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 most unique and unexpected films I viewed this year is the surreal, experimental horror film, Sour Minnows, written and directed by Harrison Atkins and starring David Brown (Cvnt) and Chase Williamson (I Blame Society).
Two friends stumble upon an unusual sight: six men sensually licking the pavement on an empty LA street. For Ricky, this moment ruptures something. As his reality grows porous, and his memories begin to slip and slide, he finds himself in contact with “The Yellow Thing,” an entity that wears people like costumes. As Ricky adapts to his expanding worldview, a delirious new logic takes hold.
To celebrate the film’s premiere at the festival, I chatted with Harrison about crafting the film, selling his vision, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I had a lot of fun with Sour Minnows so I’m excited to talk to you about it today.
Harrison Atkins: I’m excited to talk to you too!
PopHorror: The catalyst for the entire movie is Ricky witnessing these six men sensually licking the pavement on an empty street. Was this striking image born from a dream, a real life intrusive thought, or a literal event that you witnessed and thought, I have to build a movie around this?
Harrison Atkins: It’s interesting. I was looking for the right Buñuelian surrealist image to start the movie and I knew it needed to be something that felt cursed, that felt like a visual sort of hex. You don’t need a special prop; you don’t need any special equipment to lick the street. You only need the tongue that you have in your mouth and the street that’s at your feet. I feel like there’s something mundane about it, that I felt really attracted to. It seemed like it had this transgressive and taboo quality that felt like it satisfied this poetic condition or something.
PopHorror: Mundane is an interesting word choice to use to describe it. You’ve described Sour Minnows as a labor of love born in the sacred gutter underneath Los Angeles. How do the unique geography and culture of LA shape the movie?
Harrison Atkins: You know, LA is a city that’s haunted by the ghosts of movies past or something. It feels like when you watch films that are made in LA there’s a tonal creature that’s always just outside the frame and in a way, I think that we try to point the camera directly at it. There’s like this other texture that belies the artificiality of movies, that I feel is sort of haunted.
PopHorror: LA is a special place. It feels like anything can go there, it feels different. When you go to LA, it’s like anything can happen and anything’s possible. Maybe it’s because I don’t live there and when I go it’s like a special time.
Harrison Atkins: Right, to me it’s a city that… There’s beautiful light, beautiful people, there’s fun things happening, but also you know that in the darkest crevice in LA there’s the most evil shit that you can imagine. The most evil shit you can find anywhere is happening in LA somewhere. It has that feeling that the facade is in front of something horrific.
PopHorror: Yes, absolutely. On paper, an image of six men sensually licking the pavement sounds completely absurd. How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?
Harrison Atkins: The script was a poetic document really; it was originally written as a poem that was 12 pages long and it kind of expanded over time slowly until it became an 80-something page combination between a screenplay and a poem. I had this amorphous, subjective document that felt like it wasn’t just communicating what the was but maybe communicating how the movie felt, or something about the ideology that the movie had. I was working largely with a cast and crew of friends, of people that I had known before. It was a small crew and we tried to create an environment where even though the narrative events were maybe slippery or at times ambiguous, there was a tonal center where we were all tuned into the same mood. I feel like that was the North Star really, the tone more than anything concrete.
PopHorror: How did you sell them on that scene and movie magic, but it looks like they’re actually licking the pavement.
Harrison Atkins: Well, to some extent I think that the script was kind of self-selecting. It’s like if you’re exposed to an idea like this, you either lean in and want to hear more or you turn around and walk away. I think that the people who were involved in the movie were the ones that were maybe interested in hearing more. We made it on the day. We took pains to make sure that the scene in question was safe for everyone so it wasn’t a Petri dish where people would get sick or get their tongues cut up.
PopHorror: That’s good to hear because that was my first thought when I saw it. Of all colors in the spectrum, what made yellow the definitive shade of the entity?
Harrison Atkins: I feel like yellow has this synthetic quality. It feels like a color that you don’t really see much of in nature and so in trying to find the visual language for this uncanny outsider, it felt like a productive artificiality or something, that there was this weird uncanniness that came about when imagining the creature being yellow.
PopHorror: The film is having its premiere at Fantasia which is one of the most prestigious film festivals out there. How does that feel for you? How did you celebrate?
Harrison Atkins: It feels amazing! The film, it’s just up to its own thing so to have the validation of Fantasia screening the movie feels incredible and feels like it’s an honor, and it also feels like the right context for an audience to maybe try to be immersed in this world for the first time. I feel like when we found out that we got in, we were very excited but it pretty quickly became this maelstrom of all the post-production stuff that needs to be buttoned up to get the movie ready to fully premiere. I feel like I’m still processing that whole episode of my life and I’ll be excited to pop the champagne after the world premiere on Friday.
PopHorror: I always know when I’m covering Fantasia that I’m going to see something amazing and cool and definitely things that push the boundaries and are unusual, and I found that with Sour Minnows.
Harrison Atkins: Thank you so much. That’s so nice.
PopHorror: I have just one last question for you. What is your favorite scary movie?
Harrison Atkins: Wow, it’s tricky. I love The Ring. It’s sort of normy but I’ve seen it so many times. I love Gore Verbinski (read our interview with him HERE). It’s just really in the pocket. I also love Pulse, the Kiyoshi Kurosawa one. I think about that a lot, that was maybe even an influence on Sour Minnows, which is a cliché because I feel like it’s an influence on everything, but I love that movie. I love the fact that a lot of my favorite narratives don’t fully cohere, like there’s something that emerges out of the friction between elements that don’t feel like they fit together perfectly and Pulse has that for me. I find Lost Highway scary. I’m obviously obsessed with Lynch. Inland Empire of course; all the Lynch movies. There’s a lot of scary stuff in Mulholland Drive, Twin Peaks: The Return.
Thank you so much to Harrison for taking the time to chat with us! Sour Minnows had its world premiere at Fantasia and is currently playing the festival circuit.
