Thanksgiving is just a few days away, but Halloween is delivering one last fright to Montgomery County.
The feature-length indie horror flick “The Haunted Forest” just wrapped 18 days of filming Monday night at Markoff’s Haunted Forest in Dickerson, Maryland, where the story is set.
“It’s basically this high school kid, he’s obsessed with Halloween, he loves horror movies and he gets an opportunity to work at The Haunted Forest,” writer and director Keith Boynton told WTOP. “He’s thrilled beyond anything, he meets a girl, everything’s going great — but then people at the forest start dying for real.”
Founded in 1992, Markoff’s Haunted Forest is an eerie setting with animatronic ghouls swooping across bridges.
“My dad’s from Silver Spring and the Markoffs, who run Markoff’s Haunted Forest, are my cousins on my dad’s side of the family, so that’s my connection to this place,” Boynton said. “I came here with my brother probably nine years ago now and we were just blown away by this place. It’s amazing. It’s so elaborate, it’s so beautiful and we just knew we had to shoot here. I’ve never seen a location like it and we got a really good deal on it.”
Raised in Connecticut, Boynton is a self-taught filmmaker whose most recent film, the romantic drama “The Winter House” (2021), starred three-time Emmy nominee Lili Taylor (“Six Feet Under,” “The Conjuring”). It’s currently streaming on Peacock or you can rent it for $1.99 on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV+ or Vudu.
“I did not go to film school; I learned how to make movies just by making movies,” Boynton said. “The first ones were terrible, then you make more and they start to get better, and now they’re pretty good. I’m very new to horror, both as a fan and as a filmmaker. It’s a very new world for me and I’m super excited about it.”
As a relative newcomer to the genre, he’s been studying the best directors in the game.
“In the horror genre, Robert Eggers’ ‘The Witch’ is amazing and classic,” Boynton said. “You have Jennifer Kent, definitely, ‘The Babadook’ is an incredible movie. It’s a masterpiece. … I love John Carpenter, I love ‘The Thing.'”
What is his own personal filmmaking style for this particular movie?
“It’s almost all hand-held, a lot of wide-angle lenses, 35 mm and 24 mm lenses, very much in the characters’ faces, very immediate, very rough, very raw, but at the same time the lighting is beautiful, so I feel like we’re getting this luxurious, cinematic look and at the same time we have the kinetic style of the handheld camera,” Boynton said.
As for the tone, he said the scares are dead serious but with a little comic relief.
“It’s a slasher film,” Boynton said. “It’s bloody but not gory, it’s not a comedy but it has funny moments. I compare it to something like ‘Scream,’ but of course it’s an indie, so it’s kind of like a soulful indie version of ‘Scream.’ It’s got a lighthearted sensibility, but the horror is played for real. … There are a few [deaths]. I murder my brother. I murder some people that I really like in this movie and I feel weird about it. That’s how much I believe in my vision.”
The roughly 90-minute film will screen at Markoff’s Haunted Forest in October 2024.
“We’re gonna do a bunch of big screenings, a huge premiere and then screen it all month of October 2024. These are gonna be events, they’re going to be special, they’re gonna be terrifying. Definitely come out,” he said.
Listen to our full conversation here.
