ROX-TV lands an exclusive interview with Michael Laicini and David Amito, the creators of the deadliest movie ever made “Antrum”.
Welcome back to the ROX-TV website. We have a very special treat for the readers tonight. We landed an exclusive interview with the creators of the viral sensation “Antrum: The deadliest movie ever made”. That’s right ladies and gentlemen, Michael Laicini and David Amito have stopped by ROX-TV to speak about their amazing horror film. We are honored to have them with us tonight and get their perspectives on the most interesting and inventive movie to come down the line in a very long time. So without further to do, lets jump in and get moving…
I’ve read that you were working on other projects when you started to develop Antrum. Can you talk about those initial meetings when you started to discuss things that “scared you”? And how they made there way into the movie?
Mike & David: It feels like we’re always cooking up something new, it’s a little hard to keep track of how many stories we’ve been developing over the years. Around the time we made Antrum though, we were working on a few ideas, including a haunted house movie (that we’re still developing) as well as “Mr. Tom” a feature film about a faceless man / exorcist who has the ability to take demons out of people and into himself. “Mr. Tom” is based on a web series we made. Then David surprised me with the Antrum script… which really excited us both. It felt like a throwback to the kinds of dare / sleepover horror movies we grew up with like Faces of Death, Cannibal Holocaust & Blair Witch, and we both felt like it had been a long time since someone attempted a horror movie stunt like that.
What really drew me to the script David wrote was that he didn’t do the expected thing with the feature portion of Antrum. The obvious thing was to make it a nonsensical barrage of horror imagery… or a ridiculous over the top gore fest… instead he made it a beautiful parable about letting your superstitions and beliefs get away from you. On top of that, the meta-doc portions also play into the themes of the parable too – discussing the power of belief, asking you point blank if you believe Antrum is cursed?
There was also a movie that you viewed in film school, “Dining Room or There is Nothing” that you cited as an additional source of inspiration. What can you tell me about that and how it helped you with the Antrum Project?
I came across that short and it really knocked my socks off. It’s incredible. It’s a minute long but everything about it is off-putting, skin crawling. I showed it to David and we both really got a kick out of it, and this short sort of inspired a very loose conversation: wouldn’t it be cool if you could create a feature length movie that was able to sustain the same level of uncomfortable / unnatural tension that this short had. Something that felt ‘cursed’ like that short did. Something that felt like it sort of stained you after it was finished. I think that the imprint this short left on us definitely found its way into the DNA of what eventually became Antrum.
“The Lesser Key Solomon” sounds like a real interesting piece of work. Can you discuss how it played a role in the making of Antrum? Perhaps your first contact with the writing as well?
The Lesser Key of Solomon is a 17th century grimoire, written anonymously from materials that apparently date a few hundred years older and claim to be based on original writings by King Solomon. It contains several books that describe the 72 demons in hell and specific invocations to invoke them, each with their own domain of specialty. They are represented by various seals or sigils which are used in their invocation. We claim to have invoked the demon of Astaroth for Antrum… if you believe in that sort of thing.
I understand that the one-month long shoot was done with minimal staffing and a small budget. What were some of the challenges that you were forced to overcome during shooting?
Basically behind the camera at all times on Antrum there were 3 crew members. David, Michael, and our very talented D.O.P Maks. We didn’t even have a dedicated sound person… whomever had a free hand on any given shot would be responsible for holding the boom, or monitoring the recording levels. At one point, in a close up of Nicole (who played Oralee) we even needed 8 year old Rowan (who played Nathan) to hold the mic for us! We had to be extremely industrious and outside-the-box thinkers to pull off Antrum. As another example, when we realized that renting a vintage 1970’s station wagon for a shot in our movie was going to cost upwards of $1200 a day from a legitimate period Hollywood rental shop, which we couldn’t afford, we took to the classifieds instead, found someone selling a 1970’s station wagon and offered the seller a couple hundred dollars to take their car for a day. There are some sources on the internet that claim we had a production budget of $60,000 or more, that’s not true. We had a lot less than that to work with during production. $19,000 shooting budget with a $15,000 post budget.
