PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Every time I cover the Fantasia International Film Festival, I know I’m going to find some hidden gems, instant classics, and all-around amazing genre programming, and 2026, which is Fantasia’s 30th year, has come through in spades.
One of the standouts for me this year is the short film, Redneck, written and directed by Alexandria Basso and starring her sister, Annalise Basso (Oculus) and about 50 redheaded extras. It’s raw and visceral and the perfect vehicle to showcase an up-and-coming talented filmmaker.
Blending dark fantasy and Southern Gothic folklore, “Redneck” follows a young woman’s struggle to hold onto her humanity in a world where red hair is cursed and souls are currency.
To celebrate the short’s world premiere at the festival, I chatted with Alexandria and Annalise about working together, recruiting so many redheads, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I loved Redneck. I thought it was so good and I’m super excited to talk to you both today.
Annalise Basso: We’re excited as well!
PopHorror: Alexandria, you’ve said that Redneck started as a joke about the stereotype of redheads stealing souls. What was the exact moment or spark that made you decide to flip the punchline into a serious atmospheric piece of folklore?
Alexandria Basso: I have been writing for a long time and horror is such a great genre to play in for first time filmmakers because you can do so much. When you have her as a sister… I’m going to say this a million times today but she is my muse and I love her as a sister but also as a filmmaker and an actress, so me as a desperate creative wanting to take a risk and make something, that inspired me and motivated me to make something because I was like, I have this great talent here and we have a cabin out in the woods and we have this idea, let’s pull the trigger.
PopHorror: I love that! Annalise, I’ve seen the phrase, “Everybody’s got a story about redheads.” What is your personal relationship with having red hair and how did it feel turning that physical trait into a cinematic curse?
Annalise Basso: That was awesome. That was beautifully put. For me, growing up as a redhead there was just a sense of otherness and something that my sister has mentioned, the heart of this film does have a lot to do with belonging and I think whether you have red hair or not, just growing up you want to belong and find your group and find where you fit in. I remember never really fitting in and whether that was because of my red hair or something else, I don’t know, but this project really was the first where I have felt like I could just be me. I know I’m a monster in it so I don’t know what that says, but I did feel a sense of freedom just because in most of the other horror I’ve done, there’s a prosthetic, there’s a special effect, there’s something that makes me not myself, and in this one, just confronting and accepting and embracing the monster within was somehow quite freeing and fun, and getting to work with my sister too. She was just so nice before so I can’t just not talk about how incredible it was to work with her. I’m sure you have some questions about it and I’m ready. I’m ready to answer those questions.
PopHorror: I actually do have a question about working together as sisters. When working on set or in development, how do you balance the professional boundary of filmmaking and acting with the unfiltered honesty of being sisters?
Alexandria Basso: We’re very honest with each other and I feel like sisters speak – if you’re blessed enough to have a good relationship with your sister – a very, very specific language where sometimes you don’t even need to boss her around or direct her. You look at her and you know where you want to go or I feel that. Our sensibilities are so similar, we love all the same movies, we quote the same movies all the time. When your worlds are so similar, it’s really easy not to direct. I already know what she’s capable of, I know the scope of her talent, I know where she excels, I know where she’s weak and that’s not many places. She just made it really effortless.
Annalise Basso: At the same time, this was my first time being able, as a younger sister, to prove yourself to your older siblings. To have that opportunity in a world that she created and a world that she built was not something that I took lightly, and although I’m a professional and I’ve been doing this almost 20 years at this point, there was no question in my mind when she stepped on set that this was her set and it was really cool for me to be like, this is a director who happens to be my sister and not like, my sister’s directing me in a movie. It was very professional from the beginning because I think there’s an equal foundation of trust and respect, not just because we love each other because love is great, but respect, especially in a professional environment, is a lot stronger. She’s a brilliant creative and storyteller and it was just easy to fall under her spell on set.
Alexandria Basso: Thanks!
PopHorror: That was so amazingly sweet! How did you guys put out the call for 50 redheads and how did you get them on board?
Alexandria Basso: We shot this in Tennessee, and in the Midwest there just happens to be a lot of redheads. There were redheads on every street corner. I was going up to people in the airport, at grocery stores. I made these really funny business cards and I would go up to people and I’d be like, “Hi, I’m a first time director and I’m casting a movie!” and they’d recoil, but then I’d be like, “But I’m only casting redheads,” and immediately there was this sense of ease and they were in on the joke and they knew… I don’t know, there’s like this camaraderie and this knowingness around redheads, like we all know.
Annalise Basso: We all have a secret handshake.
Alexandria Basso: Yeah, there was also a really, really great extras casting director so combined with her efforts – Tina Kerr – putting out a call just to locals in Tennessee and the surrounding area and then my guerilla boots on the ground effort of just going up to random redheads at the gas station, yeah, we got about 50.
Annalise Basso: It was a sight to behold!
Alexandria Basso: People couldn’t believe it, when all the extras started coming down onto the set down this hill from my mom’s cabin to the set of cool, dilapidated, deteriorating cabins, a really cool set. Just one after the other, they just kept coming in all ages and all sizes.
