 |
| 'Fractured' filmmakers from left, Eric Swinderman, Felissa Rose, Jon Abrahams, Emelia Sherin, and Sage O'Bryant >> |
What happens when the person you trust to help you make sense of the world becomes the person you suspect is tearing it apart?
That's the unsettling premise behind Fractured, a new psychological thriller from Cleveland filmmakers Eric Swinderman and Sage O'Bryant. Starring Jon Abrahams (Scary Movie, Meet the Parents), horror favorite Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp) and Lew Temple (The Walking Dead), the film follows Arthur Thorne, a troubled, increasingly isolated man whose childhood trauma and growing paranoia leave him questioning his own reality.
Swinderman is no stranger to Northeast Ohio's independent film scene. An Emmy-nominated writer, director, and producer, he's made films in Cleveland for more than a decade. His credits include the locally produced anthology Made in Cleveland and the dark comedy The Enormity of Life, starring Breckin Meyer and Emily Kinney.
O'Bryant, who directs Fractured from Swinderman's screenplay, also has a long history in the Northeast Ohio film community. The two creatives collaborated on both Made in Cleveland and The Enormity of Life.
Emelia Sherin co-stars and serves as a producer on the film, per Variety. Abrahams, Matthew James and Shera Piper will serve as executive producers.
We caught up with Swinderman to discuss the film's origins, its complicated central character, the challenges of independent production, and why he hopes audiences leave the theater questioning everything they've just seen.
Midwest Movie Maker (MMM): What's Fractured about, and what kind of experience are you hoping audiences have when they watch it?
Eric Swinderman (ES): Fractured is a psychological thriller/horror film that follows an isolated man with deep-seated childhood issues that prevent him from building positive relationships with the people around him.
Without giving away too much, he eventually begins to descend into a delusional, paranoid state, where he believes his therapist is manipulating him in an attempt to turn him into a cold-blooded killer.
We wanted to create a modern thriller with a classic feel. I’d like people to say that if Hitchcock made a movie today, it might look something like this.
MMM: Where did the original idea for Fractured come from?
ES: Sage and I were working on multiple scripts and projects over the course of a year, and we were finding that, with the economy and uncertainty about the world around us, investors did not want to jump into a big-budget indie film.
One day, Sage mentioned a movie called Good Boy, which was made by a YouTuber for very little money. So we decided to switch gears and write something specifically that could be made on a lower budget.
Because my good friend Felissa Rose was already attached to the project, we considered crowdfunding only because movies that feature Felissa have been very successful when crowdfunded.
But after we made a proof of concept, we were lucky enough to find an investor who wanted to finance the entire project.
MMM: What attracted you to the psychological horror genre rather than a more traditional thriller or drama?
ES: I don’t think the traditional horror genre fits my writing style. I tend to write deeper characters with bigger arcs and backstories.
And I don’t know that an audience that wants to see a bunch of blood and gore really wants to wait around for the story to develop.
So since horror is so popular right now, obviously with the success of films like Obsession and Backrooms, we knew we wanted to do horror. But we also wanted to put our own slightly more sophisticated spin on the genre.
MMM: Without giving away spoilers, what makes your main character, Arthur Thorne, such an interesting fella to follow?
ES: Aside from the fact that he may be turning into a serial killer, it’s likely a lot of people will relate to Arthur.
In this world where people feel more and more isolated and more and more like their relationships aren’t as strong as they used to be, I think a lot of people will sympathize with him to a point.
He’s also what you would call an unreliable narrator, and I know people will really enjoy getting inside his head and seeing what makes him tick.
MMM: Every film has at least one day where something unexpected happens. What was the biggest challenge you faced during production, and how did you work around it?
ES: Usually, in an independent film, the big variable is the locations. Sometimes you might get to a location and find out that it wasn’t what you thought it was. Or maybe they even forgot you were coming and weren’t prepared for you. Or maybe they weren’t as accommodating as you hoped they would be.
But in our case, we didn’t really run into any of that. Our locations were incredible.
Most of the problems anybody would run into were minor, like running out of water in the middle of the day and having to go get more. Or a vegetarian cast or crew member didn’t get the order they wanted. But this was one of the smoothest independent projects I’ve ever been a part of.
MMM: You assembled a cast that includes some familiar faces for horror fans. What did Abrahams, Rose, and Temple bring to the project that surprised you?
ES: Nothing about what they did surprised me. We knew they were professionals. We knew that they were incredible actors. We knew that they understood the genre, and they delivered every day in every scene. We could not have asked for a better cast.
MMM: Was there a particular scene that became everyone's favorite?
ES: Filming at Cleveland State University was exciting because that is my alma mater. However, if I were to ask the rest of the crew, I think most people enjoyed filming at the motel. It just had a really great noir feel, and it really is kind of the crescendo of the movie.
I think the actors had to do some things they weren’t necessarily comfortable doing, and that was exciting. The audience is really going to enjoy that scene.
MMM: At its core, Fractured explores questions about reality and perception. Why do you think audiences are so drawn to stories that make them question what's real?
