Fantasia 2013: Download The Apocalypse In Canadian Horror Film ANTISOCIAL

What is the first thing you do when you hear that something bad has happened somewhere else in the world? You jump online or grab your smartphone, go to your trusted news sources, and you start looking for pictures and video. Then we link to it on our favorite social media sites so all our friends and family around the world can also take a gander. Thus we find ourselves at the premise of the upcoming Canadian horror film Antisocial which will have its World Premiere at Fantasia in Montreal on July 31st!

Antisocial begins on New Year's Eve in the not so distant future. Five university friends gather at a house party to ring in the New Year. Unbeknownst to them, an epidemic has erupted outside, causing outbreaks around the world. With nowhere else to turn, they are told to barricade themselves indoors with only their phones, laptops, and other tech devices. They use their devices to research the possible cause of this outbreak. Information and video footage over flow their computers as hey descend further into the cause and the ensuing chaos. As the virus spreads, the mood in the house changes from fear to paranoia. Who is safe? Who can they trust? Reality becomes blurred as they slowly discover the source of the virus causing the sickness...and there is no going back.

(Toronto - July 9, 2013)  To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, this is the way the world ends - not with a bang but a tweet.

 

Antisocial, the social-media-savvy horror film from Cody Calahan and Chad Archibald, turns on its head the claustrophobic horror convention of scared young people locked up together as all hell breaks loose.

In the movie, a worldwide pandemic marked by violence, suicide and hallucinations, breaks out on New Year's Eve. And five university friends witness it all live via network TV and the 'Net - from personal blog feeds to video chats gone insanely wrong.

 

How long can they keep the apocalypse at bay inside a locked apartment?

 

Celebrating is the last thing on the mind of Sam (Michelle Mylett), when she reluctantly accepts a New Year's invite with her friends Mark (Cody Thompson), Jed (Adam Christie), Steve (Romaine Waite), his girlfriend Kaitlin (Ana Alic) and Chad (Ry Barrett). Sam's boyfriend Dan (Charlie Hamilton) had broken up with her earlier in the day, in front of an entire network of online friends on a popular portal called The Social Redroom. The geeky Jed is inclined to invite the whole world to the party through his computer, and in doing so is the first to see all Hell break loose. As it plays out, they know exactly what to look for when the virus finds its way inside their padlocked apartment/haven.

 

"Basically, we took all the things that horror films usually shy away from and embraced them," says producer Chad Archibald, who co-wrote Antisocial with director Cody Calahan.  In horror films, people are always trying their cellphones, finding no reception and moving on in frustration. But this is more grounded. Whenever there's a disaster in the world, everyone runs to social media and to CNN and that's how they get their information. In this case, they try to figure out what to do instead of just running out and getting killed."

 

Produced by Breakthrough Entertainment in association with Black Fawn Films. Filmmakers are writer-producer-director Cody Calahan and writer-producer Chad Archibald. Archibald and Calahan have been a filmmaking team since collaborating on the pyscho thriller NEVERlost.  Antisocial is the fourth film they've produced together in a year - along with the sci-fi film Ejecta and the horror films Hellmouth and Septic Man. Breakthrough Entertainment's Ira Levy, Peter Williamson and Marina Cordoni are Executive Producers. Breakthrough Entertainment is the film's worldwide distributor.