In another scenario, for the scene when we shot the slo-mo sequence of Maxine biting Nathan in the park, the plan was to just sneak our cast and crew (and a dog handler) into a public park one by one and shoot the sequence somewhere at the far end. We gave everyone money for the admission into the park and snuck all of stuff in, one person at a time. We were all basically in the park and set up to start filming when David texted me “START FILMING NOW!” because he was busted on his way in and security was interrogating him! David played really dumb with security, asking all sort of newbie questions about permits, in effect he was delaying park security from tracking us all down -while the rest of us did everything we could to shoot the sequence before we were all kicked out. David held off security for about two hours and we shot the entire sequence worried that any second we were going to be kicked out of the park. Somehow, we got the whole sequence! The cast, Nicole Tompkins and Rowan Smyth, and their families, were so incredible and supportive the entire production. They could see we were doing everything we could to make Antrum possible, and believed in its potential, so, in so many ways we all participated in the unending creativity that was required to hack our way through production and finish the film.
What can you tell the readers at ROX-TV about the hundred-acre private forest? It sounds intriguing. How did that opportunity come about?
This was one of our luckiest breaks. We drove to Ojai California one afternoon, to meet a man who owned a vintage 70’s truck that we wanted to negotiate renting for some shots in our movie. When we got to this man’s property… we were taken aback. You know the junkyard Nathan and Oralee discover halfway through Antrum? That literally was this man’s backyard! We couldn’t believe the size of this junkyard, on top of that, everything he had laying around was from the period we were setting Antrum in. We negotiated a truck rental from him, and then we flat out asked him – would you be willing to let us film some sequences of our movie here too? And he flipped about the idea and let us. He couldn’t have been more excited about having his backyard featured in a horror movie.
Then we jokingly asked him – “any chance you know someone with 100 acres of forest?” and he said “as a matter of fact I do…” within 10 minutes he gave us the cell phone number of a man he knew who lived and was building a home on a massive plot of land nearby. One thing led to the next, within a few days we were able to meet that man in person, he gave us a tour of his property and it had so much character, it was exactly the kind of forest we hoped to feature in Antrum -a storybook like forest with massive old winding oak trees, a huge pond, access to a mountaintop… it literally had everything. The man who owned the land was really rich and generous, and when it came time for us to negotiate a price for the rental of his property, he recognized that we didn’t have much to offer him and he did us the biggest favor: he said he’d let us access his property for free. We had a lot of incredible luck during the making of Antrum, that’s not to say it was easy, but we were very fortunate in many ways. We often joked about Antrum having “divine influence” but we weren’t really sure from what side we were getting it from…
I only learned about the movie in reverse. When you were getting ready to release the film, did you try to conceal the fact that it was a concept movie? Or did you just put it out as is and see how people would take it?
It was important for us to conceal the truth about Antrum as long as we possibly could. Because we wanted a new generation to experience Antrum like we had experienced The Blair Witch Project: with the seed of doubt that it might be real. Of course, we knew we were never going to be able to pull off the same level of deceit that The Blair Witch did -times are different. But we still believed that people would be willing to play along and have that same kind of scary fun with Antrum. In a way it’s also a little nostalgic for older horror fans to have horror experiences like this. (because people have been doing stunt horror movies since The William Castle days) But to us Antrum felt like an evolution of the typical “stunt horror” movie – we consider it the first post-modern “horror stunt” movie because we knew people wouldn’t buy it hook line and sinker.
So we built that entire conversation into the fabric of the movie. The doc portions of Antrum very directly address the “power of belief” and the influence that power has on the viewers of Antrum. Also the feature portion of Antrum is thematically driven by an exploration of the ways our beliefs can get the best of us. Oralee for example, creates a lie and convinces her brother that lie is real, and by the end of the movie gets so caught up in it that she isn’t sure what’s real or fake anymore either… and some of our views had a similar experience with Antrum overall. We received a lot of scary messages from people who thought they might actually be cursed.
A lot of people got what we were trying to do with Antrum. Either they saw the meta stuff, or other horror fans just had a lot of fun with the throwback fun we had with the stunty nature of the film’s marketing. We went viral on TikTok shortly after release and it was a real pleasure watching “The Antrum Challenge” take hold. Not everybody enjoyed what we were doing though. When we premiered Antrum at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in 2019, we decided that we were going to handle the Q&A by pretending Antrum is a real movie and that we were just the producers of the documentary portions of the film only. About two questions into the Q&A an infuriated audience member yelled: “WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO STOP BULLSHITTING YOUR AUDIENCE!” … he really didn’t get it. We knew we were doing something right if the film is creating such a reaction… And funnily enough led another horror programmer to seek us out and ultimately program it as well. Its the magic and power of the horror community. If there is a film some people HATE there will be a community of people that will LOVE it.
