Fog rests just above a boggy stretch of swamp in the middle of a thickly wooded forest. The swamp bubbles ever so slightly, the bubbles the only hint of movement or life.

A mass BEGINS TO RISE from the swamp, like a first breath of life. 

Ashley and Walter live a bucolic, picture-perfect life in a cabin in upstate New York. They’re preparing to have guests over for dinner, fellow trad-inspired influencers who are devoted to the homesteading, traditional way of life. 

As the day progresses, Ashley works herself into a fever pitch, obsessively preparing the meal and cleaning house. Tiny things go wrong, nagging on her sense of perfection. Each time she makes a “mistake” she has a vision of a creature in the woods, staring at her. In each vision, the creature gets closer to her house. She tries to banish the intrusive thoughts by working harder toward the ideal of domestic perfection she seeks, only to find that the harder she pushes it away, the stronger the monster grows. 

I'm a writer and director, primarily focusing on horror and fantasy. My films center around characters who assert themselves in places we have not always seemed to belong, but where we have always existed.

Ashley & Walter & is my third short film as both writer and director. This film is a continuation of my career of making genre films centering Black women's stories of looking past the confines of reality to find salvation, and it builds off of the success of my films INHERITANCE (2021) and MIRASOL (2023).

With Ashley & Walter &, I want to explore the inherent contradictions within our society’s obsession with tradwife imagery and returning to the land. As a young Black woman emulating the homesteading via social media lifestyle, Ashley lives those contradictions. Homesteading is inherently messy. Living off the land is not clean. Dirt is the stuff of life. The life she strives for, that she is influenced by when she watches the videos of other influencers, is made possible by abundant wealth and resources, which Ashley doesn’t have. Lastly, the imagined tradwife past that she emulates never existed. In that past, Black women, like herself, did all the work behind closed doors, toiling away without having the privilege of enjoying the abundance they created. By denying these contradictions, Ashley teeters on the brink. She has shunted and calcified all the parts of herself that she deems as bad, wrong, or at odds with the life she so desperately wants. This action, of pushing away all the “bad” parts of herself, creates the monster. 

This film is a timely, urgent examination of Black women's mental health during a time when our sense of self - all of us - is constantly refracted and broken down by social media. I'm eager for this film to enter the conversation.

We've completed principal photography (woohoo!) and the stills above are from our beautiful footage. We're looking at ahead to one more additional day of production and post-production. In short - we need your help taking the incredible footage we have and turning it into a finished film. This campaign will help us make that dream a reality!

With a fully funded second phase of this project, we are looking at beginning post-production in early 2026, filming our remaining scenes in April 2026, and finishing the film August 2026, while looking ahead to a festival run in 2027. Check out the incentives section - we will have advanced/early screenings of the film for contributors!

It's exciting - and intimidating - to open up the process of making a film this way. I'm most looking forward to having conversations with our community about the questions this film brings up, and finding ways to connect to other filmmakers working with similar subject matters.

Thank you so much - follow along for more :) - and regardless of whether you can contribute or not, please share our film with your friends! <3

Annalise