SCARY GOOD
Woonsocket filmmaker’s latest in running for $50,000 prize
WOONSOCKET — Halloween is nothing if not a time of make-believe monsters and mythic characters, but in Elaine J. Mongeon’s world it turns out that everyday life may be most frightening thing of all.
That seems to be the plain truth of the city-born filmmaker’s latest effort in “Swiped to Death,” a horror-short produced by invitation for “Huluween,” a fright-season film festival sponsored, in part, by the Hulu livestream TV service.
But Huluween is more than just a seasonal collection of cinematic chillers; it’s also a contest with a $50,000 payoff, and you can help Mongeon win it just by watching the film. She’d use the money to invest in another project.
“I’m still trying to break through to direct bigger projects as well as writing,” says the budding filmmaker. “I’m hoping this short film will help me get over the hump to direct a feature film and a television episode.”
It was the attention that Mongeon received in her directorial debut last year on another horror short that helped her land a spot in Huluween. The film, “Good Morning,” set in Woonsocket and inspired by her father, the late Paul Mongeon, took home several awards, including the New England Director’s Award in the 2018 Rhode Island International Film Festival.
The acclaim for “Good Morning” piqued the interest of the Sundance Institute, the Colorado-based nonprofit, founded by actor Robert Redford,
whose mission is to foster a vibrant independent film industry. Hulu’s partner in Huluween, Sundance reached out to Mongeon to ask her if she had any ideas for a short film that might be suitable for the festival.
The truth was, she didn’t, at least not right off the bat. But after a quick brainstorming session with her writing partner, Glen Zipper, they came up with an idea that fit the bill.
There was one challenging contingency on Sundance’s offer that the co-writers had to honor, namely, that the writers include what Mongeon calls “a tech component” in the storyline.
“We decided to dive into dating app culture as our tech component,” says Mongeon. “I personally have not done a lot of app dating, but there is an interesting backstory here because Greg and I used to date and we met on an app that actually doesn’t even exist anymore.”
And so “Swiped to Death,” emerges as a slick, seven-minute film about what happens when two seemingly clean-cut, attractive individuals of the opposite sex turn to their cell phones to log onto their mutual dating app to set up a first-time rendezvous.
There’s an old saying about how strangers invariably tell the truth about each other when they first meet, even if they don’t mean to, that seems to be a particularly fitting lesson of “Swiped to Death,” though that’s about as much of a spoiler alert as readers are going to find in this piece. Suffice it to say that the fast-moving, mini-pic has a few of the same hallmarks that filled “Good Morning” with such suspense and surprise.
And even though it’s only a few minutes long, Mongeon manages to pack unexpected pacing and nuance into the tidy little package of storytelling.
Mongeon was one of about 50 filmmakers Sundance sourced for Huluween material, which has been available for viewing since Oct. 1. Viewers can can continue watching, on Hulu or YouTube, through Oct. 30.
The winner, and the recipient of the $50,000 cash price, will be announced by Hulu on Halloween. The film that gets the most views wins.
Raised in Woonsocket, Mongeon went to public schools here until she was in the seventh grade, when she relocated to Massachusetts with her mother, Joanne Parnell Mongeon – an English professor. She returned to the city permanently for a time around 2013 to care for her father, a longtime educator at Norton High School and Nipmuc Regional High School, who died of brain cancer that year. She still maintains contact with friends who still live in the local area.
Mongeon was a film and television major at Boston University and got her first big break right after college, when she went to work assisting a producer in Los Angeles with whom she’d previously done a student internship. Not long after, she went to work for Arnold Kopelson, a producer who won an Academy Award for “Platoon,” the film that launched the careers of several stars.
A longtime resident of Los Angeles, she has since worked on a number of high-profile projects, including TV’s “West Wing,” and several films produced by the team of Greg Jacobs and Steve Soderberg, including “The Informant,” “Haywire,” and “Contagion.”
While the money would certainly come in handy, and winning would be a valuable trophy to put on her resume, Mongeon says there’s already some benefit in just having made it this far in Huluween. “Swiped to Death” is another notch on her director’s belt, helping bolster her professional profile.
“The other really important piece of this... when people are considering hiring you to direct bigger projects they want to see you have experience,” said Mongeon. “This is very helpful.”