Featuring a diverse set of voices unified by a creative vision of life in New York City, The BLDG: Five Stories of Horror  transforms the turmoil and anxiety dominating the news and the everyday urban grind into a shared cinematic experience. These five chilling stories are all set in the same creepy building, where dark forces seemingly bring about the manifestation of its residents' worst fears.

Rather than attempting to go into production on all five segments at once, we are crowdfunding to complete the first of five shorts that make up our anthology: In the Bowels of the Building—a major step toward making the feature a reality, and one that will open routes to additional fundraising and collaborations down the line. Won't you join us in The BLDG?

***

The BLDG originated with members of the Filmshop collective, united by their love of the horror genre and coming together with the goal of creating a fun and unconventional omnibus film that would transcend some of the tropes we were used to seeing on screen. Taking inspiration from classic supernatural anthologies and films like Trilogy of Terror, Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath, and Rosemary’s Baby, as well as contemporary horror such as the V/H/S series or XX, we set out to make something that was both entertaining and driven by a real artistic vision, a film whose appeal might reach beyond the genre’s usual presumed viewership, horror fans or otherwise. We also decided to focus specifically on tales of the supernatural and the uncanny, rather than slasher fare that relied too heavily on gore, blood and guts. (Though we will say a couple of our films do include just the teensiest, most tasteful smattering of blood.)

We approached this with same spirit of collaboration that defines the Filmshop community at large, committed to developing new work through peer support. Taking a page from the Collective: Unconscious dream anthology, we deliberately opted not to have writers adapt their own work for the screen but rather choose a director from among the rest of the team, to allow room for more of us to participate and make for a more exciting and invigorating creative process.

We came up with a set of five stories that would function as stand-alone pieces all set in the same location, a creepy New York City building, and loosely connected by a handful of recurring characters.

We're excited to kick things off with In the Bowels of the Building, in which an aged janitor fights the slow spread of an infectious goo that threatens to take over the building, if not his own life.

This is the film we will be making first, with the funds raised from this campaign!! Our aim is to go into production in fall 2018.

A building is a body as well as a hierarchy. At the bottom of the building is the bottom of the body, and the bottom of the hierarchy. What happens at the bottom is not what the top wants to see. Thus there is a potential for body horror in the bowels of a building.

–Dane Benko, Writer, In the Bowels of the Building

The universe is a maddening place. Its mysteries swallow you unprovoked and unexplained.  You can try to fight it, try to understand it, but in the end its power over you is its indifference. It has a will and a way and you are merely in its way. In those times surrender to madness is your best defense.

–Nikolai Basarich, Director, In the Bowels of the Building

The other four films that make up our anthology are...

I’m Not Myself Today:

After incurring the ire of a strange and belligerent family, an overworked social worker realizes that the case she’s been assigned might come with a curse.

This is a changeling story centered around a parent-child relationship–for many of us, a particularly emotionally fraught bond. I wanted to show the threat of the occult and the alien “other” originating with an Anglo family for a change, as the Latina protagonist is faced with warding off this uncanny menace.

–Nina Gielen, Writer, I'm Not Myself Today

There’s a whiff of sawdust and the sound of bristle in Nina’s script that reminds me of the wooden magical realism behind Little Otik. But beyond the ambience, I’m Not Myself Today is a social realist story that contains a transgressive transformation on the neglected margins of society.

–Dane Benko, Director, I'm Not Myself Today

The Collector:

A hipster UPS deliveryman encounters a middle-aged woman, obsessed with collecting, as he delivers his last package of the night.

Inspired by Ten Little Indians and the recent craze of Pokemon Go, The Collector explores the obsession of having what we can’t have and how far a collector will go to “collect them all.” What is the true value of the objects we covet and the divide between those who can afford to get what they want and those who are at their whim?

–Heather Taylor, Writer, The Collector

I love that Heather’s story confers agency onto an older woman, with a young guy as the object of desire, seduction and/or menace, we’re not quite sure which. It’s funny and disturbing and flips the script on the idea of Hollywood being built on the body of a beautiful dead woman.

–Nina Gielen, Director, The Collector

My Angel of Death:

A deranged artist chases a seductive image of Death through his drawings and his nightmares, in turn evading guilt and punishment.

What is it like to go into the psyche of a person who experienced a traumatic event? How does isolation and guilt chew away at a person’s senses, especially a character like an artist who is driven by a vivid imagination?

–Danny Kim, Writer, My Angel of Death

It’s dark, cold, and lonely. An isolated and troubled young artist deals with his manic paranoia–but what’s real, what’s not? We’ll play with this idea throughout to put the audience in that same state of mind while also exploring the relationship of those who take advantage of the added creativity the deeper his mind sinks.

–David Wittlin, Director, My Angel of Death

Sushi Belly Tower:

A ten-course underground sashimi party goes into disarray as guests start hallucinating after consuming a mythical fish.

Below the surface of rationality rage impulses barely held down by social norms. We wanted to explore the thin veneer of “polite society,” so we wrote about an upscale dinner party where a simple chemical reaction from a rare and endangered fish sends normal people into animalistic and psychedelic hysteria.

–T. Shay & Nicholas Heet, Co-Writers, Sushi Belly Tower

We love vivid phantasmagoria that brings crazy experiences to the screen. We’re inspired by movies such as vintage giallo and Japanese extreme that mix graphic horror tropes with sensationalist colors and editing for a chaotic all-out assault of the senses.

–Nicholas Heet & T. Shay, Co-Directors, Sushi Belly Tower