Here is a fun horror short film for you to watch called slow creep. The film centers on a 15-year-old girl named Otter who is delighted to finally find the horror movie she has been looking for for weeks.
She took the movie home to watch with her brother and his friends, not realizing that she was dooming them to have a nightmarish encounter with the Slow Creep.
This short is shared in partnership with FilmQuest Film Festival, where we hope to showcase some of the fantastic independent genre films and shorts filmmakers are creating.
The writer and director of this film is Jim Hickox, We’ve also included an interview you can also read to get to know the filmmaker.
Without spoiling anything, please tell us about the content, characters, and themes of your film. Is it a proof of concept, or a standalone story?
Each complete story serves as a proof of concept for a larger story, but this is definitely a complete piece. This is the story of two siblings at opposite ends of adolescence. They were home alone, she wanted to watch a horror movie, but he wanted to kiss a boy. There’s also a monster trying to destroy the video they rented.
What was the inspiration for your film? How did you come up with this idea?
Nothing was an idea or inspiration, of course, but part of it was playing with the idea of monsters. They’re always super powerful, and I wanted to make a movie where the monsters weren’t as powerful as everyone else.
Tell us about yourself. What is your background? How long have you been a filmmaker?
I mainly work as a DP, but occasionally I convince people that I should do a silly project myself.
What inspires you to work in genre films and tell these kinds of stories?
Genre audiences are the best audiences. They are willing to engage in formal entertainment that most viewers would find objectionable. I like to play.
What was your favorite part of the filmmaking process on this project?
There was a really nice contrast between filming the main movie and the movie they were watching. All my previous films were on 16mm, and with this one we went in two different directions.
Much of the film was shot on 35mm film using a huge Panavision camera. We had all the storyboards written very clearly and were working in the gears of our minds. While not stiff, everything is under control.
For the movies they rent/watch at the movies, we shoot on super-8 and we shoot super loose. We were running around in the woods, repeating shots as we ran, treating all the dialogue as wild lines. Both approaches are interesting in very different ways.
What are you most proud of about this film?
It’s hard not to be proud of the festival, even though it’s lame. We have participated in many major music festivals and won some awards. As far as the visceral elements go, I’m proud to have worked with this actor. All of them are great and I hope they get recognition.
What’s your favorite story or moment from the making of the film that you’d like to share?
The Slow Creep scene is filled with love and loving people, and beautiful moments happen all the time. It’s hard to choose just one. I’m not sure who it was, but someone brought a bead kit – string, colored beads, beads for letters.
Everyone spends their free time making little friendship bracelets for each other. Otter (Nia Garner) wears one in the movie (it says “NO”), but we all wore them on set. Nia made me one that said “Slow Creep” on it and I wore it until it broke a few years later.
What was the most challenging moment or experience you had while making the film?
I’m sure there are greater challenges than this, and I may have erased some from my memory, but one of my disappointments was the slow creep itself. Amanda Haiker, the teenager who played the monster at the time, was an accomplished dancer with a very captivating visual vocabulary.
We invited her because her ideas about movement weirded and fascinated us. Unfortunately, the suit we put her in really restricted her mobility and we weren’t able to fully utilize her skills on set.
If so, how did your film change or differ from the original concept during pre-production, production, and/or post-production? How does this impact the way you approach future projects?
There’s a scene in the script that takes place between the time the main characters rent the movie and when we meet them at their home – one of Ultra’s friends is going to meet them and have an early conflict with the monster (as is tradition in horror movies).
Several people warned me that it would be too much to do on Days of Our Lives, so I ended up not even casting it. After the edit was completed, I regretted not having that scene.
I still love the scene on paper. On subsequent shoots, I made sure to be better prepared to sneak in the shots I wanted, even though we might not have the time.
Who are your collaborators and actors in this film? How did you start working together?
It was important to me that everyone on set was kind, welcoming, and positive, so I picked my team from a group of people I knew I would enjoy being around. Friends, and friends of friends. If you look at the end credits, you’ll see that each name belongs to someone who is dear to my heart.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received as a filmmaker?
For a while, starting with my first (quick, cheap, chaotic) feature, every film I made was more successful than the last. I feel like I’m on a track where beyond “cheap homemade features” will be “funded features”.
I’ve spent the last few years chasing this goal, chasing money, and making nothing. This is hard on the soul. My advice to anyone, unless you have strong connections to the industry or wealth, is to figure out how to develop projects sustainably without spending money.
Find friends who will do it out of love, or because they love you. If you don’t have the money of your own, you need to focus your practice on community rather than capitalism. It’s hard because we (at least in the United States) all live under pretty strict capitalism, and art is forced to live in a market-driven world. But it’s the only way to keep working.
What are your plans for your career? What stories would you like to tell in the future?
Slow Creep did what it could for my career – it produced the biggest festival I’ve ever directed, and it got my name into some people’s heads (at least for a while). What a story! Tuff.
I think horror has slipped into a dangerous direction and the content has “escalated” (ask me personally and I’ll talk about it for an hour). I value powerful movies that work on your ganglia and make you feel something rather than think about it.
I also believe that the more specific a story is, the easier it is to generalize. So I will continue to write in a covert way about some of my own projects that have complex social messages without articulating them overtly.
What’s your next project?
It’s hard to say! I’ve written a few scripts and am working on more. My writing is getting cheaper, but I haven’t yet found the intersection of my desires and my funding (which is just my personal bank account).
Where can we find more of your work? Do you have a website or YouTube/Vimeo channel? Social media handle?
www.jimhickcox.com https://vimeo.com/jimhickcox
Bonus Question #1: What is your favorite movie?
This question is impossible, but the answer I calculated based on people and other factors is Lifeforce (1985).
Bonus Question #2: Which film inspired you the most as a filmmaker and/or influenced your work the most?
I’ll give you four. Zorn’s Lemma by Hollis Frampton Time and Tides by Peter Hutton Scorpio Rising by Kenneth Anger Maya Deren’s Shapeshifting Ritual of Time
