In New Fears Eve, Leslie, Brian, Moses, and their unsuspecting colleagues must confront a deranged killer intent on making New Year’s Eve unforgettable—for all the wrong reasons.
It’s the latest twisted horror comedy from P.J. Starks and Eric Huskisson, whose past credits include the horror anthologies Volumes of Blood and 13 Slays Till X-Mas. Starks wrote the screenplay for New Fears Eve and also co-directed the slasher with Huskisson.
I recently received the chance to sit down with both of them to chat about their careers, the making of New Fears Eve, and what’s next for the filmmaking duo. The interview below has been edited for length and clarity. For the full, uncut discussion, click the video below to watch on ScreenAge Wasteland’s new YouTube channel, ScreenAge Wasteland Exclusives.
Val Morreale: Super cool to chat with you guys. I really enjoyed your movie, so I’m excited to talk to you guys about it.
PJ Starks: I’m glad to hear that. Yeah, thank you for having us on. Your review was great.
I wanted to start by asking both of you about when you got into film and what films you found the most influential as you started getting into film.
Eric Huskisson: I got it into film at a very early age. My dad kind of figured out that I was drawn to horror movies back in the day, so he would let me stay up late on Friday and Saturday nights, and he would stay up with me, and it was all the hosted horror shows with, you know, Elvira, all the ones that had the late night shows, and they were showing you know, the original Fly, Frankenstein. So I really got into the special effects, even though you look back at those films now and realize that the special effects were not that great for today’s time.
But I just became a fan of the genre, and I ended up in theater in high school and was doing plays, and thought, hey, I’m going to be an actor. Went to Western to be a theater major, and things just all kind of fell apart with that, but I kind of still stayed a fan and still dabbled in special effects, helping with some curtain calls and set buildings with different companies and stuff, but I didn’t get into actually making film until I met P.J. about 13 years ago on a whim with a thing he was doing at our public library. We exchanged numbers and then started working together from there on out. We did Volumes of Blood together, and then we started our production company, Blood Moon Pictures, and did Volumes of Blood Horror Stories, and now we’re four features in.
Starks: So I guess I got into wanting to be a filmmaker more in my teenage years. Originally, I wanted to be a writer, but then I was gifted a video camera when I was about 12, and I pretty much never looked back. I mean, in terms of what role I played, that evolved over the years, you know, because at one time I wanted to be an actor, because I did some theater in high school and stuff like that. And of course, just because you don’t have a lot of options if you’re doing videos with your friends, you are the one who’s putting yourself in front of the camera.
But eventually I found myself more behind the camera, doing directing and writing, and then eventually getting into it more professionally. I would say, within the last decade or so, it’s gotten more into producing. But my love for the horror genre was instilled in me at a really young age. I started watching scary movies with my grandmother around five. I started with Ghostbusters, which I know is not necessarily considered a horror film, but I personally consider it gateway horror. So it started with Ghostbusters, and then it just escalated from there, and I was watching anything and everything I could get my hands on in the horror genre. So I guess that’s why the genre I dabble in most is the horror genre.
But any film I watched inspired me in some way. My film school would happen later on. One with, like, the special features. That’s why I love special features and making of and documentaries on films, because that’s how I learned a lot of the art of filmmaking. I attempted to go to film school. It didn’t really pan out. And then, yeah, of course, Eric says we met at the library. It was Grindr. He swiped right, and it’s been this bromance ever since. No, I’m kidding, it was the library. And then we started a company together in 2015, and here we are.
Yeah, that’s great. P.J., can you talk more about how your chance meeting with Eric evolved into Blood Moon Productions?
Starks: I had been doing filmmaking here in Owensboro since 2003 or 2004, which was the first time I was in the paper for doing the filmmaking stuff. And then I just kept going and taking it more seriously. My first real feature effort was in 2008, but after that, I became kind of like an event planner because I love collaboration. So instead of making movies, I started just trying to find ways to help other filmmakers get their stuff out there, and through that came Unscripted at the Daviess County Public Library, which is where I met Eric.
