Who will be the next Mark Pirro?
Brian Duffield
Remember No One Will Save You (2023) about a young woman in a big house in the country who fights off an alien? It was written and directed by Brian Duffield. He also wrote and directed Spontaneous (2020) from the novel by Aaron Starmer about, well, exploding teenagers, which is an apt metaphor for teenagehood in itself. Duffield is working on something else, but first let’s look at Brian Duffield the writer, who definitely took the writing road to directorship and paved it well.
He has a screenplay by credit along with Akiva Goldsman and Mark Bomback for The Divergent Series: Insurgent (2015). He also wrote the impressive Babysitter (2017), directed by McG. The story is about a young boy fighting his babysitter who is part of a satanic cult. Duffield also has a story by and a screenplay by credit alongside Adam Cozad for the William Eubank-directed Underwater (2020), in which a crew of underwater researchers suffer earthquakes and flooding. Hell of a surprise ending. He followed that up with a story by credit and a screenplay by credit alongside Mathew Robinson for the Michael Matthews-directed Love and Monsters (2020) about a young man searching for his high school sweetheart after a monster apocalypse. Great effects in this one.
His most interesting ace in the hole is creating and writing the eight episode animated King Kong TV series, Skull Island, and though he has written the second season sources online reveal season two probably will not be greenlit. His greatest resume note is all of the established genre directors and writers he works with. And all of this before he wrote and directed No One Will Save You. So what’s next?
Apparently in development is a script from his own pen Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately, about a couple fighting a supernatural being. This title, however, was mentioned as early as 2014, so it might be in perpetual development. Duffield has also been slated to direct the Daniel Kraus novel Whalefall, about a guy swallowed by a whale. I look forward to the effects on that one.
Duffield’s directing resume is light for now, but his experience screenwriting should afford him more chances. Some modern genre filmmakers are working smart, working multiple gigs as screenwriters or effects artists as they aim for more directing chances.
David Moreau
This one’s a reverse-engineered Director Roundup. It snuck right past me. I’ve seen the titles for David Moreau’s films before, but none interested me enough to dive in. Then one night after I watched my one-movie-a-night movie, I watched ten minutes of a second movie and stayed up late to finish it. MadS (2024) is a one-shot wonder. It’s literally one shot for its entire eighty-something minutes. And the one-shot gimmick is the only negative for the film. They didn’t need a gimmick.
The film is an anxiety-inducing stress-o-rama, a lot like Josh Safdie and Beeny Safdie’s Good Time (2017) with Robert Pattinson. Think Ray Liotta in the Goodfellas scene where he’s getting dinner together, buying guns, and being followed by a helicopter–almost ninety minutes of that. That’s MadS.
More specifically, a young man, Romain, picks up a wandering woman covered in bandages, who has been injected with “retro-virus infected blood.” She commits bloody hari-kari in his dad’s car, tainting Romain’s drugs, and one by one he, and his friends, Anais and Julia become infected as well. As a matter of fact, it’s actors Milton Riche, Laurie Pavy, and Lucille Guillaume, respectively, who pull this off, completely shadowing the one-take film gimmick.
Riche played a main character, Paola, in the six-episode drama series Season of Sex (2022) whose title should be summary enough. He played Max in seven of the eight-episode romance series Liefdestips Aan Mezelf (2023), about a teenage girl who moves in with her father after her mother is admitted to a psychiatric hospital. He also plays Frederik in two episodes of the Death-walking-among-us series, Alter Ego (2023). Point is, well-rounded acting talent.
Besides a short film and a music video MadS appears to be Pavy’s first feature. Her next seems to be Rembrandt which is in post-production, directed by Pierre Schoeller. Guillame looks like she’s been honing her skills in a handful of features, a couple of tv shows, and a short, and finally got a break with MadS. While director Moreau was clever shooting MadS as a one-take movie, his real talent might be choosing and working with great actors.
And now your writer is backtracking, checking out Moreau’s other films. Ils/Them (2006) is a tense home invasion story based on real events co-written and co-directed with Xavier Palud. Moreau and Palud resumed co-directing when they remade The Eye (2008) from the original Chinese version Jian gui (2002). In this English language version Jessica Alba starts seeing things after a cornea transplant restores her eyesight–Parker Posey plays her sister. Sebastian Gutierrez wrote the English language version from the original Chinese-language version by Yuet-Jan Hui and Oxide Chun Pang.
Palud himself is no amateur, directing episodes for Braquo (2009-2016) and writing and directing episodes for Intrusion (2015). He directed À l’aveugle/Blind Man (2012) about a police detective whose main suspect for two crimes is a blind man, written by–get this–Eric Besnard who co-wrote Wrath of Man (2021), and also written by some guy named Luc Besson (lol). That’s gotta be watchable.
Moreau directed Seuls/Alone (2017) about five teenagers alone in a world where everybody has disappeared. Hints of The Quiet Earth (1985)? Moreau wrote the screenplay with Guillaume Moulin adapting the comic book series by Fabien Vehlmann and Bruno Gazzoti. Guillaume appears to be a casting director who sometimes works with Moreau.
Next up for Moreau? O.T.H.E.R., written by Jon Goldman which is in post-production. A woman returns to her family home now filled with surveillance equipment and one of those there “sinister presences.” Moreau isn’t limited to horror films, but if you want to see how well-rounded his work is then check out It Boy (2013) and King (2022).
