After a five-year journey making found-footage horror film Water Horse, writer/director Jennifer van Gessel will reunite with lead actor Lauren Grimson on a new feature that also draws from the genre.
Set to shoot on location in the Snowy Mountains, Find My Bones will star Grimson and Samantha Allsop as a couple struggling with fame who escape for the weekend only to stumble into a deadly game with a malevolent presence on the snow fields. Kaitlyn Boyé is also on board as the ex-girlfriend of Grimson’s character.
van Gessel penned the script and will produce alongside her sister Janine van Gessel, also a producer on Water Horse, and creative producer Nik Kacevski. Portland-based producer Janine Sheehan will executive produce with Nina Friis, van Gessel’s partner at Far From Everything Films. Filming is scheduled over three consecutive weeks later this year on a budget of under $2 million.
Like Grimson, Allsop is also a previous collaborator of the filmmaker, having starred as Anne in horror-short proof-of-concept Ver. Fine Day, a project van Gessel wrote that forms the basis of the upcoming feature Langton.
van Gessel told IF she wrote Find My Bones a month ago after being preoccupied with Langton, noting the concept was borne out of conversations with Grimson and Allsop, who also feature alongside each other in Corey Pearson’s as-yet-unreleased horror Cry Baby.
“I saw this scene in another film they worked on together and they have great chemistry,” she said.
“I just thought they would be perfect and the idea evolved from talking to them. They are both really talented actresses.”
She hopes for a smoother production this time, having faced delays from fires, flooding, broken bones, and COVID while filming Water Horse.
The director said while Find My Bones “was a very different film”, she was looking to employ some of the same techniques regarding improvisation, including letting the two leads shoot their own footage.
“On Water Horse, I found letting Lauren just run with it was when we got some of the best stuff, as was the case with Dean [Kyrwood].
“I think it will be the same with Sammy and Lauren, so I want to let them experiment and push their limits as actors.
“I’m a collaborative person; I want to get into a room and bounce ideas off people because that’s when the best stuff happens. It’s not all about me.”
Grimson has no shortage of projects in the works, with the actress taking part in the Queensland shoot for Kiah Roache-Turner’s Beast of War, and filming a proof-of-concept with Victoria Wharfe McIntyre.
She told IF she was pleased to continue her working relationship with van Gessel.
“I think that we work well together, and we both really like each other’s styles,” she said.
“There’s always been an idea of working together [after Water Horse], but we didn’t quite know what that would look like.
“Jen approached me with this idea for Find My Bones, and it sounded amazing, so I was very keen to jump on board.”