Horror is a genre where characters are often forced to venture into dark and primal places to confront forces like monsters, demons, spectral entities, and sinister magics. That’s also a frequent occurrence in the fantasy genre as well. Plus, those stories are also usually set in dangerous, untamed lands that lack the conveniences that often complicate modern horror tales, like cell phones.
So, horror and fantasy can go together like peanut butter and chocolate. It’s a combination that can heighten scary moments and refresh tales that might seem too familiar. Two recent fantasy-horror films, 2019’s The Head Hunter and 2025’s A Knight’s War, have proven that. More importantly, those films showed it’s possible to make fantasy-horror films with an epic feel on a meager budget.
Want to know more? Then read on! Because we’re going on a quest to discover how the casts and crews of these two films put together such effective and exciting fantasy-horror films with limited resources and without the backing of any major studios.
Tackling Grief in The Head Hunter
Grief is a common thematic element in horror films, but I’ve only seen one grief horror involving monsters, magic, and a medieval warrior: The Head Hunter from director Jordan Downey, written by Downey and Kevin Stewart, and starring Christopher Rygh. The film exclusively follows Rygh’s character, credited as “Father,” who lives in a ramshackle home with a wall covered with severed monster heads mounted on spikes. They’re trophies he’s collected in his work as a monster hunter for a nearby settlement.
We primarily see Father in between hunts, where day-to-day existence is difficult for him. He neglects home repairs in favor of work maintaining the weapons, armor, and magical elixir that allow him to survive his hunts. We also see him occasionally visit the grave of his deceased daughter.
Father spends all his time maintaining the tools of his trade because one of the creatures he hunts murdered his daughter and escaped him. Instead of dealing with his trauma and grief, he’s become obsessed with mounting the thing’s head on his wall.
When Father gets an assignment, we follow him into the wilds where we’re given glimpses of the creatures he hunts. At one point, there are things that look like goblins wandering through the night. In a later scene, a shadow from the air just might be a dragon passing over Father. The movie never gives you the catharsis of seeing him battle those things or the creatures he hunts. Instead, we’re given strange and frightening sounds of an off-screen confrontation, then the film cuts to a beaten and bloodied Father making his way home.
It’s an effective way of utilizing the film’s small budget to make the world feel realized, scary, and dangerous. It’s also a haunting and powerful demonstration of the fact that Father’s violent trade offers no respite from the grief demons that menace him. And when his quest for vengeance is finally fulfilled and he slays the beast that murdered his daughter, he gains no relief. In fact, the neglect his vengeance obsession caused comes back to haunt him in a very real and deadly way.
A Visual Feast
To say, much more would delve into spoiler territory, and I want viewers to experience the twists and turns of The Head Hunter on their own. What I can reveal, though, is that the movie makes the most of its 72-minute run time, and when its final act begins, it becomes a movie that will delight fans of creature features and slashers. It also makes you believe that the hulking, armored warrior on the movie’s poster is in dire peril.
Visually The Head Hunter looks and feels like it was made for several million dollars. However it cost significantly less. Downey and Stewart, who also served as producers along with Ricky Fosheim were able to make their movie with a budget of only $30,000.
Part of being able to do that came from knowing exactly when and where to buy props. On Episode 174 of the horror podcast Shockwaves Downey revealed “We went to Spirit Halloween the day after Halloween and bought up every plastic sword, helmet, mask, monster and anything that felt medieval or gothic. We bought it all up and threw it in storage. We had the groundwork for what we can start to age and modify and rip up or take a mold from or whatever we were going to do.”
Securing the Perfect Location
Those purchases were made before Downey and Stewart had a finished script. They did have something at the time though that was equally important, a location. Stewart’s grandmother owned some property in a remote village in Portugal. “The cabin in The Head Hunter was this little, old grain mill that sat on the property his grandma owned,” Downey told Shockwaves “So, we had the location, but we weren’t thinking medieval, because that did seem too expensive.”
The village where Stewart’s grandmother lived in seemed like the perfect place to make a horror film and a perhaps period piece. “I grew up in Porto, Portugal and I spent my childhood going to my grandma’s village on summer vacation. That village is called Soutelo Mourisco, near the town of Bragança in the north of Portugal, and only three people currently still live there. One of those people is my grandma. It’s a great looking two-hundred-year-old village with crumbling stone houses, ruins and amazing landscapes all around it,” Stewart explained in an interview for Horror Geek Life. “Jordan and I had been wanting to go shoot there for a few years, but we didn’t have the idea for a film yet. Finally, after brainstorming different concepts for the better part of a year, we landed on the idea of doing a medieval-horror film.
