I have known Dom for a while now and this guy is as talented as they come. He is one of the few people The Movie Whore has met that makes me wish I had the money to invest in his films. Right now that is a list of 3 people. Let’s see what Dom has to say abut the film he is premiering tonight.

TMW - So I here there is this guy named Jim Carter that helped you out with
a couple things. How is his name showing up in the credits and how has
he helped you?

DP - It’s true, there’s a man that resides in northern California. Ken had unearthed an article online that Jim wrote for a site called Rustylime.com and based on that piece of literature, Ken felt compelled to shoot him over the link to our first film “Duality”. What I got in my inbox were some very candid notes about the flick – generally positive, but wholly honest opinions on what he felt did and didn’t work. I got in touch with the cat myself to thank him for his candor and that essentially began a long distance friendship based on a mutual respect and knowledge of flicks. Since then, Jim and I have corresponded about projects and just movies in general and I felt that he would be a good candidate to bounce ideas off of. I asked him if once I completed the first rough cut of my new flick, “The Darkness Within”, if he would take a look at it and give me his genuine reactions to it. He’s basically been a good friend and a fellow film geek who’s shot straight from the hip about pretty much all of Door Eleven’s endeavors.

TMW -  What gave you the idea for this film?

DP - While I was in college I was working on an updated reinterpretation of an Edgar Allen Poe short story. It had some really ambitious ideas in it, but my mind was sort of all over the place with what I wanted to do with it and I ended up putting it on the shelf and never really finishing it.  Years later I had a really weird encounter with a neighbor of mine that reminded me of certain elements of that script. That night, I started writing what would eventually become “The Darkness Within”. I’ve always felt that really great horror films come from a very simple human fear. If you watch “Jaws” for instance, you could really deduce what makes that film so scary to a very primitive fear of being eaten. I mean, on the surface what scares us is the big fucking shark, right? But if you dig a little deeper I think that human beings are used to being the top of the food chain and there’s a primal fear of something more powerful than us eating us alive. Even “The Exorcist”, in my opinion, can be chalked up to something as simple as the fear of losing control of your body. The devil and pea-soup vomit and the crazy voice are all great window dressing for a really simple, universal fear – and that’s why it’s so effective. So with “The Darkness Within”, I wanted to start with a very simple fear – the fear of being watched. That sort of feeling you get when you’re a little kid and your mom tells you to get something out of the basement and while you’re down there you have that feeling that something is peering out at you, so you end up running up the stairs as fast as you can, feeling like at any moment something is about to jump out at you. Once I got that in my head, it became very easy to relate that to adult life. The sort of unfamiliarity you have when you move into a new place. How much it sucks to have people poking their noses into your business. And of course, what it would be like if your neighbor was constantly looking in through your window.

TMW - I dig the idea of going simple. Can you give the kids at home a taste of what they are in for without giving too much away?

DP - This is what I can tell you. “The Darkness Within” is a psychological thriller, set almost entirely in one location, budgeted at around $3,000. It follows the lives of Chad Morgan and Ashley Sera, who are a young couple that have just gotten engaged and moved into their new apartment. They quickly begin to realize that there’s something terribly wrong with their next-door neighbor, Mr. Reed. After a bizarre encounter it becomes very clear that if they don’t unlock the secret behind this mysterious voyeur soon, they stand to lose everything…including their minds!

Basically, what we were trying to do is tell a story that would actually benefit from its own limitations. By setting a film in a small basement apartment, we immediately bring the audience into a claustrophobic setting and we wanted to create the feeling that walls were closing in on them.

The focus of the film shifts from the relationship between Chad and Ashley to the dilemma Chad is faced with by Mr. Reed . Very early in the film, there’s a scene where Chad catches Reed spying through his window and it immediately establishes the frightening situation posed by this guy and as things quickly escalate, the couple’s seemingly perfect relationship begins to disintegrate. We basically spend the first act of the film building this wonderful relationship between these two characters just so we can rip it apart during the second half.

There’s also a big comedic element in the film that’s brought in by the Jordan and Dixon characters, who are essentially Chad’s landlords. Jordan lives in the apartment above him and Dixon is her on-again-off-again roommate. They definitely provide some of the much needed comic relief to the tension and it’s made pretty clear fairly quickly that Jordan’s interest in Chad goes beyond that of just a normal tenant.

Another element being touched on is the spiders in Chad’s apartment. This is something I have firsthand experience with, being that the apartment I lived in at one point did seem to have a pretty bad spider problem – and I think everyone can relate to having to deal with the common house spider bugging you out. But what starts out as something that’s really being played for laughs begins to turn into more of a symbol for what’s going on between Chad and Reed and once we move beyond the “spider-warrior” joke in the film, we begin to see the spiders as an extension of Mr. Reed’s invasion into Chad and Ashley’s lives.

