The Passenger is a horror short film about four friends who venture to a cabin in the woods to celebrate the New Year, unknowingly bringing along an evil entity that terrorizes them in their sleep with sinister plans of its own. Choose your resolutions wisely.

Grieving the recent loss of her parents, Cassie is plagued by vivid dreams that beg her to question her reality. With the support of her best friends, Nick and Emily, and a new acquaintance, David, she reluctantly agrees to spend one final weekend in her family’s cabin to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Up at the cabin, the four begin to experience nightmares of their own as something else has joined them for the celebrations. As they try to piece together what’s happening, it may be too late, and the clock is striking down to midnight. It’s out with the old and in with the new, and some of them might not make it to see the New Year.

In the year of 2021, I was in a writer’s group with some close friends from college. We started the group to help each other share screenwriting ideas, outlines, and set deadlines to continue working on our personal projects. My submission to the group was the story that would eventually become ‘The Passenger’. After two years of outlining, drafting, rewriting, and table reading - the opportunity to finally make this dream a reality came to fruition.

As an avid horror movie fan, my love of the genre stems from its drive to push characters to their limits and dive into the purest instinct: survival. When you’re up against a wall, who do you become? From a creative standpoint, I love that horror movies can be made on low budgets and simple tropes which allow the filmmakers to stretch their imagination and challenge themselves to accomplish wonders behind the camera. For this story, I took influence from the late 70s/early 80s era of horror, a classic cabin in the wood scenario, and combined it with my expertise in dreams.

My life has been forever altered by my experiences with lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis, and i've tried to emulate both within the film. Sleep paralysis and lucid dreams are two states of consciousness that are connected to Rapid-Eye-Movement (REM) sleep but are defined by higher awareness. Lucid dreaming allows the dreamer to play a more active role in their dreams, granting an awareness that gives them the ability to alter and control what happens to a certain extent. On the other hand, sleep paralysis is an awareness of your surroundings and being awake, but unable to move your body. Sleep paralysis is often accompanied by fear, as the person usually experiences auditory and visual hallucinations during this time.

I wanted to emphasize the paralytic feeling when one falls into a higher state of awareness, fighting against their own subconscious-- what terrors they feel, hear, and see. And what if these weren’t hallucinations at all? How do you know what’s a dream and what’s real?

Our story takes place in a pretty cool location (for which our producers are very grateful), in Zion National Park at a very cool (and haunted) ranch with cabins! Because of the upcoming winter season, we are having our filming weekends starting so soon (see schedule above). Because of our quickly approaching timeline, we are already well on our way planning for our upcoming shoots! 

So how on earth can you help??

Making a film, even a short, costs a lot of money if you want to do it right. We’ll be raising funds to take care of cast and crew, equipment, production design, make-up and costumes, meals, transportation, and plenty of fake blood. One of the great honors of working on this film is the incredible opportunity, as mentioned earlier, to travel into Zion National Park to film a majority of the scenes to create the most authentic environment for the film. We have calculated that we need AT LEAST $8,500 to make this film a reality.Your money will go directly into the bare bone essentials for filmmaking and creating a positive and healthy working environment for all involved.

We are so ecstatic and humbled to even be able to pursue the production of this film and are grateful for your time, consideration and support. We would love to have you on this project to bring more female-driven horror films to the screen! If you are an avid horror film fan, or feel called to help support the next generation of filmmakers, please consider making a contribution. Our experienced team has the skills to utilize your donations and bring this vision to life. 

On top of that, we want to create incredible opportunities for our director to share this film with film festivals all over the world to create networking opportunities, flex our skills as creatives, and showcase a story worthy of being seen. AND IMPORTANTLY, share this film with all of you! Our goal is to be able to eventually rent a theater to showcase this film to our lovely donors to show just how grateful we really are. This film will only exist because of YOU.

Any contribution, no matter how small, helps us get to our goal. If you're unable to contribute financially, please spread the word and follow us on Instagram @The_Passenger_Film, as well as share the link to this fundraiser to everyone you know!

THANK YOU!!!