“So with a crew of three people and one actor, we knew that with this location we could shoot a period piece for very cheap and not suffer in production value,” Stewart continued. “Not only that, but the location would lend itself very well to a horror movie.”
Starting Pre-Production In Portugal for The Head Hunter
When preproduction began on The Head Hunter Downey, Stewart, and Fosheim took their duffel bags of props they bought to Portugal and began work on production design. Part of that involved using a process called “corpsing” on the masks they had bought at Spirit Halloween. “You see it in Halloween mazes and a lot of stuff when you basically take plastic drop cloth and wrap it over something,” Downey revealed to Shockwaves. “Then you hit it with a heat gun and it sort of shrink wraps that plastic, but it gives it all these veins and textures. You paint that and then it starts to look decayed.”
The production team was also able to find a multitude of useful items in the village they were filming in, many of which made it into the finished film. “Throughout the village and under Kevin’s grandma’s house were all these rusted pieces of metal. We also found a lot of weird trinkets hidden in this cobblestone pit. They weren’t actually medieval, but they felt medieval,” Downey told Shockwaves. “For every piece of plastic from Spirit we had a metal thing or some sort of prop that looks really good. They would have been really expensive to rent or age.”
Almost all of the production design was done by The Headhunter’s three person crew with the exception of the monster in the film’s third act, “The Head,” which was designed by Downey’s collaborator on the Thankskilling series and the short film, “Critters: Bounty Hunter,” Troy Smith. And Father’s iconic, signature armor was designed by a Swedish costumer named André Brevin. “We did not design the actual look of the costume,” Downey said in an interview with Film School Rejects. “We had references, but André came up with the look of that helmet. And that thing is on the poster! What sold the movie, basically, is that costume.”
Finding The Perfect Location AGAIN
Most of The Headhunter was shot on location at the village in Portugal or later in the wilderness of Mammoth Lakes California. The crew did luck into finding a perfect location for the film’s claustrophobic climax involving Father and the film’s monstrous antagonist; a water mine owned by Stewart’s cousin.
“A water mine is basically a tunnel that is hand carved until you reach a water source so that you can irrigate the lands in the middle of the mountain sides. Since the main objective is to just hit water, the tunnel’s width and height is only carved for one person to get through,” Stewart explained to Horror Geek Life. “When we saw it, we immediately thought we had to shoot there but we didn’t know what. It wasn’t until a few days later that Jordan said to me “we’re shooting the finale in there.”
The crew of The Head Hunter didn’t just luck into finding the perfect locations for their film. They were also very fortunate to find Rygh for the part of Father. The Norwegian actor is the film’s sole character. So, much of the movie is riding on him and he delivers. Rygh makes you feel Father’s loneliness, obsession, and trauma with facial expressions and a few lines of dialogue. Making things more impressive is the fact that this was his first major role.
Going A Bit Bigger In A Knight’s War
The Head Hunter is the perfect example of how to do an intimate small budget fantasy-horror film. Writer-Director Matthew Ninaber decided to go a bit larger in terms of cast for his 2025 Dark Fantasy film, A Knight’s War, which stars his brother Jeremy Ninaber, Kristan Kaster and himself. The film pits Jermey Ninaber’s knight, Bhodie, against a host of cultists, demons, and witches while trying to win the trust of Kaster’s cynical “Chosen One,” a woman known as Avalon.
It opens with Bhodie and his brother, William (Matthew Ninaber) infiltrating the tower of a sinister cult carrying out a dark ritual. The production design and costuming shine here because the Cult and its tower are both unsettling.
The ritual goes awry and Avalon is dumped through a portal into a hellish dimension. Matthew tasks Bhodie with following her into the infernal realm, finding her, protecting her and bringing her home. It’s a herculean task that will test the knights commitment to his faith and duty because he’ll have to contend with witches, dark magics, monstrous demons and Avalon’s distrust.
Once Bhodie and Avalon enter the hell dimension most of the horror elements come from some incredible costuming, character design work, and acting. At one point, Bhodie and Avalon have to contend with two witches that seems unearthly and powerful. They have some great masks and make up, and move and talk in sinister ways.
There’s also a horned, skull-faced demon that guards the gate back to the real world. The film treats the being as pure, nightmare fuel. He has a presence that’s both surreal and brutal. He uses magic that can literally grab people and port them over to his dungeon like lair.