I feel like we live in a voyeuristic culture. Between reality T.V. and celebrity magazines, it sometimes feels like everyone’s more interested in other people’s business more so than their own.  It’s not uncommon, thanks mostly to the internet, to know exactly what’s going on in the lives of people around you. Metaphorically, we’re all kind of looking into each other’s windows. But at the same time, we’re not trying to hit anyone over the head with too much message. If people who dig independent cinema enjoy sitting through an intriguing, suspenseful thriller that’s got a few good laughs and a twist they don’t see coming, than I feel like we did our job.

TMW - Sounds like something that would keep my butt planted in the seat. Besides the money, what are some of the difficulties you faced getting this thing shot?

DP - Well besides money, the biggest issue was really just time…which there was never enough of. When you’re not paying the actors or the crew, everyone is holding down full time jobs in order to pay the bills. I think the shooting schedule was 30 some odd days. On a regular movie with a budget, that would take maybe a month and a half tops because you’d be shooting back to back consecutive days with small breaks in between, but our shoot stretched out well over 8 months. This makes things tricky because it gets tough to build up momentum when you’re mostly only shooting on weekends. And since everyone’s main source of income was from their day jobs, we all needed to work extra hard to ensure we were putting forth our strongest effort into the film. I can honestly say between my day job, shooting and editing all throughout production and all of the post production endeavors, I’ve essentially worked seven day weeks for almost two years.

TMW - Is it worth it?

DP - Fuck YES. I loooooove making flicks, I honestly can’t see myself doing anything else and so far every time at bat has been an absolute blast. I’ve gotten to work with some of the coolest and most talented people I could’ve ever hoped to meet and am very proud of the small feats I’ve been able to accomplish in the past five years. You know you truly love something when you haven’t made a dime at it but continue to do it anyways. This is something that is in my blood and I will keep stepping up to the plate until one of my movies finally makes it to a theater near you.

TMW - I am sure this is going to be a sellout. Are you planning to ship this off to any festivals?

DP - Right now it’s already been shipped out to several festivals across the country. We’re still preparing more submissions and press kits, so hopefully at some point over the next year it will be playing as part of a festival. That’s definitely a big goal of ours, if for no other reason than to get it out to a larger audience and maybe get it in front of the eyes of some potential distributors. I plan on framing any rejection letters.

TMW - You know The Movie Whore and that there is one thing I love to hear about and that is the films you love that you should be embarrassed by but love them anyway. You know the guiltiest of pleasures. What are some of your top Movie Whore movies?

DP - My all time favorites just off the top of my head would be ‘Fight Club’, ‘American Psycho’, ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’, ‘Goodfellas’, ‘Sin City’, ‘Ed Wood’, ‘The Usual Suspects’, ‘SLC Punk’, ‘The World According to Garp’, ‘The Shining’, ‘Taxi Driver’, ‘Reservoid Dogs’, ‘Clockwork Orange’, ‘Back to the Future’, ‘The Rules of Attraction’….this is a list that could really go on forever. As far as guilty pleasures…I mean, everyone always seems to give ‘Hook’ shit, but I love that goddamn movie. I went from working in a rad mom-and-pop video store where we could get away with watching anything to working in a very corporate chain store where it had to be Rated PG and under and that was a flick I would always throw in so I could run around the store screaming “Rufio, Rufio, Ru–fi–OHHHHH!!!!” Ahhh, let’s see what else? ‘Disturbing Behavior’ is one of the best bad films I’ve ever sat through. I’ll pop that in once and a while and dig on it ['The Flys' music video from that flick is among my all time favorite] ‘Angus’ is another flick people seem to dislike or have just forgotten about [doesn't even have a DVD release, wtf!?] but I love that movie and actually have a VHS copy of it that I’ll revisit from time to time. In fact, pretty much any staples 90′s movie is something I love on a different level. ‘Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead’ is classic. ‘Empire Records’ is dope. ‘Airheads’ is killer. If someone’s running around in a flannel shirt with a grunge soundtrack blaring in the background, I’m all in.

That’s pretty much all I got just off the top of my head. But I just want to say thanks Jim for the opportunity to do this interview and for being an all around avid supporter of independent film. I’d encourage anyone who is a lover of movies to support their local film scene and keep two eyes open for folks who may be four-walling or self distributing a flick that they shot in your hometown. I think there’s a new wave of independent film on the horizon and anyone who puts their blood and sweat into the making of a movie needs an audience to support and connect with it. So hit your local arthouse theater and see what the kids in your town are up to, you may even see “The Darkness Within” roll through under the radar…who knows? Much love and stay gold.

That is Dom Portalla. Now remember if you could not get tickets for tonight’s sold out show you can click here to find additional shows.