“Why can’t Fessenden be in every movie? He’s channeling his best Nicholson here, complete with crazy eyes and electrified hair. Add the barren winter landscape to the mix and you’ve got a definite Shining vibe.”
— J.R. Kinnard, Sound on Sight

OPENS TODAY in SELECT THEATERS and on VOD

From the NEW YORK TIMES:

“The Sacchettis’ friend May (Lisa Marie, of “Ed Wood” and “Mars Attacks”), who dabbles in the paranormal, comes to investigate Anne’s hopeful sense that Bobby’s spirit is in the house.

Some of the scariest and funniest bits come from May’s husband, Jacob, the veteran horror actor Larry Fessenden (director of “Wendigo”), who reaches back to “The Shining” and Jack Nicholson’s crazy eyes, and draws on the archetypal genre battle for a human soul, “The Exorcist,” as he wrestles with a demon. (He loses and has to swallow a nasty-looking gym sock.)”

Read Full review in the New York Times

Twitch sat down with WE ARE STILL HERE cast members Barbara Crampton, Fessenden, Lisa Marie, and Andrew Sensenig, and they talked about everything from the gore in the movie to the possibility of sequels!

Read on for all the gory details from Twitch!

[Photo above, L-R: Andrew Sensenig, Ted Geoghegan, Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Travis Stevens, Lisa Marie, Karim Hussain. Set photos by Stacy Buchanan / Wicked Bird Media.]

We Are Still Here has been garnering enthusiastic reviews from its premiere at SXSW and subsequent screenings at Boston Underground Film Festival and the Stanley Film Festival, with other festival screenings to come. The film is currently playing a limited theatre run, and will be available on VOD on June 5th. You can read Peter Martin’s original SXSW review here. If you’ve missed the trailer, you can watch it below.

I was able to visit the set in freezing upstate New York in February 2014 and speak to cast members Barbara Crampton, Larry Fessenden, Lisa Marie, and Andrew Sensenig.

TwitchFilm: Larry, how did you get involved with We Are Still Here?

Larry Fessenden: Ted (Geoghegan, director/writer) just asked me very casually at the bar if I would do it. Of course, I knew the executive producer, Greg Newman. I was excited tha Ted had gotten the green light, because I’ve known him for some time, and I said sure. Scheduling was a little more dicey, so I came in late to the shoot, but as a result, it was fun to see everyone already comfortable with each other and walk onto set get right into mayhem. We shot out of order, so the first stuff we did was the absolute craziest because we shot out of the house.

There’s lots of gore in the story.

READ ON…

As of this writing, WE ARE STILL HERE, featuring Fessenden, Barbara Crampton, and Andrew Sensenig, and directed by GEP-pal Ted Geoghegan, is getting tons of critical love! With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 93% fresh, it’s clear that WE ARE STILL HERE ain’t your average spook-show.

Bloody-Disgusting has a brand new, totally freaky clip from WE ARE STILL HERE. Watch as Fessenden “says some truly creepy shit.”

From Bloody-Disgusting:

In the cold, wintery fields of New England, a lonely old house wakes up every thirty years – and demands a sacrifice.

After debuting at the SXSW Midnighters, Dark Sky is set to release Ted Geoghegan’s debut feature,We Are Still Here, which stars everyone’s favorite Barbara Crampton Re-Animator, You’re Next), as well as Andrew Sensenig (Upstream Color), Lisa Marie (Ed Wood), and Larry Fessenden (I Sell the Dead). It will open in limited theaters and VOD on June 5, 2015.

Bloody Disgusting is having a seance with this exclusive clip where Larry Fessenden says some truly creepy shit. Follow the link below!

We’re finally getting a look at some awesome box covers for the Fessenden/Graham Reznick scripted PS4 Game, UNTIL DAWN, set to release August 25th. 

As reported by WCCF Tech:

Sony has revealed the European box art for the standard edition, the Extended Edition and the Steelbook Edition, and the North American box art for PS4 exclusive Until Dawn.

The Steelbook Edition and the Extended Edition have been announced only for Europe so far.

Being one of the few exclusives that we know of, to be releasing for the PS4 this year, Until Dawn shouldn’t be missed by fans of the horror genre.

Until Dawn will be launching on August 25 exclusively for the PlayStation 4. With the recent delays of Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End and Ratchet & Clank to 2016, PS4 owners don’t have much else in exclusive titles, so Until Dawn could prove to be the game to fill the need for a unique experience.

Until Dawn features performances from a Hollywood cast including Hayden Panettiere and Peter Stormare. Players’ actions alone decide the outcome of who survives Until Dawn. With an unpredictable and dynamically adaptive story, crafted in consultation with Until Dawn scriptwriters and indie horror authors Larry Fessenden and Graham Reznick, eight friends come together at a remote mountain getaway and embark upon a night of unexpected terror.

Featuring innovative choice mechanics and the Butterfly-Effect Interface, gives players the chance to see the path of their story amid the thousands that are possible. Seemingly insignificant choices as well as huge moral dilemmas that will question your sense of fairness, good and evil, can have major unforeseen consequences.

Using the power of the superior rendering capability of the Killzone Shadowfall Engine, and the power of the PlayStation 4 together with proprietary major enhancements in lighting, camera, and animation systems, Until Dawn brings emotional and credible performances of a talented Hollywood cast to life in its realistically terrifying environments.

E3 2015 is just around the corner though and Sony is said to have a killer line-up of game announcements and reveals, some of which are likely to release within the year.

We will bring you any new information on Until Dawn, E3 2015 and Sony as soon as it becomes available.

source

Fangoria just posted an awesome interview with Fessenden about Ted Geoghegan’s “neo-fulci fright flick” WE ARE STILL HERE.

