Cryptid horror movies are a favorite of mine because I adore cryptids. From Bigfoot and Mothman to the Loveland Frogman, these legends are perfect vessels for creature features. Director Jon Garcia tapped into that with his new Bigfoot horror film Summoning The Spirit, a new take on Sasquatch himself.
In honor of the film’s release, Garcia sat down with producer Gregg Hale, who also famously produced The Blair Witch Project, about how they got into filmmaking, creating their own legendary monsters, and what it means to be an indie horror filmmaker.
Gregg Hale: Well, I guess it depends on what you consider production. I mean, we developed the idea for probably over a year, pursuing it as a more traditionally made movie. We gave the actors cameras, and we basically ran them through a giant obstacle course, and they filmed themselves. That’s ultimately how we captured the footage of The Blair Witch Project and then started shooting the framing stuff and then realized that the framing stuff didn’t work. So we completely pivoted and made the film just the footage that the actors had shot in the woods, just their story.
There was a long development process of trying to raise money for it, traditionally changing that, coming up with $22,000 to shoot the stuff in the woods, then getting more money to shoot the other stuff, and then realizing the editing took forever because it was 22 hours of unique footage, not 22 hours of takes, but 22 hours of unique footage. So all told, by the time we submitted to Sundance in ’98, you know, close to two years total of developing the idea and all the different iterations that I just mentioned. So, yeah a two-year process that got us to the film that we sold at Sundance.
You know esthetically, the biggest influence on The Blair Witch Project—and I’ve said this many, many times—was probably Cops. So we would have to check what year Cops came out, but when we started sort of developing Blair in like ‘96, Cops was relatively new and you’d never seen anything like that when it came out.
GH: We shot on Hi8 and then 60mm black and white. But we bought two Hi8 cameras from Best Buy. We used both of them in the shoot, but primarily just one. The production designer, Ben Rock, bought one that had been used the most. The other one we literally put back in the box and returned it to Best Buy and got our money back, because we needed that 500 bucks to finish the movie.
GH: I think there are lots of other ones too, but yeah, those are found footage houses. The barrier to entry of making a film now is so much lower even than it was in 1997 when we made The Blair Witch Project. In 1997, you still had to ultimately transfer your movie to film to be in festivals. And ending up with a finished product was just a more involved and more expensive technological process. Now the technological bar and the cost bar to some degree of making a film is so much lower that I think in some ways you’re going to have a glut of material out there.
Distributors especially, you know, streamers or video on demand or whatever, they know how much material is out there and they know how desperate people are to sell things. So I think just the market where you can actually make a movie and make some money has been diminished. So in some ways, I think it’s easier to actually make the movie, but it’s probably harder to take that movie and have it translate into something that feels successful or feels financially viable if you’re looking at it as a job or as a career.
I think it comes down to the movie being good and innovative, although, that’s not always enough, right? Some of it’s right place, right time. I mean, I think The Blair Witch Project is a good movie, but it’s a lot of right place, right time, too. I still think that’s true.
GH: Ed and I were both freaked out by Legend of Boggy Creek when we were kids. And one of the reasons that Legend of Boggy Creek worked so well is that it’s framed like a faux documentary. And that just fucking freaked me out when I was a kid. So the thought of a story being framed as a documentary was something that had been in both me and Ed’s heads since we were little. In fourth or fifth grade, I did a fake show-and-tell where I pretended like I had seen Bigfoot. I basically did a mockumentary show-and-tell, and I made a poster and I did a fake Bigfoot print and photographed it and brought it in and showed everybody and pretended like I had really seen Bigfoot. Then I just did it, you know, 40 years later.
GH: I think a creature ultimately is not only just a character, they’re usually your main antagonist. I think an antagonist without their own internal story and their own internal motivations, is really boring. It’s not going to make sense and you’re not in for a very good movie. I think a creature that has its own story and its own motivations is going to make more sense and be more compelling. It also just helps you make your movie right because you’ve got an antagonist that has a point of view that helps guide the propulsion of the story from the beginning. They have an inciting incident.
The Sasquatch in Exists has a little bit of a three-act structure that the kids are just cutting in and out of. She has her own motivation, her own story. If you consider Altered a creature film, which I guess it probably is, you know, the alien, she had her motivation of what she was trying to do as well and I think that just makes for a better movie. That’s well done in Summoning the Spirit. There’s a story behind the Sasquatch. The creature wants something and is not just there to wreak havoc. It’s got a goal.
GH: Well, I think that creatures or monsters kind of do two things simultaneously. They project your fears and your hatred onto this thing outside of you that you must resist or you must destroy. So it can be one or the other and they can serve that function. And then at the same time, it can be a mirror of darker human instincts that you may have yourself.
You can see yourself in the creature sometimes. A creature can be kind of this interesting thing that’s a little bit of a shorthand for that kind of duality that’s harder to pull off with a fully human character. A creature kind of gives you more flexibility in how you depict them. And it also gives the audience more flexibility in how they perceive them. It feels like more of a myth that you’re able to get into and believe and get into the psychology of it without humanity getting in the way. I don’t know if that makes any sense.
