What happens when a quiet Wisconsin lake town becomes a pressure cooker of resentment and desperation? For Wisconsin filmmaker Manny Gumina, the answer is Creature Fear, an award-winning independent horror film starring Natalie Gerene, Billy Chengary, and Jarrod Langwinski about the rot lurking beneath Wisconsin’s idyllic landscape and the rot people carry with them.
With Creature Fear beginning its Wisconsin theatrical run in October, I talked to Manny about the real-life inspirations for the film, shooting a movie in the same county where Ed Gein committed his crimes, the dangers of filming in rural Wisconsin, and the things that make our great weird state ripe for horror.
Wisconsin Frights: A horror filmmaker’s job is to make viewers confront difficult and uncomfortable truths, and Creature Fear digs into some pretty primal fears about human nature. Where did the story come from?
Manny Gumina: During Covid, my family and I quarantined at the lake house featured in the film. It’s a vacation home. We were on a walk one day when a diesel pickup truck driver pulled up beside us, rolled down the window, and yelled, “Go home!” before skidding off up the highway. At the time, there weren’t any cases of Covid in that county, but there was an outbreak in Milwaukee and Chicago. Many people from the Milwaukee/Chicago area vacation in northern Wisconsin but don’t live there permanently. This pickup truck driver could tell just by how were dressed and our behavior that we weren’t from the area. There’s this mostly friendly cultural rivalry between northern and southern Wisconsinites that I wanted to explore boiling over into a nightmare. Movies are really hard to get off the ground, but because I had that nice kernel of an idea AND I had the locations, I thought I had a chance of pulling it off. The lake house and Paul’s land in the story are locations my family owns. From there, I thought: who would live at these locations? And we were off to the races.
Chronic Wasting Disease is a very real Wisconsin concern. You turned it into something even more disturbing. What made you look at that issue and think, “There’s a horror movie in this”?
Manny: I’m a hunter. Not a good one. But I go every year. The DNR started sending emails over a decade ago about testing harvests for CWD. The name itself sounds terrifying. Then, I listened to a podcast where a wildlife scientist said it would be very unlikely, but there is a non-zero chance that the disease could spread to humans. I had already written Paul Pilcrow to be living at a hunting compound and hunting out of season to survive. Theorizing him as patient zero for CWD spreading to humans seemed like a logical, fitting, and horrifying characterization.
The film puts rural poverty and wealthy lake communities in the same small-town landscape. What did you want to explore about the tension between those two very different Wisconsins?
Manny: I kind of touched on this in my first answer, but I’m glad you picked up on it. When I write, I like keeping my stories close to real life. They’re dramatized, sure, but I try to keep moments of recognizable truth in my fiction. I grew up, as many Wisconsinites do, hanging out in lake towns on the weekend. Anyone who has done that will recognize the vacationers and those who serve them. For the most part, there aren’t many high-paying job opportunities in rural lake towns, otherwise, they wouldn’t be rural, ya know? These towns would have become cities if they had adequate resources and geography. But these towns are also absolutely beautiful and so, permanent residents live there and wealthy people vacation there. Generally speaking, Wisconsinites are incredibly nice and polite so we don’t talk about class tensions like this. It felt like a theme worthy of screen time especially in a dissonant horror movie.
I love the line “nothing good happens north of Madison.” How do the Wisconsin locations shape the film?
Manny: That’s awesome. People are loving that line. That character in particular has no time for Wisconsin, especially northern Wisconsin. He’s a fratty cosmopolitan. Because of everything described above regarding our shooting locations, I doubled down and tried to inject as much regional humor, atmosphere, and dialogue as possible into the movie. I was kind of surprised when were selected to play in Atlanta for our first film festival. I thought this would only work with Midwesterners, particularly Wisconsinites and Illinoisans.
Tell me about the decision to shoot a cannibal film in Gein country.
Manny: Wisconsin is well known for its serial killers (including some cannibals), we shot in the same county where Gein committed his crimes, and that decision was also born from that character’s legitimate desperation. All of that together felt cohesive.
What are the challenges of making an independent horror film in Wisconsin?
