Director Allen Kellogg Talks 7 Nights of Darkness: The Devil’s Toybox
The original 7 Nights of Darkness was one hell of a creepy horror film about a reality TV show set inside a haunted asylum. Director Allen Kellogg returns for the sequel, 7 Nights of Darkness: The Devil’s Toybox, and granted us the following interview.
Dread Central: What exactly is 7 Nights of Darkness: The Devil’s Toybox?
Allen Kellogg: Thanks for this opportunity, David. I am both happy and grateful to be able to contribute to this site. The Devil’s Toy Box is actually a sequel to our first found footage film, 7 Nights of Darkness, in which six reality show contestants attempt to spend 7 nights in a haunted and abandoned asylum. As you can imagine, that doesn’t go very well for them. The Devil’s Toy Box picks up 5 years after the events of the first movie and retains the same found footage style. The sequel follows the lone survivor of the events of the first film as well as the daughter of one of the missing contestants. A documentary crew captures the action as they try to free the lost souls trapped inside.
DC: Did you have a clear idea for the sequel when making the first film, or did it develop later?
AK: My writing partner, Spencer Jay Kim, and I slowly developed the story over a few years. We play with time and dimension quite a bit so writing an outline at times became a tad confusing while having discussions via email. Those emails turned into many lengthy phone calls. Even if it wasn’t a story point that we were going to explain, we wanted to understand the mechanics of how time and space worked within the walls of the asylum so that we could retain consistency. We knew what we wanted it to be; it was just about filling in the gaps but filling those gaps with things that made sense for those characters.
DC: How will this differ from the original whilst retaining the essential elements?
AK: The Devil’s Toy Box will be its own stand-alone movie that doesn’t require the audience to have seen 7 Nights of Darkness. We wanted the audience to be as broad as possible. A few things are at our advantage on The Devil’s Toy Box, the first being a much larger budget. We had about two times the budget of the first film. When you have a larger budget, it gives you so much more time to do things the way they should be done. Our shooting schedule involved 14 days of principal photography. To put that in perspective, the previous project was just 4 days of shooting. That being said, this was still an ultra low-budget production with a very tight window to fit actual production in.
Compared to the previous movie, there is an extreme jump in quality. This entire project was shot on 4k cameras. We utilized multiple different locations, and with the extra time in our schedule, we could spend some more time on developing the characters. We gained a lot of advantages and were able to sprinkle in all the extra things that add depth to found footage horror, while retaining the tension and scares.
DC: I understand that it’s about an asylum?
AK: It mainly takes place inside the Madison Seminary, also known as The Ohio Cottage, yes. The building itself was built during the Civil War and housed families that had been displaced as well as wounded soldiers. There is still a stretcher in the building from this time period.
It was owned by many different institutions throughout its history, but we mainly concentrate on the period in which it was owned by the Ohio Department of Mental Corrections and Hygiene. Currently it is owned by a wonderful family whom I couldn’t be more grateful for. They run their family business out of the first floor and don’t really venture to the upper levels very often. They also provide tours, and many different groups of ghost hunters go there to spend the night and investigate. You can see many of their investigations on YouTube.
As to whether the place is haunted, I couldn’t give you a 100% definitive answer on that, but what I will say is this: There are things that happened in that place while we were in production that I cannot explain. Whether or not those events have a paranormal explanation to them will always be debatable. The building certainly provided intriguing evidence and really works to our advantage because the cast was always on their toes, waiting for something to happen. You can feel the tension before the camera even rolls.
DC: Can you talk about the characters?
AK: Character development was a huge line item for us. In found footage character development is a bit of a challenge. From a technical standpoint it’s hard to get the audience invested in a character if you can’t work in the correct angles that bring the audience to identify with any given character’s situation. It’s hard to identify with people you are seeing from a bunch of wide security camera type angles. We would find ways to cheat close-ups and give things a little bit more of a cinematic look at times.
From an actor’s standpoint, there are so many performances that this cast pulled off with amazing precision. My only hope is that I can do them justice in the editing room.
DC: How did filming go?
AK: It went very well. Of course you always have your hiccups and walls are put in front of you. Some walls are logistical, some creative, but we busted through them one by one. This was a very collaborative process that really involved every crew member and every cast member. It certainly is OUR movie, and I am very proud of that. I had a great right hand in Jessica Fleming as our first AD and co-producer, and I had amazing support from my business partners and friends in David Thomas and Spencer Jay Kim, who both also turn in amazing performances.
DC: How’s post-production coming along?
AK: Going well. We’ve been wrapped now for about three weeks, and I’m getting to the halfway point of the rough cut. Once the rough is complete, we will be refining every detail of it in preparation for screenings, festivals, and ultimately distribution. In the meantime people interested in how it’s all coming along can check out our Facebook page here.
Our executive producer, Adam Roorda, has been putting a lot of time into making that page what it is thus far, along with help from our associate producer, Kylie Edison. Keeping up pages like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram can be time-consuming, and I can’t thank them enough for their efforts.
DC: Is a third film a possibility?
AK: There’s always a possibility, but it’s not something we are actively working on.
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