I think Summoning the Spirit has that. Has that a little bit like retroactively when you realize why the Sasquatch has been doing what she’s been doing, in retrospect, you’re like, Oh, that sucks for her. You know, King Kong definitely kind of front-loads that where you’re kind of on King Kong’s side earlier in Summoning the Spirit. I think you do get a sense that something is going on with the creature that makes it kind of clear that the creature is not completely bad.
GH: I’ve always heard the most fut sets are horror movies and dramas where you need that levity. And some of the hardest sets are comedies. I don’t know if that’s true. I think it’s kind of hard to tell just being on set if it’s working or not. You can look at something on the monitor. I think you can get an idea and obviously, [The Blair Witch Project] director, Ed, is great at this. You know, you have an idea of how everything is going to come together and work. But so much of horror is getting the audience into the moment and then the pacing leading up to the scare and then the music and the sound, you know, there’s so much that goes into it.
I think you go into it with an idea of the elements that you think are going to make for a frightening scene or a creepy scene or an effective jump scare then you try to execute it. But I don’t know. I think a lot of times you don’t know fully now until you’re in the edit room. I mean all films are definitely made in the edit, but I think horror films in particular are a little dependent on the edit and the post to really bring everything together.
GH: Yeah. And you can. I mean, obviously. In The Blair Witch Project, you don’t see shit, right? That’s kind of the amazing thing about horror. The most effective stuff is what’s not on screen. I mean, that’s really the only genre that I can think of where not seeing something is more effective than seeing something, you know?
GH: Yeah, we did the same thing. I mean, Blair Witch was literally one thing we shot that we thought you’d be able to see and you couldn’t. And then at the end, we had all these ideas for you to see the Witch but then the co-director just couldn’t come up with anything that we could pull off. So I just kept telling them as we were shooting, that we still don’t know how it was going to end until I was like, you got ten days and we could do something like this. Now you got a week and you can do less. And then three days out, I’m like, that’s it, dude, you’re not going to see anything. And that ended up being the best decision we ever made.
So in The Blair Witch Project, it worked one way, but there was that debate. We tested Lovely Molly, which I fucking hate test screenings, but we did one and we got some feedback from the audience and we added something at the end based on a test screening. And in retrospect, we should not have, in my opinion. When you watch the film, I think you’re going to know exactly what we added that we shouldn’t have.
GH: Yeah, it kind of starts with an instinct, right? It’s got to start with the feeling that this is something that I want to do, something I want to try to create. Because if you don’t have that motivation, I think it’s going to be hard to see it through properly. Then you put a lot of stuff out there and you see what sticks. At some point with making movies especially, it comes down to where can I get money. And that ends up being where the rubber hits the road most of the time. It’s mostly do I have the funds/resources to make this right? At some point, it becomes just practical, but I think it always starts with a gut instinct of some sort and then just persistence and spinning plates until something takes.
GH: I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. I think if you were only out there trying to make stuff for the market and what’s going to sell, more than likely you’re going to end up making shit. But I think if you’re starting from a place of “I want to tell the story” or “I want to make a movie creatively, artistically,” then your heart’s in the right place. And then applying some sort of parameters to it of, “Well, how can I make this make money?” Or “How can I change this so that it’s more marketable?”
So me and Ed [Sanchez], we both come from the school of filmmakers who, like, that’s all we’ve ever wanted to do. We kind of structured our lives around trying to be filmmakers. But you came to filmmaking later in life. So just curious, how did that work for you as a person in your thirties deciding you wanted to be a filmmaker?
GH: What year was that?
GH: Your degree was more like Film theory, film studies, yeah? So really, as a filmmaker, you’re just completely self-taught.
GH: You’ve made a lot of relationship-oriented dramas or comedies, and a few of them have been queer. How did you go from being in that kind of genre, so to speak, as a filmmaker to doing horror? And how does it feel different to you as a filmmaker to make a horror film versus a relationship drama?
GH: Some of the early malaise films were magicians and a lot of it was filmed as if it was a magic trick. And I think horror is a little bit like that, right? You’re not really pulling somebody’s eyeball out, you know? Bigfoot’s not really there. You’re not really ripping somebody’s arm off. So you get that kind of play-acting. Little kid energy, right? That’s the appeal of making something fun that really shouldn’t be fun. Doing it can be a fun experience when it’s not a nightmare, right? When it’s not falling apart and driving you crazy.
GH: Oh, of course. Yeah.
GH: Yeah. Horror has a big advantage because there’s a genre or a sub-genre or whatever you want to call it. There’s always a dedicated audience in a way that no other genre has. Not even close. So young filmmakers and beginning filmmakers and a lot of famous filmmakers get their start in schlock because there’s always an audience for that.
GH: Do you think you’re going to make another horror film? Are you motivated to make another horror film?
GH: Do you know what it’s going to be or can you talk about it?
GH: Fun.
Summoning The Spirit is available now on Tubi.