But around that same time, I had been working on a video for a local radio station for their Zombie Run that they were doing. And Eric showed up, and his zombie makeup was fantastic. So I said to him, “Hey, I’ve got this thing coming up in a few weeks. Would you want to come portray this zombie in that video?” He said, “Yeah,” so he and a friend of his showed up the day that we filmed all of that, and then when it was over, Eric and I hung out afterwards and talked for like an hour.
I was also co-coordinating the film festival at Scare Fest in Lexington at the time. And I said, “Hey, that’s coming up in a few weeks. I need volunteers to help out that weekend. Do you want to come do that?” And he said, “Absolutely.” So we became fast friends, and then not long after, I came up with the idea for and eventually pitched Volumes of Blood to the library, which became that anthology film. Eric was super involved in that project, even though he only really got like prop master and maybe a couple other smaller credits on the film.
Volumes of Blood did far better than any of us thought it would do because it got found distribution and things. So we thought, hey, let’s see if it’s a fluke, and let’s do a sequel. But before that, Eric came to me and said, “Hey, let’s try to legitimize what you’ve already been doing, and now I’m a part of and let’s combine our efforts and create this company.” So that’s where Blood Moon Pictures came from. And then we did the sequel, and eventually 13 Slays Till X-Mas, and now New Fears Eve.
What lessons did you learn from 13 Slays Till X-Mas that you took into New Fears Eve?
Starks: 13 Slays Till X-Mas was also an anthology. But for Eric, that was the first time he ever really wrote and directed something that we had done together. I had already had a ton of experience with directing and writing and everything up to that point. So there wasn’t as much transition going into New Fears Eve from 13 Slays Till X-Mas for me, because I had also made that feature-length, single-narrative movie in 2008. But for Eric, it was kind of a whole new ball game for him.
Huskisson: Yeah, for 13 Slays Till X-Mas, P.J. reluctantly let me write a script for it, and I’m not going to go into that whole ball game. And then I directed it, and that’s loosely said as PJ was in my back pocket, serving as my shadow the whole time, helping me out because it’s something I’d never done. I knew he wasn’t going to let me fail or let it look bad because it’s his film as well. So that’s where I got my first experience.
But typically, my experience had always been either helping somebody with their own film, so I wouldn’t be on set for a whole long time. However, with being on set with three anthologies, and then with us wanting to go bigger and better each time, we kind of transitioned into the single narrative for New Fears Eve. And I have to say, there are a lot of things about the single narrative I really enjoy compared to doing an anthology. I’m not saying it’s easier, but it’s just, to me, it’s easier to character build because you have a whole film, not just a piece, to do it in.
New Fears Eve flowed so well with your learning about the characters and what they’re going through and who they are, and you know, in their relationships. I kind of enjoyed how that process works compared to the anthology. I’m not saying I’m against anthologies, or I’ll never do an anthology again, but I think I give it a 60/40, comparative with doing anthologies.
That totally makes sense. I can imagine how it would be difficult to kind of develop the characters in that limited scope, whereas with a full-length movie like New Fears Eve, you have that whole movie to kind of flesh out your characters.
Where did the idea for New Fears Eve originally come? When you were kind of coming up with the script and the characters, how did that creative process go?
Starks: So ironically, I came up with the title while we were making 13 Slays Till X-Mas. But I didn’t know what the story was at the time. It was just the title. The original concept then became a slasher film anthology about these different characters and the connections between them, with this killer and all this other stuff. But by the time it really came down to the brass tacks of what project we’re going to make next, there were a lot of things that Eric and I had already kind of discussed, which was, you know, what do we want our next movie to be, and do we want to make another anthology? And so we had kind of decided that we wanted to make some changes with what our next project was, what it was going to be, and how it was going to be done.
