PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Filmmaker J. Horton launched A Hard Place on January 12 at Englewood Cinema, just outside Dayton, Ohio. The genre-bending creature feature has since hit the road, drawing packed crowds at indie theaters and drive-ins across the Midwest — and beyond (you can read our review here). With Horton often appearing for Q&As, the tour has built serious momentum ahead of the film’s streaming release on Digital VOD, including Apple TV and Prime Video.
The film stars Felissa Rose (Sleepaway Camp, Terrifier 2), Lynn Lowry (Shivers, The Crazies), Sadie Katz (Wrong Turn 6, The Beast Inside), Rachel Amanda Bryant (Craving), Kevin Caliber (“Future Man”), Ashley Undercuffler (Craving, 16 Bits), and Bai Ling (The Crow).
Interview with J. Horton About A Hard Place
PopHorror: This story fuses a crime story with creature horror — what sparked the idea to bring those two worlds crashing together?
J. Horton: I’ve always loved mixing crime and horror. There’s something fun about throwing criminals—people who already live outside the rules—into a situation where even that won’t save them. Like, sure, you’ve robbed banks, shot people, maybe buried a body or two… but none of that helps when a tree-monster’s trying to rip your face off.
What I really dig is the shift in power dynamics. These are characters used to being the threat. They walk into the woods thinking they’re the danger, and suddenly they’re the prey. It flips everything. Their codes, their confidence, their bravado—it all gets tested in a way prison never could.
Plus, criminals tend to come with baggage, which makes for great tension. Everyone’s got a secret, a grudge, a reason to turn on each other when the pressure hits. Add monsters into that mix, and it’s just fuel on the fire. Honestly, it’s a blast to watch bad people try to survive worse things. No one’s calling the cops, no backup’s coming. It’s just them, their bad choices, and whatever’s crawling out of the dark.
Working with Horror Icons
PopHorror: You’ve got genre legends like Felissa Rose and Bai Ling in the cast. How did you approach casting, and what did these icons bring to the table creatively?
J. Horton: I’d worked with Felissa before, and honestly, she’s just pure joy on set. Always shows up, always delivers. She brings this infectious energy that lifts the whole crew — and beyond that, I’ve been a fan of hers since Sleepaway Camp. So getting to work with her, let alone bring her into something where she could stretch a little and play against type, was a real honor. We gave her something a little different than what she’s usually offered, and she ran with it. I love casting people in roles that let them surprise the audience.
Bai Ling — this was my first time working with her, and I’m not gonna lie, I was intimidated going in. She’s such a unique, larger-than-life presence. But from day one, she was lovely with me. Super engaged, gave thoughtful notes on her character, and was really committed to the work. She brought a kind of eccentric intensity that fit the world of the movie perfectly. And she was fun — like, genuinely fun to have around. Professional, prepared, but also totally in the spirit of the chaos.
Bringing people like that in — icons who’ve seen it all but still come ready to work — that’s a gift on any production, especially one as scrappy as ours.
PopHorror: The synopsis hints at an ancient war between monsters of day and night — can you tease what inspired this mythology?
J. Horton: That idea came out of wanting the world to feel bigger than just “criminals vs. creatures.” I didn’t want the monsters to be random threats — I wanted it to feel like our characters had wandered into the middle of something ancient and way beyond them. The day vs. night divide gave us this built-in tension and let us create two very different kinds of horror—one wild and primal, the other more calculated and predatory.
A big part of the inspiration was honestly the Hatfields and McCoys—but dropped into a monster movie context. Just this old, brutal feud that’s been going on so long, no one even remembers who started it or why. It’s generational violence on a mythic scale. The humans just happen to show up in the middle and get caught in the crossfire.
It’s not based on one specific folklore or legend—we kind of pulled bits from everywhere. I like that sort of “ancient but half-forgotten” vibe. You don’t need every detail explained — sometimes it’s creepier when you don’t know the rules, but you can still feel they’re there. That under-the-surface mythology gives everything a little more weight. Plus, let’s be real: monsters fighting monsters is just plain fun.
Mistrust in A Hard Place
PopHorror: There’s a strong undercurrent of mistrust among the crew. Was the human tension always as important as the supernatural threat?
J. Horton: Yeah — maybe even more important, honestly. From the start, I wanted the real danger to come just as much from the people as from the monsters. The supernatural stuff raises the stakes, but it’s the human cracks that make it interesting. These aren’t heroes—they’re desperate people with baggage, bad history, and conflicting agendas. And once things start falling apart, that tension gets just as deadly as anything lurking in the woods.
I’ve always believed that horror works best when it’s about people first. If you took the monsters out of the movie, you’d still have a powder keg ready to blow. The creatures just speed up the clock.
Plus, paranoia and mistrust are their own kind of horror. When you can’t trust the people next to you, even the quiet moments feel dangerous. That’s the vibe I wanted — where survival isn’t just about avoiding monsters, it’s about not getting stabbed in the back while you’re looking for a way out.
PopHorror: The setting plays a big role — isolating, harsh, and vast. What did you want that landscape to say about the character’ state of mind or their fate?
J. Horton: The setting was everything. That harsh, unforgiving landscape wasn’t just a backdrop — it was a reflection of where the characters were mentally. These people are already lost before the monsters even show up. Emotionally, morally, spiritually — they’re off the grid. So putting them in a place that’s wide open but somehow still claustrophobic just made sense. It’s isolating, endless, and indifferent. That’s the real threat—it doesn’t care if you make it out.
