Arts & Culture

LA-Based ‘The Perfect House’ Looks to Oct. 1 VOD World Premiere After Successful Screenings

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Working to gain 1 million Facebook fans by its video-on-demand release on Oct. 1, “The Perfect House” was produced by Andrea Vahl, Randy Kent, Hans Hernke and Kris Hulbert and first began its screening tour in April with six cities. After the initial cities, the tour looks to add additional stops only through the “Demand it Now” program on eventful.com—a method that helped the popular “Paranormal Activity” gain a following.

On Sept. 30, a live webcast of the Video on Demand Premiere Party will be filmed in a secret location, leading up to the first VOD screening for free at midnight on Oct. 1. But before “The Perfect House” could get to these types of premiere events, it had to get made by those who believe in it most.

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Vahl (producer), Kent (producer/director) and Hulbert (writer/producer/director) were interested in filmmaking at an early age. “I think I have always naturally been interested in story telling and filmmaking was a natural progression of that,” Hulbert told LA’s The Place. He realized he would have to make it his career when, “it didn’t matter if my scripts were good or not because nobody was interested in reading them.”

Kent had a little bit of a different experience at first. “I really wanted to be an actor at first, but the more film sets I got on, the more I realized acting wasn’t really doing it for me, and I was much more fascinated by what was going on behind the camera. Then when I started to actually make my own stuff, I grew to really love filmmaking and transitioned to that,” he explained.

The idea for the horror “The Perfect House” first came up between Kent and Hulbert after some Craigslist exchanges. Hulbert saw Kent’s Craigslist ad asking for someone to help him make a horror film, and the two began discussing ideas based on Hulbert’s short that he submitted.

“It was a short and I wanted to do a feature so we went back and forth trying to figure a way to stretch it and it wasn’t working,” Kent told LA’s The Place. “So I came up with the idea of making it part of an anthology about this house and he wrote some more and it grew very quickly from there into what we have today.”

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The movie revolves around newlyweds Mike and Marisol who have just purchased their dream house, but it’s quickly realized that the ‘perfect house’ has a terrifying past. This past is conjured up in three separate back stories.

“The film is a story about the horrors that occur inside an ordinary house that is not haunted,” Vahl explained.

Hulbert adds, “It’s an homage to horror told through an anthology. Each story is set in a specific time period based on the filmmaking styles used in that era of horror.”

Things like the short shoot schedule and receiving funds for “The Perfect House” made the production difficult, something many young filmmakers are facing today.

“Aside from the raising the money part of it, which is the toughest thing in indie filmmaking, period, not having enough time to do things while we were shooting. We shot this in 14 days, and although it turned out better than we ever imagined it would, there are several things that if we just had another couple of days to shoot, we knew we could’ve really done something special. And every time I watch it, I think of different ways to do it but we were under the gun on certain things and had to move on,” Kent revealed.

On the reverse side, everyone also had a favorite part of the film, including Vahl who enjoyed the audition process.

“Since I was producing the film since the very beginning I was able to see the character development in the script through each draft. When we held auditions, it was fascinating to see how actors interpreted the script and delivered the lines so differently than how we had expected,” Vahl said.

Hernke had many favorite instances, including getting to know everyone on the set of the small movie.

“One of the things I enjoyed was getting to know everyone and their personalities on day one of filming. From there on, I knew how to work with everyone while I was in the position of being the 1st A.D. for the shoot. Once everyone got into the groove of how I ran the set, things were great and everyone got along and worked very hard, but actually enjoyed the work they were doing and not complaining about anything! We all became like a family,” Hernke told LA’s The Place.

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With the intense violence and disturbing themes, horror fans are enjoying the movie, and according to its producers, they are receiving very positive reviews so far.

“I have yet to see a bad reaction, unless you consider people being so disturbed that they had to leave the theatre or someone throwing up in their cup during the movie a bad review, but I consider that to be the best reactions yet!” Vahl said.

Hulbert has seen a different kind of reaction to “The Perfect House”—one of passion and support.

“People have loved the film and more importantly the cause behind the film and what we are trying to do with it,” he explained. “Some of the biggest opportunities and breaks we have gotten have been directly through audience members that loved the film and just wanted to help out in any way.”

Now, the cast and crew are busy promoting the work through social media and looking towards their Oct. 1 worldwide release date.

Kent sums it up: “The biggest compliment we get, and I agree completely, is that it ‘actually has a story and great script.’ I’ve heard that more times than I can count and that is the biggest shock that people have in seeing the movie, aside from the gore. Most people think, ‘Oh, low-budget horror movie with no huge stars, it’s going to be schlock crap!’ Then most end up being pleasantly surprised and happy to be wrong about the movie. I think that is where a lot of the passion comes in, that we threw them a huge curve ball and they are grateful for it.”

For more information, visit www.theperfecthousemovie.net and www.facebook.com/theperfecthousemovie.

About the author

Mandy Rodgers