Last year I was lucky enough to be able to attend the filming of Red Hook, an upcoming horror flick directed by Elizabeth Lucas as one of her first feature films. What’s it about?
Ten years after witnessing her older sister’s brutal murder, Jenny
Traylor leaves her hometown in North Carolina to start her freshman
year at the University of New York City. Still traumatized by her
sister’s death and struggling with crippling agoraphobia, Jenny tries
to cope with the overwhelming city and figure out her new life. When
Jenny’s over-enthusiastic Resident Advisor organizes a Welcome Week
scavenger hunt, Jenny is reluctantly persuaded to join the game. But as
she and her new friends decipher the cryptic clues texted to their cell
phones — clues that lead them through darker and increasingly remote
parts of the city — it becomes terrifyingly clear how high the stakes
have become. Someone is hunting for real.
Co-producer Michael J. Hein (who’s also president of the fantastic NYC Horror Film Festival) had heard about our local bar Hell Gate Social through our movie screenings that we’ve been hosting for the last few summers. The team checked it out for a possible scene in the film and loved the place (as does everyone who steps foot in there). He invited me to attend the filming, but due to a lot of things going on I never managed to get up an article about it.
The shoot was a helluva lot of fun, a lot more professional and slick than the bar owners had anticipated. I was actually cast as a background extra along with a few other bar regulars, and we were given fake drinks to nurse and places to sit. In our scene two of the people on the scavenger hunt open the door and entered the bar, realizing immediately that it wasn’t the friendliest place in the world. But they had scavenging to do! We all stared them down till they nervously took their seats (I had just shaved my head the morning, so it worked out perfectly) and then resumed our fake conversations.
I’m sure it won’t be spoiling anything to let you know that someone gets murdered in the bathroom downstairs, in incredibly bloody fashion. Look for the sink that looks like a trough…
Anyway, I’m sure we’ll have more up on the film soon, and just from the trailer it looks to be a pretty fun slasher flick. Check the official site for more info.