look like? And can we like dig into that in a way that is uh that is challenging and scary and and and fun? Um, so yeah, we had uh a makeup set up for uh our actors that took them through uh for some of our actors. Um, Sean Michael, I think, who plays Eli in the film, had the most comprehensive set of this, but uh several of the actors went through phases where we had uh stage one, two, three, and four of turning from a human being into something else, something calcified, something where flesh and coal become one. And uh it was really fun to create those builds. And I think it's it's some of the some of the most uh chilling and troubling visuals aren't just the monster itself, because the monster sort of coheres into, again, something entirely of its of a piece. But uh when you're halfway in between and things are sort of emerging from the flesh, tusks and fangs, and the flesh itself is rotting and calcifying, I think that stuff's a lot scarier because you can still see the human being underneath it.

SPEAKER_02 20:13

Yeah, and yeah, and there's a lot that happens at the end, uh, which I'm not gonna say. So, but when you finally saw, you know, this uh with the creature, and um, from what you envisioned um that was physically brought to life, did it look like the monster that had been living inside your head, or did it become way creepier than you've ever imagined given the team that you worked with?

SPEAKER_00 20:38

It's a really good way to frame that. You're you're giving me a good and a great. There's no there's no fail condition in this. I love that question. Um Yeah, so it's it's it's a it's a real it's a real thing though to try and take something out of your head, especially something that doesn't exist, something fantastical, and and put it into uh into a medium where people, other people can watch it. And so my philosophy with this stuff is you should always start practical if you can, right? There's uh there's so many benefits to it. And and that's what we did. You know, we we built a practical monster suit. We designed it with uh Dimension X Studios based out of Pittsburgh. They made an awesome Z brush design, and then they actually built the suit. And the actor we cast, Radu Spinghel, he's a former MMA fighter. He's seven feet one inches tall. He's a massive dude. And so it took them six times as, or they had to use six times as much latex to make this suit as they would have for a man of average height. Uh so massive suit, gigantic build. And uh the head was very cool, fangs, it had a mechanical articulating jaw, they could um put a little tube in so he could spew this black goo out of his mouth and drip it down his teeth. It was like the whole build was really, really cool. And then uh, of course, you know, you you go so far with that, and you have the physical monster on set, you have the real weight, the real presence, the actors have something to actually respond to. And I think all of that really matters. And then as the next step, you layer over it with CGI. And that was what we did in post. I went through and did another pass on it, inspired by the original ZBrush model, working in some other programs. And we painted over just pieces of it, like the face, to take it a little further away from humanity. It's kind of what they did with the animatronic animals in in Babe. I was, I was, uh, had the opportunity to meet uh uh James Cromwell recently and uh see some of some of his uh Indigenous art collections. And he was telling me about working on Babe and how they had the animatronic animals, and they just it was the first time that they were experimenting with this stuff, but they just CGI the faces. So that's kind of the same philosophy I took with this. I was like, uh, you know, there's that quote, uh, oh, who said it? But uh the quote is uh you can't scare the audience if they can see this, if they can see the scenes. And uh, you know, there were a few scenes to uh to paint over with the uh the magic of of digital effects, but they were all based on a layer of reality. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to build this monster in layers. So I guess to answer your question, yes, I feel like it did ultimately land very close to the vision that was in my head, and it took a lot of really talented artists and a whole process to get there.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

Wow. Well, you did a great job. And because of that, I want to delve darker into your reflection, if I may. So is there a part of yourself, like as you're writing, as you're thinking about these monsters, is there a part of yourself that you only allow to exist when you're making horror?

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Yeah, I would say the the the dreamer part of me exists more when I'm making horror, right? Especially in contrast to doing documentary work, which is so so grounded in uh real experiences and real cultures and real places. And really what you're trying to do is kind of dignify somebody else's story. But uh with horror, it's all it's all kind of dark dreams and nightmares. And so I think the real joy of it, especially when you're writing it for the first time, especially when you're at that sort of conception phase where you're building and designing the look of things. Um, you know, because once you're on set, then like it's it's like war. Like war isn't one on the battlefield, it's one in the preparation phase, right? How good are your supply lines? And uh and so by that point, it's all should be running according to plan. And of course, you pivot and uh improvise where you have to. But I think the really wonderful part of it is when you are unconstrained, when you haven't had to start making all the concessions and all the compromises that inevitably come uh to your vision uh with whatever resources you have in an indie film, you never have enough. So you're always having to creatively solve problems that you wish you could throw money at, and you can't. Um But yeah, I think that dreaming stage, uh, when you first when you first write the script and when you storyboard, and every now and then on set, something will surprise you so much. Some beautiful moment of performance or some incredibly cool visual gag, uh blood and goose brays just so, and you're like, ah, you feel that poetry again.

unknown 25:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Yeah, the horrific, beautiful poetry, I would say again. Um, so I'm this question. Um what's the darkest thought you've ever had that eventually found its way into something you created?