Ana Lily Amirpour
So Joe Hill’s Hill House Comics put out a few short-run comic book series, including Basketful of Heads. This is one of those plots where everything’s a spoiler, but it’s important to point out that it’s a female lead. Adaptations of Hill’s work includes Horns (2013), The Black Phone (2021), and the tv show NOS4A2 (2019-2020), along with two tv movies and one series of Locke and Key, and then some.
It’s set to star and be produced by the indomitable Natasha Lyonne who has been working like a workaholic for decades and finally won some buzz acclaim with the tv show Poker Face. Your writer’s been watching her since 1998 in Slums of Beverly Hills, and Lyonne is no stranger to horror. Check her out in Die, Mommie, Die! (2003) and All About Evil (2010).
And who has the cojones to direct this. Nobody. No cojones here. Not even one. This could be a huge flick. A female lead from a Joe Hill comic played by Lyonne and written and directed by … Ana Lily Amirpour, director of A Girl Walks Home at Night (2014).
Amirpour hit the ground running with A Girl Walks Home at Night. Since then she’s been directing episodes of TV shows, including Legion (2017-2019) and Castle Rock (2018-2019). She directed A Traveler season one episode four of the Jordan Peele Twilight Zone (2019-2020), about a mysterious visitor at a police station starring Steven Yeun, and season two episode four Ovation about a singer who pays the price for success. She directed episode four of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities (2022) called The Outside–remember the lotion episode? That is Amirpour.
Feature-wise she wrote and directed Bad Batch (2016) about a woman surviving in a post apocalypse with cannibals, starring Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, Keanu Reeves, Giovanni Ribisi, and Jim Carrey–wait, Jim Carrey was in that? She wrote and directed Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon (2021) about a woman with special powers who escapes an asylum. Amirpour is working with some of the best
Psycho Drive-In likes Amirpour. Director Roundup covered her work in July 2021, John Yohe reviewed A Girl… in 2015, Nate Zoebl reviewed Bad Batch in 2017, and our fearless leader, Paul Brian McCoy, includes A Girl Walks… on his top indie horror films of 2015.
Jason Trost
You might get funny replies if you say you like hard-core independent filmmaker Jason Trost’s All Superheroes Must Die (2011), but it raised this writer’s curiosity. It’s his four-film FP franchise, however, that keeps his fans happy. James Remar plays a supervillain exacting revenge on superheroes in All Superheroes Must Die. Remar’s been in everything from The Warriors (1979) to the original Dexter(2006-2013) TV series and a lot before and after those. Trost followed this with a sequel he co-wrote with Tallay Wickham, All Superheroes Must Die 2: The Last Superhero (2016), a documentary style movie interviewing the last superhero, Charge.
Trost and his fans like his four-movie franchise FP (Frazier Park) the most, and why not? It’s the post-apocalypse where people battle each other in a dance video game called Beat-Beat Revolution and includes The FP (2011), FP2: Beats of Rage (2018), FP3: Escape from Bako (2021), FP 4EVZ (2023). There also seems to be a TV episode series Duck-Fit: The Official FP Workout Video but it’s not easy to find or is possibly still in post-production. The first The FP was co-written with Brandon Trost who looks like a full-time cinematographer/director of photography for Crank: High Voltage (2009), the Rob Zombie Halloween II (2009), Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022) and 3 (2024), and a helluva whole lot more.
Trost has written and directed more than his two franchises: Wet and Reckless (2013), a comedy about a reality TV show where the contestants look for a treasure map; How to Save Us (2014), a sci-fi thriller about a man searching for his brother while avoiding mysterious beings that can only be seen via infrared and destroyed by EMP; and Waves of Madness (2024), a horror movie about a lone agent investigating a distress call from an abandoned ship.
Trost recently finished an Indiegogo campaign for his next project, AFAR: An Interactive Horror Movie, a movie he describes as a “cosmic survival horror” movie, and the “spiritual successor to How to Save Us.” In it a man is hired to find someone from a survival show, all of whom have disappeared. The campaign raised about $7000 of a $10,000 goal, which certainly will not deter him, but chances are he will still accept your money maybe even in exchange for some of his movies if you’re into physical media.
Trost is part of a small cadre of filmmakers who raise their own money and sell most of their own movies or at least make their own deals through boutique companies–true independents. This small group also includes Chris LaMartina, Call Girl of Cthulhu (2014), WNUF Halloween Special (2013), and Out There Halloween Mega Tape (2022); Scott Schirmer, Found (2012), Harvest Lake (2016), and the upcoming Gush, mentioned in our last Director Roundup; and a filmmaker who was doing it way before them, Mark Pirro, A Polish Vampire in Burbank (1983), Deathrow Gameshow (1987), Curse of the Queerwolf (1988), and Nudist Colony of the Dead (1991). If beginning filmmakers are looking for a truly independent business model, check out these directors.
There is so much more Jason Trost has done and is doing that can’t be covered thoroughly enough here at Director Roundup, like his novel Invasion Outback for one. You can catch a glimpse of him, for another, in the horror movie Studio 666 (2022) made by the Foo Fighters. And this is hardly his first appearance at Psycho Drive-In. Adam Barraclough reviewed All Superheroes Must Die, Wet and Reckless, and he also interviewed Trost. Your writer has reviewed All Superheroes Must Die, the sequel …The Last Superhero, and How to Save Us
Trost is active across all social media and then some: Facebook, Instagram, YouTube–most of the links to the trailers here are from his YouTube account–Vimeo, Indiegogo, and the platform formerly known as Twitter. Interested in his movies in physical media form? Shoot him a line.
All for now.