The movie eventually became a number one trending movie on Amazon and I understand that it has just been released in Japan. The film has been featured at several film festivals, was released as a special feature on VHS (I love that) and was picked up Uncork’d Entertainment. Can you talk about how Antrum has changed your lives? And what you’re doing now?
Antrum went viral on TikTok. #Antrum #Antrumchallenge now has over 60 million hits. Because of TikTok we flew to the top of Itunes and Amazon. It’s incredible to see the reach Antrum has had with an audience. We started getting all sorts of messages from fans, some who understood the fun of it all, others who took it 100% seriously and were worried we had actually cursed them… which was difficult to manage. Because of Antrum’s popularity, we were able to get a manager, and we’ve had some doors opened up to us in the industry. We’ve had the opportunity to make pitches for new films to various producers who are all interested in seeing what we’re capable of doing next. We’ve got multiple scripts in development now that we’re hopeful we’ll be able to make. Hopefully once the pandemic passes, we can get back to making movies happen again.
All a person has to do is go on YouTube to see the millions of people that have taken an interest in the film. What is it like to make something that touches millions of people, whatever their motivations? It must be surreal.
It’s amazing. We started making Antrum in 2014 and it wasn’t done until 2019. It was a long process filled with plenty of extended gaps where we weren’t sure if anybody was ever going to get this movie, or if a distributor would ever take a chance on it… so we’re really grateful to see Antrum have a viral effect on people. When we first sat down with the script to Antrum, as horror fans, we both thought to ourselves that if someone else made this movie we’d be crazy for it! So we knew we had to see it through. The fact that others, like you, have gone crazy for it, is a full-circle effect for us that’s really gratifying.
Any plans or new projects you’d like to tease out to the readers of the ROX-TV website? What does the rest of 2021 and beyond look like for you?
We’re working on our most ambitious project to date that will take our fondness for meta-realties to a whole other dimension… that’s all we can say right now!
(Author’s note: I asked Michael and David why they think the movie has resonated with so many people. The creators of “Antrum” told me that they would like to hear my own thoughts on the question and I’m honored to do so. Here it goes…)
As a fan of horror movies from all decades, I believe that anytime a movie can make the viewer feel “included” in the process somehow, that it’s going to be a hit with fans. By and large, most horror and scary movies are simply put out for the viewing pleasure of the audience. You find a movie, hit play, and watch it. That is all well and good, but every now and again, a movie comes along that swallows the viewer up and brings them into the fold.
In my lifetime, there have been very few movies to actually include the audience on a level to where they are involved somehow with the film. It’s not just a click and stare type of thing, these special movies like Antrum, somehow give a whole new outlook and meaning to the screening of a film. The possibility of real consequences for watching a film is a class unto itself and I think that special connection drives fans and followers to a new level of appreciation, that most motion pictures can not attain.
The very notion that a film could “do something to you” if you watched it certainly ups the stakes in entertainment. The really interesting thing about “Antrum” is that it seems to come very close to that idea, so much so, that believing in the power of the film is rather easy. Fans with a functioning imagination, who know better but want to believe that there is something to it, merely have to squint their eyes a bit, to get that excited feeling of terror.
And isn’t that what it’s all about? Getting a good scare, challenging the status quo, and giving the audience something to really think about? I say yes and that is the genius of this film. Anytime you can get a reaction and make people feel something, than the creators have done their job. This is not an easy thing to do in our world of instant gratification and consumption, so my hat is off to David and Michael for their stunning movie.
If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I suggest that you check it out today. Besides it’s just a movie right? There’s no way that it could actually “do something” to you….right? I guess there is only one way to find out, but be warned my friends. Proceed at your own risk!
I would like to thank Michael and David for speaking with the ROX-TV website tonight and congratulate them on a job well done. I look forward to their next project and can’t wait to see what they have in store for us. Until next time…
Signing Off,
Mike Shepard
ROX-TV Head Writer
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