Filmmaking pair Addison Heath and Jasmine Jakupi are set to unleash another blood-spattered adventure in the form of crime/horror mash-up My Cherry Pie.
Billed as Chopper meets Friday the 13th V, the film stars Sotiris Tzelios, Dylan Heath and Tim Jason Wicks as three Melbourne criminals whose car breaks down as they attempt to flee the city, leading to an encounter with the ominous Crow Family.
What begins as a seemingly well-intentioned invite from the leader of the family (Glenn Maynard) soon unravels as the trio realise they face an evil beyond anything they have encountered in the underworld.
My Cherry Pie was written by Heath, who is producing alongside Jakupi, and Dylan Heath with support from Black Forest Films.
The micro-budget film, which was shot across two weeks between Melbourne and Stawell last November, is the sixth film Heath and Jakupi have collaborated on.
It comes after they shot footage/horror/comedy/Western Good Girl Lola during lockdown, using COVID as a kind of unseen monster.
The project was borne out of being unable to travel to the US, where the pair had been in line to shoot crime comedy An American Masquerade.
They have continued the infection theme in the upcoming project, using an old hospital that had previously housed Spanish influenza patients as one of the settings.
Heath said the site had added another element to the horror scenes.
“Dylan [Heath] had a high school friend that worked near the hospital, who happened to be a fan of horror,” he said.
“It already had parts that were super creepy and he said we could make it as gory as we wanted.
“It brought heaps to the film.”
For Jakupi, who is also the cinematographer for the project, being able to film on location was a “fruitful” end to what had been a challenging year.
“Being a closed set, we were just on our own with crew and our cast getting to be creative,” she said.
“It was almost like a retreat.”
She added the contribution of Trudi Ranik (Good Girl Lola) as Cherry had allowed them to offer a more feminist take on the slasher genre.
“I couldn’t help but dabble with that,” she said.
“There’s obviously been a lot of really strong female characters in horror throughout the years but I think it’s become such a great thing to have more parity in the stories that we hear of late.
“This means not only in your protagonist but your antagonist as well.”
The final version of My Cherry Pie is expected to be completed by April/May, at which point Heath and Jakupi are aiming to begin its festival run. No distribution for the film has been confirmed as yet.
Coming up for the pair is a potential revisit of their US project, as well as a musical action film that is in the early stages of development.