
Greetings, all. Ambush Bug here with another AICN HORROR: ZOMBIES & SHARKS column. I found the new conspiracy theory/horror film called BANSHEE CHAPTER to be a refreshingly chilling film and one more people should check out. The film opens in limited release this Friday and is available on digital download and Video On Demand now. I had a chance to catch up with the director Blair Erickson about the film, working with Ted Levine, and his thoughts on this terrifying real life horror.

BLAIR ERICKSON (BE): BANSHEE CHAPTER is a surreal Lovecraftian horror story about an online news journalist named Anne Roland trying to uncover the terrible truth about a CIA government research gone horribly awry. It explores frightening concepts around the real-life MK-ULTRA program that our intelligence agencies and the Chemical Corp of Army Engineers engaged in in the late 20th century. It's a metaphorical haunted house of America's own horrific crimes coming back to haunt us.
BUG: This story is rooted in fact. How much of it is true and how much were you able to take liberties with?
BR: Though the story does not proclaim to be "based on a true story" like a lot of horror films, much of the material in the film is based on and inspired by real events and real research. There really was (and some say still is) a program in which the U.S. government worked to develop powerful chemical agents and tested them on unsuspecting American citizens. Much of that research was focused on finding a way to create "puppet people" or basically kill the conscious life inside the human and create a kind of hollow man who would do the bidding of the controller. We mixed that in with some fascinating government research that's been done with dimethyltryptamine seeming to contact alternate dimensions and creating strange pathways through time and space.

BUG: Who did you go to in order to talk about this phenomenon in terms of research?
BR: For most of this I talked to a lot of experts in CIA history as well as people who had done their own experimentation with chemicals like DMT and such. But for the most part I didn't want to engage too much with the real life people involved with MKULTRA as the story is fiction and I didn't want victims (or perpetrators) thinking that something in the film was directly based on them.

BR: I wanted that kind of "cinema verite" feel to the story because I felt that would help make this kind of disturbing matieral feel more immediate and direct. You want the visceral impact of found footage but without the narrative restrictions. If the shots had been perfectly staged and artfully lit, the story would lose a lot of the creepy immersive punch of feeling like you're trapped in the experiment with the main characters. The style also helped us blend in real archival footage and mix recreations of real events in.
BUG: Ted Levine plays somewhat of a madman in this film. How did he come on board and what was he like on the set?

BUG: TRUE BLOOD's Mike McMillian's character is sort of the focal point in this film. He's a part of Before the Door Pictures and has a fantastically scary scene at the beginning of the film where he takes a dose of this experimental drug. What's Michael like to work with and what input did McMillian and Zachary Quinto offer to the film?
BR: Michael McMillian is first an awesome actor and secondly an incredibly well-versed writer. We used to make student films together back at Carnegie Mellon University when we were young.

Zach Quinto and the rest of the team at Before the Door really have perfected the art of creating an elevated cinematic experience for the indie world. They know the genre world well and I think love being able to bring something weird and new to the conversation. I think because we all went to college together so we have a kind of working geek language that you don't get from most of the Hollywood world. And Corey Moosa, our brilliant producer from Before the Door basically has the largest working memory of horror movies and books I've ever seen so he was the perfect person to guide this production.

BR: The film is actually full of strange and weird secrets to catch and if I started giving them away it might set a terrible precedent...
BUG: If you had a chance to take the blue drug and experience what the characters in BANSHEE CHAPTER experience, would you?
BR: Not a chance. Since I first started researching the story and poking around the world of chemical research and alchemists I've been offered a whole bunch of mysterious compounds to ingest. I've avoided them because I think at this point I know a bit too much about what to expect to jump off that metaphysical cliff.
BUG: The unique messages that play along with the ice cream truck sound is really eerie. Were these accurate or did you come up with those noises yourself? Because they they are creeeeeeepy...
BR: Want to know what's really creepy? We didn't create that noise. That's a real recording of a number station.

BR: There's a terrific bunch of books and documentaries about chemicals like DMT that seem to connect the human mind to alternate dimensions, both beautiful and terrifying. And the phenomenon of patients experiencing the malevolent entity is well documented. I think the real question is whether the phenomenon is simply a drug hallucination or something more tangible and unexplained. Personally, I can't say I know either way. I'll say that there's almost certainly forces at work in this universe and perhaps other universes than we can ever truly "know" right now with our limited human senses.
BUG: Are you afraid "They" will come after you for trying to uncover these secrets?
BR: I'm more worried nobody is paying attention to these kind of terrible secrets at all! Since making this I've had several interviewers ask whether the MKLUTRA program was real (obviously two seconds on Google can confirm that) and why I didn't just make a documentary. The sad punchline is that there were already documentaries on this topic readily available to view, but nobody cared.

BUG: What other projects do you have coming up and in the works?
BR: There actually is a new film I'm working on. Normally, I pretty much dodge this question but I finished the script with my co-writer Shawn Depasquale and development has begun moving forward, here's the premise:
IN MEMORY is the story of Jessica King, a brilliant young creative student and the complicated relationship she has with her introspective lifelong friend, Daniel at the end of the summer of '96. Just as their close bond begins blossoming into something more, Jess is brutally murdered and Daniel's life is shattered. Decades later, one snowbound winter night, when he's in his late thirties... Jess shows up at his house, looking exactly the same as she did the night she died. Together they're forced to confront the truth about her death and whether their journey together ends as a love story or a tragic horror story.

BUG: Last chance, why should the readers of AICN HORROR check out THE BANSHEE CHAPTER and where can they find it?
BR: Ambush Bug at AICN said the film is "utterly terrifying" and nobody should disagree with something on AICN! Also, we have won several "scariest film" awards at horror film fests and hardened film critics have said the movie will either give you a heart attack or make you shit your pants. If you've seen a lot of horror films and want to try something crazy, frightening, and unique I think this film delivers on all three.
Right now, iTunes, Amazon, OnDemand, pretty much anywhere digital films are rented. There's also a theatrical run coming to select cities on Jan. 10th so if you want to see this gonzo horror tale, it's pretty easy to find.
BUG: Thanks so much for answering these questions.
BR: Anytime, I love you guys! AICN has been my go to movie geek site since I was a teenager.
BUG: BANSHEE CHAPTER is available on digital download and in select theaters January 10, 2014. Below is my review of the film!

BANSHEE CHAPTER (2013)
Directed by Blair EricksonWritten by Blair Erickson, Daniel J. Healy (story)
Starring Ted Levine, Katia Winter, Michael McMillian, Monique Candelaria
Find out more about this film here and on Facebook here
Reviewed by Ambush Bug
Supposedly based on real government tests that occurred in the late sixties involving mind altering drugs that were meant to be developed into all kinds of psychic weaponry, BANSHEE CHAPTER starts with what looks like authentic footage of scientist types being interviewed about the secret programs. While I’m not sure of the validity of all of the claims this film seems to be based upon, it does make for a compelling backdrop to cast a horror film.



Though there is an over-reliance on the cumbersome jump scare paired with a music blast in BANSHEE CHAPTER, I have to give the film props for coming up with a truly original premise and following through with an execution that is sure to cause multiple leaps from your seat. I jumped from my own chair numerous times in the film and was overcome by a sense of unease by the use of unnatural sights and sounds Erickson filled this film with. BANSHEE CHAPTER uses tried and true methods to scare, but also comes up with some new ways to terrorize the eyes and ears and take you on trips few films are creative enough to go.




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