SPEAKER_00 25:32

The darkest thought I ever had that found its way into something that I created. Um boy oh boy. Well, I think I've always been fascinated with horror. Um I cleaned out my childhood room um last year, and I found the first book that I had ever uh written, which I was too young to actually write at the time, so I dictated it to my mom and she wrote it down. But I did all the pictures and it was a compendium of monsters. It was uh 15 different monsters, and then they all fought at the end, and I uh had a big monster battle and decided which monster ruled the roost. So I think that I always have been drawn to this stuff and have been drawn to it for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure. And this is one of the things that kind of comes up with my family when they're like, why do you make horror? Are you are you disturbed? Is there something wrong with you? And and I have to say, no, I I think that horror for me is like a it's really fun. It doesn't really come from a dark place. Of course, we're dealing with dark themes, and the movie deals with dark themes. And if there's anything sort of that inspired me in this, it was it was really kind of that darkness between people and the darkness that uh comes, the evil that comes of exploitation, I think, when you have uh kind of these large, faceless, powerful groups that can descend upon um, you know, smaller populations, more rural populations, people who can't necessarily um physically defend themselves from that threat. And and then like not just not just victimizing them, though, like what does it look like to fight anyway? I think there's kind of a radical hope in this movie. At least that was my intention, um, to show these people uh and show their incredibly heroic fight against pretty impossible odds. Um so I'm not sure if uh I again I don't want to spoil it. I'm not gonna tell you whether it's a happy ending or a bleak ending, but it is a world in which I'll just say this um the forces acting on the people, no one really escapes these types of forces, right? It doesn't matter whether you're perpetrating this evil or whether you are kind of on the receiving end and running from it. It's an equal opportunity type of evil and it hits everyone.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

So if I'm understanding it correctly, do you think then evil can exist independently from the human beings? Because it's evil is like the entity, and so it's never part of the human beings, it's just exists independently outside of us.

SPEAKER_00 28:16

I think so. I think uh typically people aren't evil themselves. I don't know if I'd call uh there's probably a handful, right? But I think even they are probably a victim of environment and circumstance. But I think we have created demons, right? We've created a number of modern demons that uh all of us are threatened by. And and one of those is big extractive industry, right? I think there are examples of big extractive industry that create absolute devastation and horror. And in West Virginia, um, I lived through this. You know, I grew up during this period of time. Uh cancer rates, you know, child cancer rates through the roof, uh, because of all of the poisoning of the air and the water, massive impacts on the land, massive impacts on the people. I don't think any human being would, you know, step forward and proudly say that's a good thing, you know. But we've created this demon, this entity that is not a human, this this uh yeah, this this corporation, and and it is very happy to do these things to people because it doesn't have human needs or motivations or cares or sympathies. So I think we we have created evil. Um and it's and it's typically not uh in uh any individual human, but it is a thing that humans wield and humans use. They've they've created genies and demons and they use them to control and uh to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

SPEAKER_02 29:40

Yeah, wow. This is very dark, but very interesting, Daniel. Um, so now we approach the final door and to the last, very last question that I'll ask you. So we reach the final door, Daniel, of the mirror room. So you're back inside the mine, you're alone, there's no phone, no one else around. The only light is the one you're carrying. And then you find the chain door from Dark Hollow. Except this time, the chains are already broken. The door is open, and from somewhere inside the darkness, something says your name. You can turn around and leave, or you can answer it. What do you do?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Ooh, the old fight, flight, or freeze question. Well, I would like to think that following uh after the model of our protagonist, Casey Scarborough in the movie, I would find the likeliest jackhammer around and I would rev that thing up and I would head into the darkness after that voice and face what comes. Because what are we doing if we don't fight these demons? You know, what's the point? We gotta face the darkness.

SPEAKER_02 30:49

Okay. All right. You are a survivor. And um the last question I have is because this is the Looks Creepy Cool podcast, what is the creepiest thing that's ever happened to you? You kind of probably I think already said in the beginning. And what's the coolest thing that's happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Boy, uh, well, I'll give you one answer for both. Uh, about 10 years ago, I got struck by lightning. Um my God. And this was also in Nepal. Uh, happened at midnight during the monsoon. I was over there doing earthquake relief with uh an egg organization, and uh, we thought we were being really smart by putting our tents uh in the soccer field away from the avalanche zone, because that's what really gets you in those high mountain areas. It's not the earthquake, it's the avalanches. Uh, but we, you know, we were the only thing sticking up out of a field, uh, and everything else had been leveled flat. And so, yeah, midnight, um, I fell a charge in the air and it woke me up, and I had a tripod next to me. I was filming, and I saw uh an arc of electricity go through the tripod like a Jacobs ladder and then into my body and through it and uh and into the ground. And I was very lucky, I was grounded, so I didn't get burned by this lighting, but it did feel like getting kicked by a horse. It was this incredible impact. And uh, you know, the whole left side of my body went numb and I went screaming out into the night. I had I thought I was dead, I thought I had been, you know, burned half my body off. And uh, and after about 20 seconds of that, I realized like uh I was okay. I wasn't dead, and also I wasn't getting any sympathy because the storm was too loud. So I went back to bed. But the next the next day I got checked by the trip doctor, and you know, there can be serious follow-on effects to this, right? Nerve damage, pulmonary stuff. And so she was like, keep an eye on it. You seem okay, but like get checked up again in six months and whatever. Um, and and I was like, all right, great. I guess I I guess I'm fine. I still feel tingly, but I and I went off to my day and and did my like shooting for the day. And I came back and my tent was right where I had left it. And all of the Nepalis that we were working with had moved their tents 50 feet away because they knew they knew something I didn't know, which is that I was now cursed. Uh, if you get struck by lightning in that culture, you are cursed. And bad things in Asia happen in fours, right? Four is the death number. And so it uh it's sort of like 13 here. Um, and so I had I had one, and that means I had three more to go before I shuffle off this mortal coil. So they were all like, sorry, no offense, but we're not getting anywhere near you.