From Fangoria:

For fans of independent horror, the name “Larry Fessenden” should be very familiar. The creator of the NY-based production house Glass Eye Pix, which turns 30 later this year, Fessenden has proven himself as performer, producer and director in the independent horror world, shepherding talents like Ti West, Jim Mickle and Glenn McQuaid while helming fright fare such as WENDIGO, THE LAST WINTER and 2013’s killer fish movie BENEATH. However, Fessenden has been just as busy on-camera as he has been off, appearing in recent projects such as YOU’RE NEXT, HELLBENDERS, LATE PHASES, JUG FACE, I SELL THE DEAD, THE STRAIN and, most recently, Ted Geoghegan’s WE ARE STILL HERE.

Recently, the neo-Fulci chiller played at the incredible Stanley Film Festival, where Fessenden also represented his own TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE LIVE as well as his appearance in Dan Berk and Robert Olsen’s BODY. FANGORIA caught up with Fessenden shortly after the Festival to talk about his multi-faceted macabre role in Geoghegan’s demonic directorial debut…

FANGORIA: Director Ted Geoghegan has been working in various capacities in the NY film world for a while now. How did Ted first approach you for WE ARE STILL HERE?

LARRY FESSENDEN: Well, I’ve known Ted on-and-off for almost ten years; he’s worked with my friend, Glenn McQuaid, and WE ARE STILL HERE was funded by MPI, whom I’ve worked with long enough to know that it was a real deal. That’s the thing I love about MPI: when they say they’re going to make a movie, they do. So I thought it was cool, and Ted asked me if I wanted the role and I said, “Absolutely, whatever it is. It’s so sweet of you to think of me.”

As it turns out, WE ARE STILL HERE was a period piece that took place in the ‘70s; I think ‘79 was what was decided. I really enjoyed the script and loved the character, and I liked that Ted would trust me to have a slightly more substantial role. Normally, I come on to get killed in a film; in WE ARE STILL HERE, I come on, hang out for a while and then get killed in the film. [laughs]

Read on…

UNTIL DAWN, the PS4 horror/thriller written in collaboration with Fessenden and Graham Reznick, hits shelves on August 25th!

As Polygon Reports:

Until Dawn, the narrative-focused horror game from Supermassive Games, will be released Aug. 25 on PlayStation 4, the studio announced today.

Supermassive also announced a new cast member: Peter Stormare, the distinctive Swedish actor best known for his role in the 1996 film Fargo and the television series Prison Break. Stormare isn’t new to video games, having lent his voice to titles such as Destiny and The Elder Scrolls Online.

“[Stormare] gave some incredibly powerful performances in the motion capture studio and you can tell from the end result in the game that he had some fun with the character,” said Pete Samuels, executive producer at Supermassive, in a post on the PlayStation Blog.

Until Dawn stars Heroes’ Hayden Panettiere and others in addition to Stormare. The actors’ likenesses appear in the game along with their voices. Players control the fates of eight friends in an adventure game that’s inspired by slasher flicks and other horror genres. Until Dawn was originally in development for PlayStation 3 as a PlayStation Move title; on PS4, players use the DualShock 4 controller’s tilt functionality to make choices.

For more on Until Dawn, check out our thoughts on the PlayStation Experience demo, and watch the new trailer above.

Today: Tune in to Entertainment Weekly Radio for Clark Collis’s episode dedicated to the Stanley Film Festival, including a chat with the GEP team about the festival’s TALES FROM BEYOND THE PALE live show! Also hear convos with Elijah Wood, Leigh Whannell, Barbara Crampton, Mick Garris, Stuart Gordon, and more! 

1-3pm EST on SirusXM 105

GEP Pal and WE ARE STILL HERE director Ted Geoghegan talked about how The Shining influenced his feature debut for EW. Read on for his thoughts on the horror classic, working in the shadow of such a masterpiece, and working with Fessenden on such a reminiscent piece.

From Entertainment Weekly:

… My love for The Shining runs so deeply that when writing and directing my debut feature, We Are Still Here, I had to step back from the project and decide just how much of the film’s influence we could allow onscreen. My film, which is set in the late 1970s and features a haunted, snowbound location that slowly traps its unwitting inhabitants, couldn’t simply rehash the beats of a masterpiece—but we knew we’d be doing our project a disservice to willfully ignore how perfectly Kubrick balanced his scares and teeth-gnashing tension. While the stylized nooks and corners of We Are Still Here’s New England homestead were a far cry from the labyrinthine halls of the Overlook Hotel, the mounting snowdrifts and desolate locale had created an environment too similar for our cast and crew to ignore. While many people have noted that horror director and We Are Still Here cast member Larry Fessenden bears a striking resemblance to Shining-era Nicholson, never had it been more clear to me than when trudging through the snow with him by my side, costumed in garb from 1979. Why, even our film’s supernatural antagonists, the ghostly Dagmar family, conjured up memories of the dreamlike ghouls that inhabit Kubrick’s hotel: strange, physical beings, somehow conjured up from the spirit world to terrify (and possibly warn) the living.

But by the end of our 21-day shoot (blissfully shy of Kubrick’s reported 230), I began to question whether it was the details of The Shining that had influenced me, or if the film was just so damn perfect that one couldn’t help but want to be associated with something similar. Being able to capture even the tiniest iota of the movie’s dark allure and spectacle seems to have become the dream of every genre director since it was opened May 23, 1980. There is, after all, a reason why both filmmakers and fans hold it in such high regard—because The Shining still engages, horrifies, and enchants like absolutely no other piece of cinema.