Manny: At the time, Wisconsin was one of only a few states without film tax incentives, I had never made a feature before, and we were shooting during Wisconsin spring so starting and finishing the shoot was risky as hell. It’s an honest to God miracle this movie got made. I’ll tell one of numerous stories: Paul Pilcrow’s land is ten minutes by car down a bumpy dirt road. It rained as we were caravaning up there. Then, that rain turned to snow and the water in the crevices of the dirt road froze with a layer of fresh snow on top. The morning we were supposed to shoot, my DP and I scouted the location with a pickup truck and decided to cancel two days of shooting for safety reasons. I thought the production was over. I wasn’t going to risk car damage, injury, or life. It’s hard to describe how small you feel in God’s country like that, but that environment and that weather made me feel very small. Fortunately, I secured bridge funding and we shot that location two weeks later. We still had to deal with a lightning storm, but that’s another story.
What Wisconsin-made horror film has stuck with you the most, and why?
Manny: I honestly haven’t watched a ton of them! I would take recommendations, but two recent movies I like are Blossom Needs a Ride Home and What Happened to Dorothy Bell? I saw Blossom for the first time at Buried Alive Film Fest in Atlanta and found it very well-crafted, engaging, and funny. Perfect little piece of entertainment. The film has been crushing it on the festival circuit. I also like Tim Schwagel. He’s going to make good movies here for a long time. I’ve also met Danny Villanueva, who made Dorothy Bell, which played at Fantastic Fest in 2024. What an awesome opportunity, first of all. Second, his movie scared the crap out of me. Danny is very good at crafting suspense and jump scares. It’s also set in Kenosha, which is like the opposite setting of mine. There are so many good places to shoot in Wisconsin! I think we’re on the precipice of a really nice film movement happening in our state.
Important Wisconsin Frights question: what’s your personal weird or unexplained Wisconsin story?
Manny: Ooo great question. Maybe I’m too cynical, but I can’t recall a personal unexplained or paranormal story. However, I will say I think there’s always something a little spooky about deer hunting in the woods with no cell phone service all day. I mean it’s sort of reflected in Creature Fear, but I’m afraid of Mother Nature. Predators, inclement weather, getting lost, disease. These all scare the heck out of me. I can vividly remember sitting in the woods with my rifle when I was about thirteen years old and being told not to move until it was completely dark if I wanted to see a deer. As the darkness crept in, I heard wolves howling in the distance. The howling got louder and closer, louder and closer. Because of the overly masculine deer camp, I was so afraid of going in early and taking a verbal lashing from the guys that I sat there and gripped my rifle as tightly as I could. I couldn’t wait to click on the flashlight. And when I did, I swear I saw the tail of a wolf scampering away. Scariest walk back to camp ever.
If you had the opportunity to make another film inspired by a real Wisconsin legend or piece of folklore, what would it be?
Manny: I’m working on a script set in Mount Horeb, the troll capital of the world, that I would like to make. My friend Adam Smith, who runs Voices Off Paper in Milwaukee has a really nice script about the Beast of Bray Road. I hope he gets to make it.
Creature Fear leaves us with a very different kind of monster than the one we start with. What do you hope viewers are still thinking about when they walk out of the screening?
Manny: I love movies that kind of rug pull you at the end and give you an “aha” feeling upon rewatch. It’s all there in Creature Fear, but it’s really subtle. I may have overdone the subtlety and some people will find that frustrating, but I hope the audience thinks about why that character is reacting that way in the final shot. It’s the most horrifying aspect of the entire story to me. That shot was the last thing we filmed during principal photography and it still gives me chills thinking about that character’s psychology. There’s an entire conversation to have outside the theater about that character’s motivations. I remember asking my crew what they thought it meant and getting pretty wildly different answers, which I think is awesome! I know what my intention was, but if people read it differently, all power to them. Some people are finding that frustrating though and to them I say, focus on the starting monster’s performance because it’s unreal! We have something for everyone!
Creature Fear begins its Wisconsin theatrical run in October, with screenings scheduled across the state, followed by a digital release later in the month. Here’s where you can find it:
- October 1: Avalon Atmospheric Theater (Milwaukee premiere) – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 2-8: Prairie Cinema, Prairie Du Chien – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 7: Highway 18 Outdoor Theatre, Jefferson – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 9: Sawdust City Fright Fest, Oshkosh – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 9-10: Micon Cinemas at Oakwood Mall, Eau Claire – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 12: Rivoli Theatre, La Crosse – BUY TICKETS
- Oct 23: Worldwide digital release through Terror Films