SPEAKER_02 33:20

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

So I had to I had to deal with the situation because I had to continue my work there. And so um eventually one of them told me, he's like, okay, we can deal with this. You're probably not gonna like it. But um, you know, we traveled back into Kathmandu and we found Asadu, which is a holy man in the Hindu culture there, explained the situation to him. And this was near Pakshnupatanath in Kathmandu, which is where the Tibetan people uh cremate, they have open air cremations of the dead, right? So they burn the dead bodies in these open air pyres. Um, so he understood what had happened to me, and he went and he made a deal with one of these uh Tibetan um cremation sites and came back with a bunch of um human ashes, ashes from one of these burned bodies. And then he said, Take off your clothes. And I was like, Oh, okay, I'm here. I might as well I went in Rome, right? So I stripped onto my underwear and he rubbed these human ashes all over my body, uh, sort of covered me in this white ash from a cremated corpse. And I think that in that tradition, it's like a sympathetic magic, right? The fire from the cremated body and the fire from the skies were connected by some sort of magical tether. And so the one would act as a protection from the other. So he gave me that, he gave me a mantra to say nine times a day for nine days, and a betal nut um on a string that I had to wear till it fell off. And he was like, all right, you're probably good, but if you leave my area of influence, if you go into like the Tibetan areas, because they have a different religion, they're Buddhist, it's not going to work anymore. And of course, I was immediately after this going up into the Tibetan areas. So then I had to go to a Rinfoche at a at a monastery up there and get a whole other ritual done in order to protect me from avalanches and for lightning strikes. So that was uh, I would say that was like spooky and also pretty cool.

SPEAKER_02 35:15

Yeah, I was just about to say you answered both questions in one story. Wow. Wow. I I'm just speechless. I mean, and you were wow, I'm just speechless. That's that's amazing. So, wow. So as we end the podcast, where can people, uh, when can people start watching Dark Hollow? Where is it at? And what's your next project? What's coming up after this?

SPEAKER_00 35:38

Awesome. Well, thank you for asking and thanking you for letting me plug the movie. It will be coming out on September 4th. We're having a theatrical run in LA. So if you're in Los Angeles, come out to the Lumiere in Beverly Hills on September 4th for opening night or anytime that week for the theatrical run. And it will also on September 4th be available on all major VOD platforms. So please rent it on Amazon or Apple or Fandango or whatever you like to use. Uh, and then come next January. Well, we're gonna be on like television and cable and all that stuff. And then come next January, the thing I'm really excited for, we're getting Blu-ray discs. I love physical media. Let's bring it back. Uh, let's own the movies that we watch and not let these streamers edit them for content. Um, so we're gonna have our Blu-rays coming out then, so you'll be able to get it uh on a physical media platform at that point. Um and uh what's up next? Boy, I'm gonna sleep uh really well for a couple weeks and get back to you. But um, in seriousness, I I have been working on another script. Uh, it's with a production company here in New York with a very, very brilliant and accomplished director, uh, well-known director, uh, who wants to take it out. And it'd be his first horror movie. So he's uh been working on taking that out into the world. So we're hoping for that. Always got a bunch of other projects in the barrel. But right now, I'm just gonna enjoy the release of Dark Hollow.

SPEAKER_02 37:03

Oh, awesome. Well, Daniel, you're always welcome back into the mirror room. I do tell my guests if they are returning, the questions may get a little bit darker, depending on the next film or content that they have they want to um promote. And if you would like to be a guest on the Looks Creepy Cool podcast, just go to lookscreepycool.com, fill out the form, and someone in the mirror room will get back to you. So, Daniel, thank you again uh for being in the mirror room and joining the podcast and house guests until next time, until the next reflection awaits. Thank you, and have a good night.

SPEAKER_00 37:38

Thank you, Renee.

SPEAKER_02 37:39

Thank you. Want more chills and chatter? We're streaming on all podcast platforms.