“The Day The Woods Stood Still” a review of “The Stillness” by Nathan Thomas Milliner
In 1994 I was a senior in high school and I worked at a grocery store stocking shelves but was soon moved to the frozen foods department and that’s where I met a guy named Jason Monks. It turned out the two of us had more in common than stocking shelves with perishables. Jason, like myself, was an artist, aspired to draw comic books and was a big movie fanatic.
Jason was a year older than me and was a freshman at the University of Louisville. I’d soon follow him in the Fall. Everyone needs that person in college who turns you on to the subculture and Jason was that guy for me. I was already big into geek shit but it was Monks who was suddenly inviting me to go see “Clerks” with him and his buddy Bruce at the local arthouse theater The Vogue. He was the one inviting me to go see The Reverend Horton Heat play live, telling me to read the works of local legend Hunter S Thompson and most importantly, telling me to rent a little film I’d never heard of called “Reservoir Dogs.”
Reservoir Dogs changed my life and made me want to become a film writer/director. Jason and I attended art classes together at U of L and would spend a lot of our in between class times riding out to Bardstown Road for lunch, and stops at Ear-X-Tacy (record shop) and The Great Escape (comic book shop).
I quit The grocery store in 1998 and soon, Jason and I usually only saw one another when he’d invite me to his annual Kentucky Derby parties. Then around 2002, my wife and I ran into him somewhere and he told me he had started a comic book website with Bruce and two other guys called Feral Comix and they hoped to soon put out an anthology comic series.
Jason and the guys invited me to be part of the Feral and I took them up on it. We ended up releasing 4 issues of Feral Comix Presents and did several comic conventions and book signings together for the next couple of years.
At the time of Feral, Jason was also a new dad. He had a baby boy named Jackson. Soon, Feral came to an end and we all moved off into our own directions. But then something unexpected happened.
Jackson had grown up to play little league baseball and it just so happened that my nephew Hunter Hieatt also played in the same league. Eventually, Hunter and Jackson would end up living across the street from one another and both became obsessed with movies. And after working on my last film, both started moving towards becoming filmmakers themselves.
And they have just made their first film together under their banner “Horror Gang” which is also a YouTube channel where Jackson does movie reviews, usually of old horror films.
Now I told you all of that because, well, I think it’s really cool that an old friend and collaborator of mine’s son found my nephew and the two at about the same ages as Jason and I were, are now obsessing over a lot of the same movies that we did in the 90’s and also to show that I’m a bit bias with this review so take it for what it is. A proud uncle’s perspective.
The Stillness is about ten minutes long and will debut on Friday July 11th when it opens for director James Dean’s new feature film “Absolution” at the historic Richey Suncoast Theater in New Port Richey, Florida. It’s a plague/zombie movie and while it’s fairly simple and more of an exercise in, well, stillness and the moving image—The Stillness shows signs of inspired, budding filmmakers with a good sense of visual storytelling.
Jackson plays the lead character in the short, a sort of Robert Neville in his own “I am Legend” tale as a lonely survivor walking through a dead woods searching old cabins for food and whatever might be useful. Soon, this scavenger hunt turns dangerous as we see that the plague has also produced the walking dead.
The short has its roots in the first adaptation of the novel by Richard Matheson, 1964’s “Last Man on Earth” and George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead.” The zombies are very reminiscent of those seen in the original Dawn of the Dead. The first zombie (played by Jacob Horvitz)we see in the short, has that vintage shambling zombie down very well which took me right back to old school Romero.
The film is shot and edited quite well. The compositions, color grading and images are often striking, creative and for the most part, moving the action fluidly. The shot selections and editing are well executed compared to the early, low budget work of many novice filmmakers.
The location plays a huge part in making The Stillness worth the ten minutes. Shot in an old Civil War park with little signs of life and filled with 19th Century structures, the area is a dream scout for any indie horror film.
The score is pretty wonderful and it was composed by the short’s editor and executive producer Brandon Hardy. Hunter and Jackson wrote, shot and directed the film and Hunter tells me he is already working on the follow up episode.
While it’s slim on the story end, I look forward to seeing where they take it with the next one. To see how they expand this world they have introduced us to. Give it a look.
