A new movie set in Owen Sound is hitting the film festival circuit at the end of the month.
Cult Hero, is a 93 minute comedy horror movie made by the Collingwood Film Company that is filmed in part, at Moreland Place on the edge of the city.
It follows washed-up ‘cult buster’ Dale Domazar (Ry Barrett) and control freak Scenic City Real Estate agent Kallie Jones (Liv Collins) as they attempt to rescue her husband (Justin Bott) from a cult.
“It’s kooky, it’s bizarre, it’s weird, but there’s a lot of fun,” says Director Jesse Thomas Cook.
“You’ve got this lead character that Liv plays that’s kind of the quintessential control freak ‘Karen’ type of caricature, whose marriage is kind of going nowhere, so she enlists her depressed husband into a wellness centre called Hope Acres, which is filmed out at Moreland Place,” says Cook, explaining, “Turns out this wellness centre is a cult– and she’s unable to get her husband back from the clutches of the dubious guru there, so she’s forced to hire this washed up cult buster and together they team up.”
Cook says, “They’re very much an odd couple. He’s very brash and impulsive, and again, she’s a control freak and very set in her ways. So together they have to team up and infiltrate this cult to rescue her husband.”
Cook says its the sixth film he has made in the area. This one’s main location is Moreland Place, which cook says has been used in some of his other movies including The Hexecutioners (2015) and Monster Brawl (2011). He says the Collingwood Film Co. has been working with the owner of Moreland Place, Barry More since then.
“He has a bunch of pretty cool houses throughout Owen Sound,” says Cook who notes, while the company does its pre production, development and post production out of Collingwood, they like filming in Owen Sound.
“Mainly because of the gothic vibe of the city,” says Cook, adding, it doesn’t have a kitschy tourist look, “Owen Sound still maintains that century home gothic feel that I really love and it really lends itself to the kind of cool, action and horror films that we make.”
He notes the company’s 2015 movie The Hexecutioners has a number of crew, actors and extras from the Owen Sound area. “From there we just met so many fantastic people in the arts community in Owen Sound,” says Cook.
Cult Hero went to the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year to be shown in a program featuring genre films that were nearing completion. Cook says there, they were able to premiere about 20 minutes of the movie and take part in a networking portion of the film festival called Frontiers.
Cult Hero is now going to the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, which runs from Mid July to August. Cult Hero will premiere there on July 30th.
Cook says after that, it will tour a number of other film festivals including one in Sydney, Australia before being shown in Owen Sound at the Roxy Theatre in January 2023.
“We get to have our big homecoming which is the screening I’m most excited for because everyone is going to recognize each other and the local area on the screen,” says Cook, adding, “We’ve done a number of our premiers at the Roxy, we love it there.”
Cook says his company also just shot another film around the Annan area in June. He says it’s another horror comedy called Vessel 17, that he expects to finish next spring.
Content warning: Trailer contains scenes of violence