Rob Munday
Returning to Short of the Week with We Summoned a Demon, the final part in what he describes as his “Goredy Trilogy”, Chris McInroy is back with another film brimming with practical fx and dark, DARK humour. Following in the vein of previous features Bad Guy #2 and Death Metal, McInroy’s latest short once again serves up laughs, shocks and a sh*t-ton of blood.
Inspired by some of his favourite horror and comedy films of the 80s (The Gate, Night of the Demons, Weird Science & Revenge of the Nerds) McInroy decided he wanted to combine two staple elements of these genres and make a short that featured nerdy friends and demons.
“Growing up in the 80’s, satanic happenings were always in the news”
“I think as a kid that evil satanic type of thing scared me the most because it seemed like there was no real way of stopping it or knowing when it would show up” the director explains. “Plus growing up in the 80’s, satanic happenings were always in the news. Silly things, like metal was the music of the devil and any and all crimes were caused by satan worshipers”.
Filmed over two days, in a warehouse with a crew of around 25, McInroy admits one of the driving factors behind making We Summoned a Demon was his desire to work with creature designers and an actor in a monster suit. Wanting to add that specific experience to his repertoire before he moved on to work on his debut feature (which features werewolves), from creating mood boards and concept sketches to getting special effects wizard Eric Zapata to sculpt his monster out of clay, the director describes their work as an “amazing collaborative process”.
Feeling like now is the right time to start working on that aforementioned first feature, McInroy is first finishing post on a segment he has made for Horror anthology Scare Package, before moving onto his longer project. In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this great bit of insight from Chris, which should hopefully leave you hungry for more of his work.
“On the last day we had lasagna for lunch”, he reveals, “the final shot of Carlos getting his face ripped off wasn’t quite looking how we were wanting so on the last take they shoved leftover lasagna in the green skull and thats what made the final movie!”
YUM!