Members of audacious Winnipeg film collective return with new horror short — that's also a beer commercial

Since 1996, the annual Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal has been a kind of global clearing house for weird and wonderful genre movies from around the world. 

But surely one of its most unexpected entries this year is a seven-minute beer commercial from a film collective with Winnipeg roots.

The 27th edition of Fantasia, which has been going since July 20 and wraps up Aug. 9, continues the fest's tradition of celebrating cinema's strange and dangerous — for example, giving late-career Nicolas Cage a lifetime achievement award, or screening a restoration of the notorious 1977 exploitation film Emanuelle in America alongside former Winnipeg Cinematheque programmer Kier-La Janisse's documentary short about that film's star, Laura Gemser, titled The Reluctant Icon.

It also featured Forgotten Lake, a short created by Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy — two members of the erstwhile Winnipeg-based film collective Astron-6.

In the last couple of decades, Brooks and Kennedy, alongside Steven Kostanski, Conor Sweeney and Jeremy Gillespie, created an impressive output of feature films, short films and even TV content out of Winnipeg with very little money, but endless reserves of creativity and sheer chutzpah.

These include the 2012 post-apocalyptic adventure Manborg (largely shot in the basement of a Pembina Highway Superblinds store) and Father's Day, a demented psycho-killer movie from 2012 that was picked up for distribution by exploitation specialists Troma.

Their last feature, a lovingly outrageous pastiche of the Italian giallo genre titled The Editor, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2014.

Since then, the group has largely disbanded, each member finding legit work in the film industry throughout Manitoba and Ontario. Brooks still acts and makes commercial and corporate film in Winnipeg. Kennedy returned to his hometown of Kenora, Ont., where he does the same.

"It's not exciting stuff," admitted Brooks, 44, in an interview.

But one of Kennedy's clients happens to be the Kenora-based Lake of the Woods Brewing Company, and the management of that company has always taken an interest in Brooks and Kennedy's past lives as Winnipeg exploitation filmmakers.

Years ago, Kennedy jokingly pitched them on a commercial for their Forgotten Lake blueberry ale product, inspired by his love for the Friday the 13th horror franchise.

"Those guys kept coming back to us, saying, 'So when is this Friday the 13th thing gonna happen?" Brooks said.

'100% creative freedom' from brewery

Hence, the film Forgotten Lake was underwritten by Lake of the Woods, contrary to the Astron-6 business plan of using their own money to fund their projects.

"What was so amazing was they gave us 100 per cent creative freedom," Brooks said. "It was kind of too good to be true. I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Once the script was written, "we gave them approval anyway, but they didn't give us any notes," said Brooks.

"They just said, 'It would be nice if you put us in there somewhere.'" (Brewery honchos Taras Manzie, Audrey Manzie and Rob Dokuchie play the disreputable-looking "kitchen staff" in cameo appearances.)

"We kind of pre-emptively course corrected," Brooks said. "We didn't put too much blood in and kept the extreme violence off camera," but "they never asked us to cut anything."

Making the film was "just us having fun and it was so nostalgic," said Brooks. "It felt like 'I wish we could be doing this every day for a living.'"

Inspired by Friday the 13th

Shot in the fall of 2022 in and around Luther Village — a faith-based non-profit camp on the shores of Dogtooth Lake, near Kenora — the commercial is set at a summer camp facility.

Instead of Friday the 13th's Jason Voorhees, the designated stalker is "Blueberry Boy" (Curtis Howson), a giant killer who was evidently possessed by an evil force as a child and stalks the woods in a burlap hood, just like the pre-hockey mask iteration of Jason.

Though it's essentially a commercial for the beer, "we made it seven minutes long instead of 30 seconds," said Kennedy, 38.

The more ambitious scope demanded that he and Brooks enlist their Astron pal Steve Kostanski to design Blueberry Boy's hideous visage when unmasked. Kostanski works in Toronto as a director (Psycho Goreman, The Void) and has been a makeup effects technician on everything from Star Trek: Discovery to Crimson Peak.

But he was also eager to get back into the Astron-6 groove, and to "working on something fun," Brooks said.

"And it was wonderful. If you make this kind of thing without that [visual effects] component, you might as well not make it," said Brooks. "If you don't have something under the mask to reveal, what's the point?"

In front of the camera, Brooks and Kennedy worked as actors alongside Samantha Hill, a veteran of the Broadway stage (Phantom of the Opera), and more importantly of Astron-6 (The Editor). She plays counsellor Annie, the film's designated "final girl."

Brooks and Kennedy say the experience has them contemplating some kind of return to the Astron-6 experience, including a potential feature film spinoff of the commercial.

"We're all middle-aged and have kids now," said Brooks. "So it's hard to get away from your kids for long, and it's hard not to make enough money to pay for the kids to keep eating."

Making the short film was "more work than we anticipated — but you have so much fun at the time," said Kennedy.

"It's like surviving a war," he said. "There's a lot of camaraderie in that."

Forgotten Lake screened at Fantasia Aug. 3-4. Brooks says it should be viewable online for free by Aug. 11.