So when it was determined that we were going to make a single narrative feature, I had to completely restructure the anthology concept and figure out, okay, so then what is the story? And then that’s when I came up with, well, you know, it’s three best friends. They all work for this same company, and it’s in the days leading up to a mandatory work party. Of course, they hate their job, and this killer is stalking them. And then there’s a subplot happening with the police and the FBI because I love doing storylines like that. I think a lot of that stems from the fact that some of the coolest scenes in a lot of slasher films are the aftermath scenes, where you have all the police and the FBI.
So after I came up with the concept, I fleshed it all out and pitched the idea to Eric. He really liked it, and then I sat down to write it, fully intending for it to be lots of tension, lots of atmosphere, straightforward horror. If you watch any of the things that we’ve done previously, the stuff that I’ve written, Kevin Smith, I’m a big fan of his, so he is heavily influenced. I’m sure, watching the movie, you can see his influence on my writing and everything. So I’ve always injected comedy somewhere into the horror. And I was not planning on doing that with this. But I couldn’t help myself. I had to use humor to deal with a lot of the serious issues and undertones and things that I was using from my real personal life fictionally in this script. So I never said a word to Eric about any of that, wrote the script, finished it, and sent it to him to read.
Huskisson: Honestly, I almost stopped reading it. I called him in the middle of it because, I mean, when he came to me with the idea, originally, I was like, okay, cool, let’s do that. It’s the next holiday. So I’m expecting this holiday slasher with more kills and blood, and this thrilling ambiance of just this really intense horror movie. And I get, you know, 65% comedy and 35% horror. I called him up, and I’m like, “Dude, what the hell is this? This is a comedy. This isn’t a horror movie.” So we laughed. I still approved the script. I love the script. I think it’s hilarious, but I had no clue. He didn’t tell me a damn thing. When I started reading, he didn’t give me any heads up. I didn’t expect it to be a comedy horror at all.
New Fears Eve was legitimately really funny. I was constantly laughing while watching it. This actually transitions really well to my next question about the movie’s humor, which feels part Scary Movie, part Naked Gun/Airplane. P.J., you mentioned Kevin Smith, but would you say there were any other inspirations to the movie’s physical comedy, and obviously, the humor in the script?
Starks: Every single one of the movies that you mentioned, I absolutely love. I grew up on the National Lampoon and American Pie movies. I was in high school when they came out, so every time the next installment of American Pie came out, it was kind of about the next transition in Jim’s life, and it coincided a lot with the next transition in my life. So those films are very near and dear to my heart.
But that’s also like my sense of humor now, same with Eric, who, like me, has a very immature sense of humor. But just because it’s immature doesn’t mean it’s not smart. I mean, look at Mel Brooks. We share a lot of the same comedic sensibilities, dark humor, all of that. In my opinion, nothing is off the table. And when I mean nothing, the best example I can give you is when my mom ended up passing away towards the end of editing. I would be sitting in a room with her and, like, she and I are joking about her dying of cancer. So I guess it’s generational in a lot of ways.
I don’t know if I would say there’s a lot of slapstick in the movie. There are a couple of times, like when the Brian character, well, slaps the Doctor. Yeah, that’s probably the only time it ventures into that territory, and I almost didn’t do it because when it came to the horror elements, or the Doctor in particular, I wanted to keep it as straightforward and serious as I could. The Doctor, and I hate to get artsy fartsy on you, because I’m definitely not an artsy fartsy filmmaker, but the Doctor does symbolize catastrophic change that happens in a person’s life, and with catastrophic change comes trauma and things that have that ripple effect, and that’s what he creates. I’m a fan of true crime and fascinated by serial killers. After you watch so many things, you kind of have an idea of how a serial killer operates. So I used a lot of that knowledge also in how the Doctor is. But when it came to that moment where Brian is supposed to slap him, I wasn’t going to do it at first, but I thought, man…
It’s too good a moment. So funny.
