Chelsea Lupkin
Just when you thought the things that go bump in the night are all in your head… think again. A study in how to turn a safe haven into a site of terror, Julian Terry’s They Hear It is so much more than a scary movie. With impressive production values, particularly in its incredible, multi-dimensional soundscape, They Hear It is a uniquely immersive experience that is made for a movie theater, but your headphones will just have to do. Prepare to get thoroughly freaked out!
A hair-raising horror born from childhood fears, a brother and sister find themselves haunted by an otherworldly sound that lures them into the woods when their mom leaves them home alone one night. Terry’s thoroughly engrossing approach to filmmaking causes you to pay attention to every door creak, twig snap, and leaf crunch as you’re in a state of perpetual high alert for threats. By making the audience hyper-aware of what his protagonists hear and might see in the dark, it’s easy to feel jumpy and filled with dread to the point where you no longer feel safe on your couch watching this story unfold. Not to mention, there’s something absolutely horrifying about a beloved pet dog sensing danger before you do.
“The idea came from when I was a kid hearing creepy sounds from the woods outside my childhood home. I kept thinking how scary it would be to hear something call my name from the dark”, Terry explains. The sound that lures his characters into the woods is actually a sound that only children can hear. If that’s not nightmare fuel, I don’t know what is.
We freely admit that we’re suckers for dogs sensing evil.
Akin to David F. Sandberg’s early short film work like Lights Out, Terry’s style across several successful proof-of-concept shorts marries simplicity and familiar horror mechanics to A+ level execution. In They Hear It, he transforms everyday familiar spaces into hellscapes with the use of sound design, well-timed spookiness, and killer creature design. It’s no wonder that Terry has been on a fast upward trajectory in the industry, with 4 of his shorts having been optioned for features. Terry’s recent SXSW short, Don’t Peek, found a home at Timur Bekmambetov’s company, Bazelevs, The Nurse is making its way over at New Line Cinema, and Whisper so impressed Steven Spielberg that he signed off it for his company, Amblin Entertainment. They Hear It is no different, as it is set up at Legendary Entertainment. All of these films are set to be adapted into feature-length projects and we can imagine they will be just as eerily terrifying. Terry tells us that They Hear It is actually the opening scene of a bigger story.
As accomplished as he is already, Terry’s films still possess a charming DiY feel that adheres to the indie filmmaker axiom of “make it work”. An anecdote the filmmaker shared with us attests to that—as the last act of They Hear It begins, the use of point-of-view camera perspective, solely lit by a flashlight, will certainly give you goosebumps. While absolutely effective, it was surprisingly a choice the director had to make out of necessity rather than choice. Already shot with a very small crew, the team had to excuse the actors and crew members during the homestretch of filming so that they wouldn’t be snowed in at the location. “My producer and I stayed behind and shot the rest of the short in the main character’s perspective. Her POV is so heavily featured in the short, it nearly feels like a video game. It definitely heightens the scares!” Terry tells Short of the Week. It goes to show that sometimes a seeming hurdle can actually inspire the creativity needed to take a film to the next level.
We’re happy to welcome Terry to our online collection of terrific shorts, and the filmmaker is hard work tending to his projects and gearing up to direct his first feature, which he hopes will happen in 2022. Will it be an expansion of They Hear It? “David Robert Mitchell came aboard and we fleshed it out into a feature-length script!” Terry tells Short of the Week. With an impressively robust and horrifying monster that is sure to haunt your dreams (did that ending make anyone else jump a foot?) we can only imagine just how scary his feature-length movie will be!