ES: At the end of the day, people go to movies to escape reality. And what better way to escape reality than to create a world where you are unsure what is reality and what is fantasy? These stories put the audience into the movie and give them a fun task of figuring out what the hell is going on.
MMM: When the credits roll, what's the one thing you hope viewers are still talking about on the drive home?
ES: The movie has a lot of twists and turns. As we said before, it really blurs the line between reality and insanity. So I hope people are driving home talking about the ending and asking themselves, “What the hell did I just watch? What was real and what wasn’t? And now I think I have to go back and watch it again!”
And then hopefully again and again and again.
We caught up with Swinderman to discuss the film's origins, its complicated central character, the challenges of independent production, and why he hopes audiences leave the theater questioning everything they've just seen.
Director Sage O'Bryant in video village
Putting the pieces together
Midwest Movie Maker (MMM): What's Fractured about, and what kind of experience are you hoping audiences have when they watch it?
Eric Swinderman (ES): Fractured is a psychological thriller/horror film that follows an isolated man with deep-seated childhood issues that prevent him from building positive relationships with the people around him.
Without giving away too much, he eventually begins to descend into a delusional, paranoid state, where he believes his therapist is manipulating him in an attempt to turn him into a cold-blooded killer.
We wanted to create a modern thriller with a classic feel. I’d like people to say that if Hitchcock made a movie today, it might look something like this.
MMM: Where did the original idea for Fractured come from?
ES: Sage and I were working on multiple scripts and projects over the course of a year, and we were finding that, with the economy and uncertainty about the world around us, investors did not want to jump into a big-budget indie film.
One day, Sage mentioned a movie called Good Boy, which was made by a YouTuber for very little money. So we decided to switch gears and write something specifically that could be made on a lower budget.
Because my good friend Felissa Rose was already attached to the project, we considered crowdfunding only because movies that feature Felissa have been very successful when crowdfunded.
But after we made a proof of concept, we were lucky enough to find an investor who wanted to finance the entire project.
 |
| Setting up a scene |
MMM: What attracted you to the psychological horror genre rather than a more traditional thriller or drama?
ES: I don’t think the traditional horror genre fits my writing style. I tend to write deeper characters with bigger arcs and backstories.
And I don’t know that an audience that wants to see a bunch of blood and gore really wants to wait around for the story to develop.
So since horror is so popular right now, obviously with the success of films like Obsession and Backrooms, we knew we wanted to do horror. But we also wanted to put our own slightly more sophisticated spin on the genre.
MMM: Without giving away spoilers, what makes your main character, Arthur Thorne, such an interesting fella to follow?
ES: Aside from the fact that he may be turning into a serial killer, it’s likely a lot of people will relate to Arthur.
In this world where people feel more and more isolated and more and more like their relationships aren’t as strong as they used to be, I think a lot of people will sympathize with him to a point.
He’s also what you would call an unreliable narrator, and I know people will really enjoy getting inside his head and seeing what makes him tick.
 |
| The 'Fractured' one-sheet, featuring Jon Abrahams |
MMM: Every film has at least one day where something unexpected happens. What was the biggest challenge you faced during production, and how did you work around it?
ES: Usually, in an independent film, the big variable is the locations. Sometimes you might get to a location and find out that it wasn’t what you thought it was. Or maybe they even forgot you were coming and weren’t prepared for you. Or maybe they weren’t as accommodating as you hoped they would be.
But in our case, we didn’t really run into any of that. Our locations were incredible.
Most of the problems anybody would run into were minor, like running out of water in the middle of the day and having to go get more. Or a vegetarian cast or crew member didn’t get the order they wanted. But this was one of the smoothest independent projects I’ve ever been a part of.
MMM: You assembled a cast that includes some familiar faces for horror fans. What did Abrahams, Rose, and Temple bring to the project that surprised you?
ES: Nothing about what they did surprised me. We knew they were professionals. We knew that they were incredible actors. We knew that they understood the genre, and they delivered every day in every scene. We could not have asked for a better cast.
 |
| Makeup on the monitor |
MMM: Was there a particular scene that became everyone's favorite?
ES: Filming at Cleveland State University was exciting because that is my alma mater. However, if I were to ask the rest of the crew, I think most people enjoyed filming at the motel. It just had a really great noir feel, and it really is kind of the crescendo of the movie.
I think the actors had to do some things they weren’t necessarily comfortable doing, and that was exciting. The audience is really going to enjoy that scene.
MMM: At its core, Fractured explores questions about reality and perception. Why do you think audiences are so drawn to stories that make them question what's real?
ES: At the end of the day, people go to movies to escape reality. And what better way to escape reality than to create a world where you are unsure what is reality and what is fantasy? These stories put the audience into the movie and give them a fun task of figuring out what the hell is going on.
MMM: When the credits roll, what's the one thing you hope viewers are still talking about on the drive home?
ES: The movie has a lot of twists and turns. As we said before, it really blurs the line between reality and insanity. So I hope people are driving home talking about the ending and asking themselves, “What the hell did I just watch? What was real and what wasn’t? And now I think I have to go back and watch it again!”
And then hopefully again and again and again.
Comments