Annalise Basso: Then they picked up torches! And even as a redhead, looking at this tribe… A hoard, I’ll say a hoard, a hoard of redheads, yeah, it was something…
Alexandria Basso: It was really striking, really visually striking and everyone also had a lot of fun. We were filming in record-breaking heat in the middle of the forest, we were literally picking ticks off of each other, holding torches next to a very old brittle cabin and yet every single person from the 60-year-old woman to the 10-year-old kid was like, “I’m so excited to be here as a redhead and be in on this joke.”
Annalise Basso: No complaints.
Alexandria Basso: It was really empowering for a lot of them who have grown up with the soulless ginger joke to stand on the other side of that joke and be like, so what? Yes, and? It was really fun.
PopHorror: Red hair aside, I’m sure a large group of people with torches was a sight to behold on its own and then add that everyone is similar.
Annalise Basso: Yes, yes, and then add screaming, it was quite intimidating.
PopHorror: I bet! Are there any plans to expand Redneck the short into a feature length film?
Alexandria Basso: Yes, there’s a single plan. This is a proof of concept. The world is so fun to play in. It could be a series, it could be a feature, but I have a really great concept for a feature that’s kind of like O Brother, Where Art Thou? meets Sinners, like just this Southern gothic weird fairy tale through the South about redheads. The goal, and that’s why we’re here, is to get as many eyes on it as possible and to create some momentum because a feature is very possible.
PopHorror: I will be first in line and I’m very excited for that. Playing at Fantasia, that’s a huge deal!
Annalise Basso: I keep telling her the fact that she’s a first time filmmaker, was able to get this far without an agent, just with people who believed in her vision, is quite an accomplishment because people do this for years and years and years and they don’t stop trying. That is something that I will say whenever I read articles about somebody hitting it big or overnight success. She’s been writing and directing her whole life. She would direct me and my brother when we would play outside and she’s always been there as a storyteller and as a creative, always expanding her mind and her imagination. Yes, it’s an incredible professional accomplishment. I’ve seen how hard she’s worked and how far she’s pushed herself and how she’s never given up, and I really hope that this is somehow a success story and inspiration for other filmmakers because really, this is a game of endurance. She’s relentless and that’s something that I really respect.
Alexandria Basso: I’m really good at failing a lot until the right thing hits. It’s a timing thing and things have lined up. Fantasia’s such a great festival and the celebration of my favorite kind of movie, which is something that leans into the supernatural because for me, I love Stephen King. I love that even the stories of his that don’t take place in a world with a little bit of fantasy, like The Shawshank Redemption, to me, still feels fantastical, and Stand by Me still feels fantastical. He’s just so quietly supernatural and that’s the kind of film I want to make, and that’s why horror is so fun to play in because yeah, there’s room for gore, there’s room for shock, but everyone… They think that horror is meant to scare you and it’s actually just another language to get to you, to eliminate things that are really dark and unknown. That’s what it is; it’s the unknown. To just lump it into horror, it’s so much broader than that. It’s just like the perfect outlet.
PopHorror: I have a fear of the unknown so it’s perfect for me. That’s why I love horror. I have just one last question for you both. What’s your favorite scary movie?
Alexandria Basso: Can I do my own movies? I’m just kidding. Can I do a two-part answer to this? The thing that scares me the most is the destruction of innocence on a mass scale, so natural disaster movies fill me with so much dread. Like 2012 is a horror movie to me because I can’t physically stop that amount of destruction happening and people being wiped out, that really scares me. Civilization being wiped out really scares me. My favorite overt horror movie is Silence of the Lambs. I think it’s perfect because it is a romance between Hannibal and Clarice, and the way Jonathan Demme, just all of these front-on closeup shots… They’re so disconcerting. My sister and I will watch the same movie like a hundred times in a year, like a hundred times, and I’ve watched Silence of the Lambs a few times this year and it’s just so uncomfortable and unnerving to be stared at on the screen and I don’t think anyone’s ever done that again. That’s the perfect horror movie to me, and it’s also very quiet and peaceful. That’s my number one.
Annalise Basso: My favorite horror is The Babadook just because there’s something about corrupting and distorting this childlike creature and making it evil and that really freaked me out. It did its job well because usually… Growing up doing horror, it’s like okay, yeah, there’s a monster, there’s whatever, and I’ve been able to see behind the curtain so it sort of demystified a lot of the monsters and a lot of the stuff that would normally scare… What is mystery now in a world where you can just look up anything and see everything?
Alexandria Basso: How it’s made.
Annalise Basso: I can say that the movies that scare me the most like The Babadook have a lot to do with… There’s this one scene where this kid starts screaming in the backseat and mom’s driving and she doesn’t know what the kid’s screaming at, and it’s just the chaos that still moves me to this day. I’m thinking about it and I think there’s a lot of horror, and going back to your fear of the unknown, who doesn’t have a fear of the unknown? The stuff that you can’t see is often a lot more powerful and tangible than the stuff that you do see and can hold in your hand.
Thank you so much to Alexandria and Annalise for taking the time to chat with us! Redneck had its International premiere at Fantasia 2026 and is currently playing the festival circuit.
