With a dwindling budget, a dedicated team of volunteers and a slasher film plot influenced by donations, Kevin Preece hopes his directorial debut will expand Ottawa’s filmmaking industry beyond Hallmark Christmas movies. But just getting the film done has been a nail-biter.
Slasher Film follows a group of teenagers forced to clean an abandoned asylum as part of community service. Director and lead script writer Preece says the characters learn they’re in a slasher film halfway through, but they never address the camera or comment on the film.
“You think you know the characters in the first five minutes – virgin girl, slutty girl, smart one – but as the movie progresses, you realize none of these people are who you think they are,” he said. “When one of the artists in my movie auditioned back in 2019, they said ‘This movie is like Halloween (meets) The Breakfast Club.’”
Preece is a longstanding member of the capital’s film industry. He spent over half a decade working on Hallmark productions before becoming an assistant producer on 2020’s Butchers, directed by Ottawa filmmaker Adrian Langley. With Slasher Film, Preece is trying to create local work opportunities and expand on the horror-based art of people like Langley.
“Ottawa’s always given that moniker of ‘The Town That Fun Forgot,’ but you just have to peel back a couple of layers. There’s some amazing festivals here like Digi60, Killer 63, Monster Pool, and they’re all encouraging to filmmakers and crews who want to make stuff here,” he said.
Since 2015, the city has been the location for several successful horror films: The Blackcoat’s Daughter, Awakening the Zodiac, and I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, which was nominated for a Toronto International Film Festival award. Paramount+ is also producing Vicious in Ottawa this year.
Sandrine Pechels de Saint Sardos, film commissioner at the Ottawa Film Office, credits the capital’s various landscapes and the possibility of a looming recession for the growth of the horror genre.
“The alleys that are kind of dark (are) right in downtown so it’s easy to get a film set there, and 20 minutes away you can go to a farm that offers a disturbing background,” she said. “When there’s a recession, there’s always those dark movies and TV series coming back. I think it’s a way of lashing out against all the negatives in our reality.”
The genre’s growth is part of a recent surge in the local film industry. Pechels de Saint Sardos says the live action and animation industries generated a combined $120 million in 2022, more than double the revenue from 2018.
Rico Nicholson, a recent graduate of the Algonquin College Scriptwriting program, says Slasher Film was their first professional experience as a script supervisor. Through this position they learned how to use the digital program ScriptE, something they wish was taught at the college.
Nicholson says they also taught people about their non-binary gender identity on set. When crew members didn’t fully understand what it meant to identify with any pronouns, they were comfortable approaching Nicholson to learn more.
Preece not only made sure his staff respected Nicholson’s identity, but he went above and beyond to switch between pronouns as often as possible, according to the script supervisor.
“I tell people they can have fun with it,” Nicholson said. “Typically people will stick to the easy ones. I understand why – it makes it easier for them – but Kevin likes to be chaotic. I’m very proud of him for that. He was actively trying to use three at the same time to mess with people.”
Nicholson says the positive experience on set showed them pursuing a career in script supervising was possible.
“I’ll be sending out a resume to a bunch of film companies saying I’m an up-and-coming script supervisor. This was a leaping pad for what I want to do with the rest of my life.”
Some of the cast members of Slasher Film say they have had an equally positive experience during production. Anne-Carolyne Binette, the actress who plays Nellie, originally met Preece on the set of Butchers, where his “cheeky” sense of humour and no-pressure attitude helped calm her and the rest of the crew down after intense days of filming.
Preece was more tense during the making of Slasher Film, but Binette says he still made the project fun and collaborative.
For example, to help fund the film, Preece created an Indiegogo campaign during production, and Binette suggested that people who donate should be able to vote on the fate of her character.
“The idea of using the campaign to potentially give my character a different outcome in the movie came from my mom basically begging me to stop dying (in movies),” Binette said. “I brought the idea to Kevin and he was super on board.”
The campaign happened in October 2023 after Preece realized they wouldn’t have enough funds to continue production. When he told this to his team, they wouldn’t let him quit – they wanted to finish the movie as volunteers, he said. Preece decided to give them “royalties in perpetuity” so they would still have an opportunity to profit from the release.
Filming wrapped up at the beginning of March. The fundraiser closed around the same time with just under $7,000 – far from the $30,000 goal. Still, Preece is optimistic post-production will finish in time for a late 2024 release.
“I feel like we’re building a ship together,” he said. “Sure, I’ve got to captain it, get the lumber and the crew, but now that we’re shooting, we’re all on it and making it go forward. That is a … unicorn: rare, magical, and wild.”
