LandLocked (2023) Writer/Director

“Summoned to his soon-to-be demolished childhood home, Mason discovers an old VHS camera that can see into the past, driving him to record as many memories as possible before the doomed house is destroyed… Utilizing the director’s actual childhood home movies and casting real life family members to play fictionalized versions of themselves, LandLocked combines narrative and documentary with horror and science fiction to create a movie unlike any other.”

Beginning life as a personal project, LandLocked was a movie I made in the background of other movies over a decade-long span. Returning to my childhood home in New Jersey after a lengthy absence, I discovered a box of home movies my Dad had filmed years ago. I grew obsessed with them. Wanting to somehow incorporate them into a narrative film, I hit upon the idea of using them to tell a unique time travel story of sorts that could highlight the emotions I was feeling at that time: grief, loss, and the dangerous allure of nostalgia. 

Once the pandemic began in 2020, I set about trying to finally finish what had become an all-consuming project and my first feature-length narrative.

I began filming in 2014, shooting most of the movie in a two-week-span that summer with my brothers, dad and mom. As they had done with my short films in the past, they were game to do whatever I needed on camera. It’s nice to work with an actor whose movies you love but being able to direct actual loved ones and show their true personality to the world — that was a real thrill. Returning home whenever I found time, I would gather more scenes and experiment with new concepts, eventually wrapping production in 2018.

There was something cathartic in the shooting of the movie through those years. We were saying stuff to each other and acting out these things that we had kept inside ourselves. There was real truth to a lot of those scenes. Other moments felt more surreal: my Dad reenacting his heart attack on camera, in the same spot it had occurred years prior. I wasn’t there when it happened before but now I was filming a recreation of it. Then my Dad in turn acted out what he had experienced on his mother’s death bed, except with him in the bed this time. Moments like these where reality folded in on itself and led to some new truth were just so powerful to be behind the camera for. I wondered at all this scenes that I had set in motion and why I had done it, hoping for answers that the editing could eventually reveal. 

Finally premiering at festivals in 2021, it immediately won a Fellowship Award from the George A. Romero Foundation and was featured in Fangoria Magazine. After playing on the festival circuit throughout 2022, it capped off it’s run at the legendary Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, France. It was picked up for distribution shortly after and released theatrically through Dark Sky Films in early 2023 to some very flattering reviews, including glowing praise from the New York Times and some very thoughtful articles on BloodyDisgusting, Fthismovie, Dread Central and Certified Forgotten. Now the movie has found a home on Shudder, where I always dreamed it would end up.

Staggeringly, many viewers who have either lost loved ones or have otherwise connected with the film in a profound way have reached out to express gratitude. My own relationship to the movie is less clear however. On the rare occasion now when I do rewatch it, LandLocked itself doesn’t unlock some hidden mystery in my life, as much as I hoped it would. The memories of the actual shoot and the process of making the movie with my family are what I ultimately treasure. Those are the moments I look back on now and replay in my mind…