Filmmaker Lance Weiler, co-creator with Stefan Avalos of the award-winning indie chiller THE LAST BROADCAST, gave Fango some details from his new movie HEAD TRAUMA, which he directed from a script he wrote with Brian Majeska. Weiler just launched a website here for the movie, which he describes as “a very ambitious independent feature. There are aerials, underwater sequences, stunts, cable-cam shots through treetops and we even flooded an abandoned house’s basement. We are challenging ourselves every step of the way, and as a result the look and feel of the movie is very dark and atmospheric.”
HEAD TRAUMA stars Vince Mola as George Walker, a drifter who returns to his home town after being away for 20 years, whereupon he finds that the house where he spent his summers is scheduled for demolition. After falling and hitting his head, he begins suffering nightmares in which he witnesses a hooded figure murdering a girl—and soon the visions begin crossing over into reality. “The concept for the movie came out of a life experience,” Weiler reveals. “In 1994, I was in a head-on collision. I spent five days in intensive care and could not remember anything. Slowly, moments from the crash started to turn up in my dreams, but they were fragmented.”
The director relates that he scouted over 60 abandoned houses in order to find one suitable for the movie. “You would not believe what we saw in some of them,” he says. “Rotting food, bloodstained walls, even rooms full of fecal matter. The most haunting aspects of many of the houses were all the items left behind—piles of clothes, shoes, kids’ toys, papers, pills, bizarre photos, drawings, journals, records, bills, needles and bullet casings. In most cases it looked like whoever had lived in the house had left in a hurry, running away from something.”
Weiler is currently preparing to send HEAD TRAUMA out on the festival circuit; in the meantime, check out the site, which includes an interactive comic with some hidden secrets and other features.
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