Starks: I think what makes it work so well is it’s not an angry punch or a shove or anything like that. He’s the more down to earth, probably the least violent character in the movie. So he open-palm slaps him because he’s not a fighter, and it’s almost like a knee-jerk reaction, but it’s also like such a shitty slap that he does.
The funny thing is, when we filmed that scene, when he slapped the Doctor, it actually shut off the eyes by accident. We did multiple takes because I’m like, “Oh shit, the eyes are going off. We need to do it again.” But every take we did, the lights in the eyes would shut off. There was no way we could film it where the lights didn’t go off. And then I had this light bulb go off in my mind, where I thought, “Okay, how about this? Let’s just go ahead and use that first take, because it was the best one. But what we’ll do is we’ll have the Doctor turn towards him, and then the lights and the eyes pop back on.”
So that part right there was a happy accident that spawned an idea that actually works really well, because when the Doctor turns back towards him, and the eyes pop back on, that always gets a really good reaction in an audience setting. And then Frank Dormani, when he did the score, gave him a moment where he could do a musical cue that kind of paired up with the eyes coming back on.
A really fun scene spawned from a happy accident. How did you decide on the look and feel of the Doctor? Was it a kind of “we tried this, we tried that” kind of process, or did you kind of know going in that this is what the Doctor was going to look like in the movie?
Huskisson: Well, the idea came from P.J., that was all him. As he said, he’s a True Crime lover, so the Doctor is kind of a mix of Jack the Ripper and the plague doctor. When he came up with the idea of what he wanted, we contacted a friend of mine, and P.J. pretty much outlined what we wanted to do, some of the colors we wanted to use. And then he would send us something, like a 3D rendering. There was a guy in Louisville who was really the one who kind of just went, “Oh, I can do this, and I can make the mask look like this.”
We used a coat from one of our other films. That was P.J.’s that I had worn, and we had it pieced together by a seamstress here in Owensboro who turned it into an Inverness coat. P.J. found stuff online that he wanted the Doctor to wear. When we got the mask and the top hat, and put them all together, it was fantastic.
Starks: I did have a really good idea as to how I wanted the Doctor to look. Now, the mask wasn’t anything I said needs to look exactly like this or that. Just that it needs to be a plague doctor mask and look like something that could be made at home. I didn’t want it to look like something that he just went to the store and bought and modified. How the Doctor looks in New Fears Eve is almost exactly like what I was hoping he would look like on screen.
I’m a big fan of silent killers like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees, where they’re all business, and any personality they have is given to them through body language, and Jesse McDonald did that in spades. He gave the Doctor a lot of his nuance, the way he walked, and how he always balled his hands into fists and stuff like that. The fixing his coat after an intense situation, things of that nature, like Jesse gave that to the character, so that that was all him. But you know, when you’re making a slasher film, you want your killer to look cool and be stylized, and hopefully have that iconic look. So when people look at it, they’re like, “Oh, man, that’s pretty badass looking,” and I feel like we achieve that with the Doctor.
This movie contains my personal nightmare, which is being stuck at an office party on a holiday.
Starks: To be honest, I knew when I was writing: How do you get everyone to a party but they don’t want to be there? Well, you make it mandatory. I don’t think I’ve ever worked anywhere where they said, “Oh, you HAVE to come to this party we’re putting together, or it’s going to negatively impact your employment here.” There may be a place that does that, but that was just a plot tactic so I could get everybody together in one place where the Doctor could follow them.
Then you also have the party atmosphere. As much as this is a New Year’s Eve movie, it doesn’t really get New Year’s until that last third-act party scene fight, and that was really the whole reason for doing that. During pre-production, I told Eric that anytime you see a movie that’s set on Halloween or Christmas, it’s like the most Halloween anything has ever looked or the most Christmas. Very rarely do you see a holiday that’s celebrated or decorated as much as you see in movies. It’s always over the top. So, that’s what I wanted when it came to that third-act party scene. It had to be very over the top, where you know it’s New Year’s Eve, which is another reason why that Happy New Year’s banner got used so many times. It was probably overused, honestly.
