In horror movies, it's not always what you see among the trees that can scare you, it's also what you hear... or worse yet, what you hope you didn't hear. Carrying a portable field mixer while working on a horror movie in the woods, sound recordist Nikki (Danielle Butlin) picks up more than just the noises of Mother Nature in Andrew Montague's Blackwood, which you can now watch in its entirety right here on Daily Dead!
Listen to the spooky sounds that Nikki captures on her recording equipment in the short film below... and turn it all the way up for maximum scares.
Written and directed by Montague, Blackwood premiered at Monster Fest in Australia, the same country in which it was filmed. Blackwood stars Danielle Butlin, Alanah Parkin, Jim Koutsoukos, and Rowan Howard, with creature design by Torstein Nordstrand and creature animation by Daniel Fotheringham.
Here's what writer/director Montague shared about his new short film:
"With Blackwood I wanted to make a short film that aims to subvert the genre while bringing a fresh take on the misadventure trope in horror.
I chose the sound recordist as a character to portray as their job is very solitary almost walled off from the rest of the production, a great character to follow and put in a solitary situation.
I love sound design and wanted to explore soundscape as a way to drive tension. We designed a specific sound, both ominous and peculiar that leads you through the film and to its terrifying source.
After visiting the California Redwoods I fell in love with the texture and scale of the forest, which is unlike the Australian bush, luckily there is one forest like that here in Australia and we used it as our location."
Synopsis: "Nikki, a sound recordist, picks up a strange sound whilst filming on location in a forest. After a disturbing encounter, she wakes up alone, confused and filthy in her house. Her only chance at finding out what happened to her, lies within her sound recorder."
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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