EAST GRAND FORKS – From Crookston natives Kale and Charles Eickhof, the unbiased horror movie LOON! It begins a two-week run on the River Cinema on Friday, January 20.
Described as a tongue-in-cheek thriller about “killer loons” in Minnesota’s lake nation, the 85-minute movie is “a pure horror movie made by lake individuals for lake individuals.”
The Eickhof cousins wrote, filmed and produced the movie, which options an all-local forged. Videographer Kale Eickhof directed the movie, which was shot solely in northwestern Minnesota, totally on Lake Union close to Erskine. Different places embrace Crookston, East Grand Forks and Bemidji.
The movie took about 16 days to shoot in the summertime of 2020, mentioned Charles Eickhoff, who stars within the movie, together with Mario Schisano and Anna Huck, each of Crookston. About 30 different space residents, together with household and pals of the recruit, had been additionally forged members.
The post-production points of the undertaking, significantly the enhancement of the particular results, the licensing of the unique musical rating, and “including the finer particulars” took considerably longer than the precise filming. A lot of the meeting work happened within the storage on the household’s Union Lake residence.
In post-production, computer-generated imagery (CGI) recreated scenes of loons attacking lake dwellers. Charles mentioned the work was executed by freelancers in Los Angeles and elsewhere all over the world.
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The story is ready in a seemingly peaceable lake setting till it begins to terrorize the inhabitants with a sequence of unusual and violent assaults, based on a information launch. “They quickly uncover that nothing is because it appears and the reply could also be extra terrifying than they may have imagined.”
That is in stark distinction to the depiction of Minnesota’s state chook, which has grow to be a logo of the serene surroundings that characterizes the outside within the North Star State.
In keeping with Charles, in creating the movie, Charles and Kale had been influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s 1963 naturalistic horror-thriller The Birds.
The Eickhofs’ first movie “performed like a film,” he mentioned. “It has a number of the weather you’ll want to have story, with totally different steps, a climax, and a decision.”
Charles, 24, works on the Eickhof Columbaria in Crookston. Kale, 33, who lives in Grand Forks and attends Sacred Coronary heart Faculty, is an expert videographer in Los Angeles.
The cousins have been going to Union Lake all their lives. Their household has owned residential property there for generations.
The concept for the movie got here from a dialog with Kale’s mom, Joyce Hagen, about films, together with Titanic, whereas sitting by a lake in the course of the pandemic.
“He talked about the title ‘loon-panic,’ and loons are an ongoing theme within the lake,” Charles recalled. “We thought, wow, what if we make a film about loons, and it actually snowballed.”
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The movie “began as a pandemic undertaking,” Kale mentioned in a information launch. “We thought we may watch films or write a film. So we wrote.”
Lovers of unbiased movies specifically will benefit from the movie, “merely due to its low-budget nature and the tenacity required to make a movie. … It type of has a horror-comedy facet to it,” Charles mentioned. “It is typically quirky and enjoyable; I feel it is one thing that everybody can take pleasure in.”
“Ah!” just lately carried out on the Grand Theater in Crookston.
The Eickhof household plans to attend a screening on the River Cinema on Friday, January 20, however there aren’t any formal occasions.
Charles mentioned work is underway to open the movie in early February in different places, together with Fargo, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth.
He and Kale “LOON!” are exploring choices for attain bigger audiences by means of streaming and video-on-demand platforms.
