Sudbury horror film buffs will have the chance to see their hometown in a terrifying new light, as the Nickel City served as the setting for "The Curse of Buckout Road" which debuts nationwide and on video on demand on Sept. 27.
Written and directed by North Bay native Matthew Currie Holmes, the film was shot between 2016-2017 and focuses on a group of college students taking on a class project to crack the urban legends surrounding the famed Buckout Road in upstate New York.
This was Currie Holmes' first time shooting in Sudbury, despite growing up just down Highway 17 in North Bay.
"I never really ventured into Sudbury, that was always considered no-man's land," laughed Currie Holmes. "But it was fantastic, working with David Anselmo (Northern Ontario Film Studios) was great. Aside from being an hour from my family, it was great to discover Sudbury, we shot in a lot of places around Sudbury and did a lot of location scouting so it was really cool."
Aside from some B-roll shot in upstate New York where the film takes place, all of the locations in the The Curse of Buckout Road are in Sudbury. Currie Holmes and his crew shot a number of scenes at Northern Ontario Film Studios and the nearby area around Adanac Ski Hill.
The director also happened upon some great locations during his scouts that made it into the film.
"There was this really cool church up on a hill that we shot at that was just such a beautiful building," said Currie Holmes. "It was like a 1970's church, it was just really cool, it was this ominous church on the hill and it was a great spot."
The church in question was Our Lady of Hope Church off Brennan Road in the Gatchell neighbourhood.
"We shot near the ski hill, in the woods back there, the little service road that goes back there was our Buckout Road," said Currie Holmes.
This was Currie Holmes' first time working with David Anselmo and NOFS and the director had glowing praise for the experience of coming to Sudbury and working with Anselmo.
"We loved it, we're actually shooting another one up in Northern Ontario. As far as working with David Anselmo it was great, he was very accommodating, his studio was really functional as far as we had our production office there but we also shot inside the studio, we also shot in the parking lot near the forest area," said Currie Holmes. "We utilized that whole area by the ski hill, it was great."
The crew also found a dilapidated old house that they cleaned up and used as a the setting in parts of the movie. Currie Holmes says he's excited to see Sudbury as a big star on the big screen.
"If you're going to shoot a horror film there, with some atmosphere, you can definitely do a lot worse (than Sudbury)," he said.
If you want to catch The Curse of Buckout Road on the big screen, Imagine Cinemas - Downtown Movie Lounge will be screening the film this Friday and Saturday at 6:40 p.m. and 9:10 p.m.
In the meantime, you can check out the trailer below.
