DARK STAR PICTURES BLOODY DISGUSTING
“Midnight Movie Making at its Finest” – Nightmarish Conjurings
***OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2018 SITGES FESTIVAL***
***OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2018 FRIGHTFEST UK***
***OFFICIAL SELECTION – 2017 CINEPOCALYPSE***
Dark Star Pictures and Bloody Disgusting will release the midnight horror film DEMENTIA PART II in theaters on May 21, 2021, and on VOD, Digital HD and DVD on June 1, 2021.
DEMENTIA PART II was produced from conception to its world premiere screening at Cinepocalype Film Festival by the writer/director team Matt Mercer and Mike Testin (The Salesman, Dementia) in just 5 weeks. The film stars Matt Mercer (Contracted, Bliss, Beyond the Gates), Graham Skipper (Almost Human, Sequence Break, VFW), Najarra Townsend (Contracted, The Stylist), and Suzanne Voss (The Lords of Salem, Dementia).
Wendell (Matt Mercer) receives a threatening phone call from his parole officer Reggie (Graham Skipper)… if he doesn’t find a job immediately, he will face serious legal repercussions. Wendell wrangles some home maintenance work for a seemingly benign older woman, Suzanne (Suzanne Voss), who persists in giving him increasingly absurd tasks to complete around the house. As the workday progresses, Wendell is thrown into an ever-escalating nightmare, and comes face to face with an unexpected evil. Suzanne hides a dark secret. And it’s up to Wendell and Suzanne’s daughter, Sheila (Najarra Townsend) to put an end to her madness.
DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT (Matt Mercer and Mike Testin):
Beyond the weird tale that unfolds in Dementia Part II, the making of the film itself has a backstory that’s in some ways equally absurd, and for us has become part of its identity.
A film festival in Chicago called Cinepocalypse held their first annual event last November (2017), and they reserved a slot for an unmade feature-length film. In a nutshell, they challenged us and the producers at BoulderLight Pictures (Raphael and JD) to conceive, finance, shoot, and finish a feature film, script-to-screen, in literally 5 weeks (beginning the day the festival announced their schedule) and see if something could come of it. Whatever we made, they promised to show it in that slot.
Insanity, but…We couldn’t resist the challenge, so we said, “Hell yes.” We got a few friends together and decided to make a completely unrelated, darkly comedic sequel to a critically-acclaimed thriller Mike directed a couple of years ago called Dementia (released by IFC in 2015). Instead of shooting for dramatic-thriller territory again, we aimed for off-kilter midnight horror-comedy territory, and put the pedal to the metal. The goal was not to fly in the face of the first film, but instead to create something entirely of its own identity, and make a fun, gooey, bizarre ride in the process.
So this movie was the result of that one month of insanity, and we’re excited at the response it’s garnering. Since that first screening, composer David Labovitch created an original and entertaining new score for it, and we’ve slightly tweaked the film to smooth some rough edges, and pad the runtime with some new little bits… so, here it is, the finished version of our midnight jaunt, Dementia Part II.