And we shot it to feel that way. Wide frames, long lenses, natural light. We wanted to let the environment breathe—to let the silence and space press in on people. Even when the characters are standing still, it should feel like the land itself is watching them, swallowing them up. The way we framed it was meant to reinforce that—they’re small in the frame, tiny against this massive, uncaring wilderness. It’s not just about monsters in the woods. The woods are the monster.
PopHorror: With characters being criminals hiding from the law, how did you make them compelling?
J. Horton: The key was not treating them like villains — just people who’ve made bad choices, sometimes for understandable reasons. I wasn’t interested in writing cartoon bad guys. I wanted them to feel lived-in. Some are trying to outrun guilt, some are clinging to loyalty, and some are just straight-up lost. You don’t have to root for them, but you should get them.
And we also had fun with it. Take Candy, for example — we gave her this beatnik, Jack Kerouac–style vernacular. On one level, it’s just fun to hear that kind of voice in this kind of world. But it’s also a bit of a wink—a gentle ribbing or homage to all the faux-tough-guy banter that flooded movies in the wake of Tarantino in the mid-’90s and early 2000s. Everyone wanted to be slick and quotable. So we leaned into that a bit but made it weird and poetic instead of cool-for-the-sake-of-it.
Criminals are fun to write because they operate outside the rules. But when you ground them in real emotions and contradictions, that’s when they become compelling. You never know which way they’ll go—and that’s the tension.
Location, Location, Location
PopHorror: What challenges did you face shooting a genre film like A Hard Place in a remote location — especially one involving practical effects, night shoots, or creature work?
J. Horton: Man, where do I start? Cold. Snow. Mud. Horse poop. I’m not being metaphorical — we were literally dodging piles of frozen horse crap while setting up blood rigs. It was February in Ohio, and we were way out there. Just getting gear in and out was a task. And once we started night shoots? Forget it. Temps dropped, fingers froze, batteries died faster, and everything took twice as long.
And then we layered on practical effects, full creature suits, and stunt work — all on a tight budget. It was a huge-scale movie for what we had. That’s not me hyping it — it shouldn’t have been possible. But the only reason it was possible is because we had the right people. Talented, reliable, and completely unflinching in the face of chaos.
You have to build a team you trust on something like this. No one’s coming to save you. You need cast and crew who show up ready, solve problems, and keep moving — even when their boots are full of snow and they’ve been working 14 hours in the dark. That’s how we got this thing done. Not money. Not luck. Just good people refusing to quit.
PopHorror: The title A Hard Place suggests characters trapped in every sense — physically, existentially. How does that theme play out in the film?
J. Horton: Yeah, the title kind of says it all—these people are screwed from every possible angle. It’s not just “stuck in the woods with monsters”; — though, yes, they are very much stuck in the woods with monsters. But they’re also stuck in bad choices, toxic relationships, emotional baggage, and the kind of life decisions that look cool in a heist movie but fall apart in the cold at 3 a.m.
I liked the idea of giving them nowhere to run—not physically, not morally, not emotionally. Some of them are trying to change, some are doubling down on being awful, but either way, there’s this sense that the walls are closing in. Even the landscape messes with them—looks wide open, but every direction leads to pain. It’s like an open-world game where every path is just a different flavor of death.
And yeah, I’ve made a few bad calls myself over the years, so I relate. Not the murdering and robbing part—but that feeling of being stuck between what you want to be and what you’ve actually done? That’s pretty universal. And way scarier than a guy in a rubber suit. (Though we’ve got that too.)
PopHorror: You’ve worked across multiple indie horror projects. What lessons or techniques did you bring into this film that separate it from your past work?
J. Horton: Yeah, I’ve done horror, but I’ve also made comedies, dramas, documentaries — a whole range of stuff. And honestly, everything feeds into everything. Doing documentaries taught me how to move fast, stay flexible, and find story in the moment. Comedies taught me about rhythm and timing, especially with dialogue. Dramas taught me how to slow down and sit in a scene when it matters. All of that came into play on “A Hard Place.”
With this one, I knew we were aiming big—creature work, action, a large ensemble, and a pretty ambitious setting for the budget. So I pulled from all of it. You learn how to pivot without losing focus, how to solve problems without killing momentum, and how to keep actors locked in even when conditions are rough.
More than anything, I’ve learned how to strip things down to what actually matters. Story, performance, tone. If those are locked in, the rest can be chaos and it’ll still work. And trust me—some days, it was chaos. But we kept the camera rolling, and we came out with something raw and real.
PopHorror: For horror fans always looking for fresh monsters — what can you say about the creatures in A Hard Place that sets them apart from the usual fare?
J. Horton: These are new monsters. They’re not vampires, not werewolves — not even zombies, though I know the look might trick you for a second. (Funny enough, in the original draft they were vampires vs. werewolves — but that’s been buried, literally and figuratively.)
What we ended up with is something a lot stranger. More organic. The day creatures are this kind of plant-based hive species — half fungus, half flesh, like nature decided to get mean. And the night creatures are something else entirely. Sleek, calculating, almost surgical in how they operate. They’ve been at war forever, and our characters are just unlucky enough to wander into the middle of it.
We wanted to make monsters that felt like they came from a different ecosystem entirely — less “dude in a costume,” more “what is that and how did it evolve?” No rulebook, no silver bullets, no ancient prophecy —just raw survival against something alien and ancient and hungry. It’s a fresh take. Or at least, a twisted one.