What was your favorite kill in the movie?
Huskisson: I have to go with the torture room. Wait, I’ll take that back. The one where the two cops go in…
Starks: The slaughter room, the kill room.
Huskisson: I just like the fact that the cops get so surprised with what they walk in on, and this guy, this thing is happening to him, and they can do nothing about it. But at the same time, it gets worse, and all they can do is just stand there and watch it. That kill and how they’re in that moment of “oh shit we’ve gotta stop this” and when they realize they can’t, all the other havoc starts, and they just have to sit and watch, and there’s nothing they can do. That’s my favorite kill in the film.
Starks: Well, I wrote them, but to me, the kill that became my favorite was the one where the Ruth character gets her head slammed into the glass door to the point where she gets killed. But a lot of that is because of how good the sound design is. That’s where the magic is, that’s what makes it so effective. That’s probably my favorite kill in the movie.
What are you working on next? Is it a sequel to New Fears Eve? Is that a possibility? I hope so. I mean, that ending feels like there could be a sequel to me.
Starks: It was 100% designed for that because there is a fully fleshed out story for the sequel, and somewhat even of a third movie if it were to get that far. Yeah, it was intended to be left off on a cliffhanger. I feel like the way the movie ends, it ends in such a way that I feel like it’s kind of self-explanatory that it’s meant to be a cliffhanger, right? So you’re like, “Oh, there’s got to be more to this.” Now, whether or not we actually make the sequel that has yet to be seen, but hopefully, yeah, hopefully it does well enough to where, you know, Cineverse would be interested in the possibility, or, you know, maybe we find a rich doctor who really liked the movie and is like, “Hey, how are you getting the sequel made?” And it’s like, “Your bank account?”
Well, best of luck to you because I would love to see a sequel to New Fears Eve.
Huskisson: Can I ask you what your favorite kill in the movie was?
Starks: Oh, I was gonna ask the same.
Oh, boy, see, you’re putting me on the spot. But honestly, the one that sticks out to me is the shears. The shears are really a good kill.
Starks: It’s so interesting. Because there are so many kills in the movie, you talk to people, and like, when I wrote it, I told Eric, “The dildo kill is gonna be…”
The dildo kill is also awesome. It reminded me of Cyberpunk 2077 when you get to beat people to death with the dildo. Niche reference. But no, I think I liked the shears scene because it’s right at the beginning of the movie. The guy’s look of surprise is so funny. It really sets the tone for what the movie is going to be. And it definitely stuck in my brain.
Starks: I kind of expected the same answers a majority of the time, but it really hasn’t been that way. When we talk to people, we get different answers. And I like that, because it does mean that there’s at least enough kills that are interesting and unique to some degree in their own way, like the shears or the throat rip has been brought up. Somebody privately messaged me on Facebook to tell me how much they loved the movie, and that their favorite kill was where the guy gets his face ripped off.
I did like the face rip. All the kills in this movie look incredible. Can you tell the screenagers where to find you and where to see your movies?
Huskisson: BloodMoonPictures.com is a great place for people who want to watch any of our films. You can go there and find pretty much anything about us and what we’ve done. You can follow us on Facebook. We are on Instagram. If they want to watch New Fears Eve, it’s a Screambox exclusive. It’s also available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Plex, YouTube TV, Hoopla, Fandango at Home, and The Roku Channel.
We’re currently working on international distribution for anybody outside North America. We’re hoping in the coming months that we’ll have something locked in, and then we can start getting the movie across the pond.
Starks: And if and after you watch it, review it on Letterboxd or IMDB. Rate it. Let us know what you think. Even if you hated it, we have thick skin.
Thank you both for your time. This was really fun.
Huskisson: Thank you.
Starks: Thank you for taking the time to watch the movie and review it. Thank you so much. We’re both really glad you enjoyed it, and thank you for this.
Absolutely, yeah. Well, thank you again, and we will see you all in the Wasteland.