How We Built a Horror Film From Scratch: The Making of A Fetish of Flesh

The Spark in the Dark

Every horror film starts with a whisper — a fleeting idea that won’t die quietly.
For me, A Fetish of Flesh was born back in 2005. It wasn’t a screenplay yet — just a sentence scribbled in a notebook and a gut feeling that the real monsters aren’t supernatural. They’re human.

I wanted to explore obsession, guilt, and the violence that grows from desire. What happens when pain becomes a religion? That question lingered for years, mutating like the nightmares it would later inspire. Over time, that idea became a mythology — one I couldn’t stop chasing.

The Birth of Demented Media

Fast-forward to 2017. My longtime creative partner Timothy “TJ” McDonald and I founded Demented Media, a small horror production company born out of Ohio mud, caffeine, and raw determination.

Our mission was simple:

“Fear. Film. Flesh.”

We didn’t want to wait for Hollywood or water down what made horror great. We wanted to bring back the Golden Age of practical effects — real screams, real fake blood, real heart. Demented Media would exist as proof that the genre still had teeth.

Writing the Nightmare

The story of A Fetish of Flesh didn’t arrive neatly packaged. It came in fragments — police reports, folklore, and whispered campfire stories. Piece by piece, they formed the legend of Carrington Creek, a cursed patch of Ohio woods with a reputation for devouring the lost.

From that world came the Blackwood family — Persephone, Hatchet, Serenity, Briar, and William — a lineage of killers driven by superstition, guilt, and ritual. They didn’t murder for pleasure. They murdered for purpose. Each believed the land demanded blood.

By the time the first draft was finished, I wasn’t holding a screenplay anymore. I was holding a universe — decades of disappearances, unsolved cases, and the echo of something ancient beneath the soil.

Building the Family of Freaks

Casting A Fetish of Flesh was like assembling a cult. Every actor had to bleed for the art, at least metaphorically.

Crow Werner, who plays Hatchet, didn’t just act — he became the sound of the film, crafting the score’s dark heartbeat and pushing the atmosphere into pure dread. Sarah Montemayor turned casting into an act of faith, connecting us with talent who embodied both passion and madness.

Angela Vaughn and Victoria Forgrave delivered terrifying realism as the mother-daughter duo Persephone and Abigail. Ali Moss (Lindsay), Nate Davis (Kameron), Eli Payne (Eric), Nichole Estelle (The Waitress), Jessica Correll (Serenity), David J. Paul, and Michael Haase — each one poured themselves into their roles, fusing professionalism with raw, indie grit.

By mid-2025, the A Fetish of Flesh crew wasn’t just a production team — it was a family. A slightly deranged, sleep-deprived, blood-soaked family.

Building Horror with Bare Hands

We made a pact early on: no lazy CGI. Every effect had to be physical, every scream deserved to echo in a real room.

We studied the classics — The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Evil Dead, Hellraiser — and took notes on how they did more with less. We learned to make fake blood from scratch, to sculpt wounds from latex, to carve terror from thrift store finds.

“If we couldn’t buy it, we built it. If we couldn’t build it, we improvised.”

Even the smallest prop had purpose. The masks, the tools, the ritual artifacts — all crafted by hand, all steeped in story. Carrington Creek didn’t just look real. It felt real.

Expanding the Universe

From the very beginning, A Fetish of Flesh was never meant to end when the credits rolled.

We built an entire mythology around it — sequels, games, books, and even a podcast to flesh out the darkness.

• Part 2: The Harvest of Blood follows a team of podcasters investigating the Carrington Creek disappearances. Spoiler: none of them survive.

• Part 3: The Final Fetish will close the saga in blood-soaked symmetry.

• A retro SNES-style video game, A Fetish of Flesh: The Arcade Game, brings the Blackwoods’ terror to pixel life.

• The book companion, The Carrington Creek Enigma, reads like a true-crime investigation into the town’s 45 missing persons.

• And The Late Night Snack Podcast? Our horror-comedy side project that makes the darkness fun.

Every branch of the project connects to the same root — one horrific universe.

The Business of Blood

Passion fuels creativity, but business keeps it alive. We knew from the start that if A Fetish of Flesh was going to survive, it needed a plan.

We built a 70-page business plan detailing budgets, revenue streams, and growth projections for Demented Media. We structured equity offers, negotiated partnerships, and even developed a “Make Your Movie” package to help other indie creators do the same.

We made sure investors knew this wasn’t a gamble — it was a movement. A stand against sanitized horror. Every frame, every drop of blood, every scream — 100% independent.

The Crowdfunding War

Crowdfunding became our battleground.

We launched campaigns on Kickstarter and IndieGoGo, crafting rewards that doubled as collector experiences — “Become a Victim” tiers, signed props, screen-used evidence, and credits that immortalized every backer in the bloodline of the film.

We posted every day. We wrote scripts, filmed pitch videos, and reached out to the horror community one person at a time. Influencers, podcasts, Reddit threads — anywhere there were fans who understood what real horror looked like, we showed up.

No paid ads. No shortcuts. Just passion, authenticity, and grind.

Crafting the Visual Identity

Visually, A Fetish of Flesh became our love letter to the 1980s — grim, foggy, and soaked in nostalgia.

The posters looked like long-lost VHS covers; the logo screamed retro rebellion. We used a mix of AI concept art and practical photography to achieve that “found-in-your-attic” vibe. The woods stretched deep, the fonts dripped red, and the tagline whispered:

“Fear. Film. Flesh.”

Even the social media presence carried that energy — grainy teasers, eerie monologues, and flashes of black-and-white evidence photos pulled from the lore.

Where We Stand Now

Today, we stand on the edge of production.

The script is final. The cast is assembled. The soundtrack breathes with Crow Werner’s haunting soundscapes. The woods of Carrington Creek are waiting for our first slate.

We’ve come a long way — from coffee-fueled writing nights to full business plans, from lost dreams to a living, breathing franchise. And through it all, we never stopped believing that horror belongs to the creators who dare to bleed for it.

Lessons from the Madness

If there’s one truth to come from this journey, it’s this:

You don’t need permission to create horror.

You don’t wait for studios to call. You build your own.
You don’t chase validation. You chase vision.
You don’t fear failure. You fear silence.

That’s how we did it. That’s how you can too.

A Fetish of Flesh isn’t just a film — it’s proof that art can rise from obsession, blood, and belief. Proof that when you give yourself fully to a dream, even the darkest one, you can build something immortal.

“A Fetish of Flesh isn’t just a film — it’s proof that passion can cut deeper than any blade.