Montana-made horror comes to Havre

Horror is coming to Havre tonight at the Cottonwood Cinema in the form of a Montana-produced horror film titled, “Nexus of Evil.”

Second Winds Productions is a film company started by partners Eden Bryant and Brandon Smith in June of 2019. The team’s company is based in Polson and “Nexus of Evil” is its first feature film, focusing on a group of adults who revisit a camp they abandoned as children.

“Honestly, it was inspired by horror films from the ’80s,” Smith said. “You know the campground horror movies. What really happened was because of COVID campgrounds were not having camps like they usually do, so we were able to rent a camp ground for a week so we wrote a movie around that.”

The production’s casting was unorthodox. Part of Second Winds’ financing for the film came in the form of raffling off a “death scene.” The idea is that the person who bought the winning ticket was featured as character who dies in the film.

The other actors in the film are largely amateurs who came from an acting program in Missoula, and other actors were cast because the pair have known them from other productions, Smith said.

“(The raffle) actually went really well,” Bryant said. “It was very well-received and we were able to raise a good portion of our funding.”

The concept of “Nexus of Evil” was conceived at the beginning of August and was released last week, Bryant said.

The film’s premise borrows from the “Sleepaway Camp” movies and other films from the era of the slasher genre.

“It’s the summer camp movies, right?” Smith said. “Where you have all of these people going to summer camp, and you have something that is completely implausible that happens, and it sends everything into chaos. It’s funny, the story only came together in a few minutes and the script was written inside of a week.”

As far as production goes, Bryant and Smith started their own distribution company, Nova Vento, not only to distribute their own films, but other independent films as well, Bryant said.

“We are a small production company located out of Polson, Montana; we help produce short films, student films and feature films, but we have done some commercial work,” Bryant said. “We are definitely leaning toward the feature film direction, we have several projects on our plate for next summer.”

Because of the coronavirus, movie theaters have been financially impacted negatively due to social distancing and Bryant feels their pain. Theater chain AMC has lost $561.2 million in the most recent quarter according to Variety.

“I just want to talk about how COVID has impacted movie theaters throughout the country,” Bryant said. “As Nova Vento, has been trying to bring in alternative content into movie theaters and to inspire people to go back into the cinemas and help support all of these small family owned theaters.”

“Nexus of Evil” is set to show from today through next Thursday at the Cottonwood Cinema, with two showings everyday.