Plus, there’s a character named Lilith who appears to be both demon and witch. She has a mask that hides her eyes and visits Bhodie in his dreams. There, she tries to tempt him. She’s almost a Cenobite by way of the Renaissance Fair and David Lynch.
Getting That Big Budget Feel On An Indie Budget
Those creatures and the world they inhabit often have a big budget feel to them, but A Knight’s War had a very modest budget. I wasn’t able to find an exact figure, but I can’t imagine it was that much because there’s a homemade quality to some of the film’s interior sets. It’s not that they don’t look good. It’s because Ninaber literally built a castle in the backyard of his home. He told Dread Central in an interview, “I don’t have money to go build a castle in some other place. I had to build it in my backyard.”
The crew of A Knight’s War didn’t just build one castle. They constructed a second one in the backyard of his brother’s house, who lives just down the street from him. The castle sets were carved out of foam.“We had three hardware stores that just ran out because we kept on buying it,” Ninaber explained to Dread Central.
Set building on A Knight’s War was a family affair. Matthew and Jeremy participated and their father, Ralph Ninaber, who served as production designer, was also part of the process. “We have a background in construction. That’s how we pay for our love of movies. It’s a great skill set,” Matthew Ninaber said an interview with The Action Elite. “My dad, Jeremy, and myself, and Robyn Elliot, our set decorator, really spearheaded building the sets from a world-building point of view. We crafted everything. We went into the woods and grabbed vines.”
Finding Authentic Props
When it came time to put together the costumes for A Knight’s War Ninaber and his team relentlessly hunted for things that looked authentic and were affordable; especially when it came to the medieval armor and weapons that were so integral to the character of Bhodie. “We drove down to somewhere in the states [Ninaber is Canadian]. It was Medieval Depot and they had a bargain bin of all the stuff that got scratched and returned. If we had to buy everything at full price we couldn’t have done it,” Ninaber told Dread Central. “Because we needed spares and extras. So we were diving into this second hand armor shop. They were like, ‘This is rusted. And this is scratched.’ I was like, ‘That’s great!’
Ninaber and his brother handled the acquisition of the weapons and armor, and he let Darcie Kaster design the outfits for the films demons and witches. “She sewed those. Out of nowhere she’d create these amazing garments. I really love what she brought to it,” Ninaber explained to Dread Central. “We’d go to fabric shops and pick out little things that would look cool.”
The monstrous, horned, skull-faced demon in A Knight’s War came about because of one of Ninaber’s most famous roles as an actor. He portrayed the body of the titular, alien, marauder in the film Psycho Goreman. “Because of Psycho Goreman there’s a bust that Steve [writer/director Steven Kostanski] has of me. Any time I want a monster he’s like, ‘Cool, but it has to be you that wears it because I only have your head and that’s all that you can afford,’” the director told Dread Central. “So, our monsters are always getting made off of this face. Because of that it’s opened so many doors. I play the horned demon in this movie.”
Creating Their Fantasy Hero
Demons, witches, castles, and the other characters are all integral parts to A Knight’s War, but ultimately it’s the journey of the titular character, Bhodie, a charismatic protagonist who does not give up on his quest or people even when everything is telling him he should. Jeremy Ninaber nails those qualities of the character. He gives Bhodie a likability and makes you want to root for him. He didn’t just exemplify those qualities on screen though.
“Jeremy is fantastic at building morale. He makes sure everyone on set is safe, taken care of and healthy. He’s the crew’s best friend,” Ninaber said of his brother in an interview with CineDump. “This was such a hard shoot to do. It was -30 sometimes when we were out in the wilderness. We’d walk in two miles, carrying all the equipment. And we didn’t have anybody quit. That’s a testament to how great Jeremy is with people and making them feel valued.”
Ultimately there were many elements that made A Knight’s War and The Head Hunter epic, fantasy, horror films that could be done on a modest budget. Perhaps the biggest one though is the same thing that allows any independent film to get made; a burning desire to go out and make something that you want to see.
“If it didn’t have an audience, we would not have felt like this was a failure,” Jordan Downey said of The Head Hunter to Film School Rejects. “We’d probably just be still talking about, ‘Okay, what’s next?’ Nothing would change.” Matthew Ninaber told CineDump this when describing his impetus for making A Knight’s War, “There’s so much love that went into this that it’s not really a budget thing. I’m going to do this because this is my art. This is what I love. This is what I want to do, and then you just find some people who are going to come along and do that with you as well.”
https://ift.tt/zPGBA0I https://ift.tt/V9cK8Or
No comments:
Post a Comment