Hartford filmmaker releases new horror film
Hartford filmmaker Erik Bloomquist doesn’t quite stick to one genre when it comes to directing movies.
“Christmas on the Carousel” is barely two years old, and was awash in all the Hallmark holiday trappings, while his latest movie, “She Came from the Woods,” is quite the departure.
“It’s funny, there were actually some people who were surprised by the Christmas movie because I had dabbled in horror before that,” Bloomquist said on the phone days before his ode to 80s slasher flicks opened at AMC Plainville and AMC Lisbon on Feb. 10.
“But I do generally like to bounce around. A sexy, contemporary thriller was my first movie. Then we did a weird, David Lynchian, surreal horror movie, then the Christmas movie, then this movie, and a romantic musical is coming out, plus I just wrapped another movie in New Milford,” the Trinity College grad said. “I think it’s very fun to bounce around and shine lights on different parts of myself, that kind of manifest themselves in different ratios depending on the genre.”
The “we” is Erik and his brother Carson, his co-writer more often than not, while Erik directs and even appears in his films. He was the male lead in “Christmas on the Carousel” and also appears in “She Came from the Woods,” while the heavy lifting is left to “Stranger Things” star Cara Buono and popular character actor William Sadler.
“I look a little different in this one,” he said. “I have straight hair and there’s a sort of poof. But we’ve got too many cool people in it. It’s a really great ensemble cast. It’s a 1987 summer camp ‘witch in the woods’ horror movie. At its heart it’s a coming of age movie that just happens to be a horror movie when something bad happens. It’s a very fun horror comedy with themes of family and legacy and stories you tell and secrets you keep. It’s a wild ride.”
Set on the final day of camp in the summer of 1987, it’s difficult not to discuss “the final girl,” a term that has surfaced in recent years to describe the lone female survivor of a horror film, if only to see to it that a sequel can happen. Think Jamie Lee Curtis in “Halloween” or Neve Campbell’s Sydney Prescott in the “Scream” franchise.
“We shot at a few different summer camps and a couple auxiliary places, but most of it we shot in and around Andover,” he said.
Bloomquist is a two-time New England Emmy Award Winner, and eight-time nominee. He’s got seven features under his belt and this one looks to be the one that really breaks through. The 80’s are a sweet spot for the Connecticut native, as is the summer camp setting.
“My brother and I have the box set of all the ‘Friday The 13th’ movies before we made this, and we made our way through all of them just to have an awareness of summer camp movies,” he said. “If you like those movies, you’re definitely going to like this one. We’re playing it straight. We’re not trying to deconstruct anything or repeat anybody. I feel like it’s a really good addition to the summer movie lexicon.”