Eight-Year Endeavor: Hand-Drawn Horror/Comedy THE WEIRD KIDZ To Premiere FRIDAY at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
A NOTE FROM DIRECTOR ZACH PASSERO AHEAD OF HIS
WORLD PREMIERE:
For the past week since finishing up THE WEIRD KIDZ, I have been shell-shocked. My nearly decade-long journey with this film (inception, screenplay writing, voice recording, animating, animating, animating) has come to an end; and I quite honestly…I don’t know what to do with myself.
I cannot believe that I am here, about to share THE WEIRD KIDZ with audiences.
I’ve been thinking a lot about what made me want to set forth on this crazy undertaking. The story for the Kidz’ adventure started forming when my wife and creating partner, Hannah, got pregnant with our first child. I began to imagine explaining to our new little one what things were like when I grew up.
That is how THE WEIRD KIDZ was born.
A stew of memories, adventures, movies, and influences from throughout my life lifted the intention to finally realize a lifelong dream, and to make that lifelong dream something I could one day show my kid to explain what my life was like – in reality, in imagination, in influence.
I write this, ruminating in a house now filled with TWO growing children. The oldest (on the cusp of 8 years old), and the younger (now 5) have only known their father as he worked away on The Weird Kidz in whatever free chance he got between work projects and family duties. Now, our whole family is about to start a new chapter and I cannot wait to share The Weird Kidz with them…and the rest of the world!
– Zach
Synopsis:
Zach Passero’s animated feature film debut is a labor of love, eight years in the making. Written and single-handedly animated by Passero, THE WEIRD KIDZ is a horror-inflected creature feature and an ode to ’80s coming-of-age films and favorite late night cinema tales. When three pre-teen boys and an older brother and his girlfriend take off for a weekend campout, none of them could imagine the horrors (and laughs) awaiting them in a remote desert inhabited by a legendary night creature and crazed townfolk. Puberty and adventure await…along with terror, amputations and midnight cult rituals!
Writer/Director/Animator:
Zach Passero
(Isolation, Wicked Lake)
Producer:
Lucky Mckee (May, The Woman)
Starring:
Angela Bettis (12 Hour Shift, May, Girl, Interrupted)
Sean Bridgers (Room, Deadwood)
Ellar Coltrane (Boyhood)
Genre:
Horror, Comedy
Runtime:
80min
