Former Beachwood resident Stone premiers horror movie at London’s FrightFest – Cleveland Jewish News

Afeature-length horror movie, Ruin Me, produced by former Beachwood resident Rebecca Stone and written by her husband, Preston DeFrancis, will have its world premiere Aug. 27 in London at the horror film festival FrightFest.

From an independent movie standpoint, horror movies are known as the one genre can still sell even if there arent A-list actors in it, said Stone by telephone from her home in Los Angeles. Theyre relatively speaking less expensive to produce than say an action film or something of a different genre.

Ruin Me, produced by former Beachwood resident Rebecca Stone, follows the story of six individuals who think they are taking part in an extreme haunting camping trip but things quickly take a turn for the worst.

Stone, who graduated Beachwood High School in 2001, said the film officially was completed in February.

DeFrancis, who graduated from Case Western Reserve in Cleveland in 2002 with a bachelors degree in electrical engineering, came up with the story idea in 2013 with his writing partner, Trysta Bissett. He said he was inspired by Blackout, an extreme haunted house experience where attendees must walk alone while being immersed into the scene and can be touched or blindfolded.

Blackout is meant to be a truly terrifying experience for an adult, said DeFrancis, originally from Wheeling, W.Va. My screenwriting partner and I, weve both been big horror fans for a long time, we sat down and said, What if we created it in our mind an event in which six people are taken out in the middle of the woods and the idea of the event is there going to live out a Friday the 13th movie?

The production company, including DeFrancis, Stone, Bissett and two others, overcame the challenge of working on a small budget, entirely independently raised, while going up against hundreds of other films to get into the festival.

The one element we dont have, is we dont have any name recognition, DeFrancis said. We dont have any actors in our film who are named actors and we dont have a producer attached to who is a named producer or anything like that. Our big challenge is finding someone bigger than ourselves to give us a stamp of approval and credibility and FrightFest does that.

While their film does not have any connection, they said they hope it will gain attention when being shown with movies like the Cult of Chucky, which follows the infamous killing doll, or Death Note, based on the popular Japanese manga.

I think the thing that really sold it for us that this is the one we want to make (is) when we created the lead character, DeFrancis said. As you watch the film, you will see that she is a complicated, multi-dimensional person who is put through a unique set of circumstances and has the opportunity to make life decisionsthats when we said we have to make this and we have to make it ourselves.

Stone said she was intrigued when DeFrancis came to her with the idea and both were in a position where they could take time to produce the movie themselves with the experience both gained from working in the movie industry. Neither of them wanted to hand off the project to another company because they said they didnt see anyone who would bring justice to the idea.

By 2015, when we actually filmed, I had been in Los Angeles 10 years and this just felt like the right, next step for all of us, said Stone, who was a member of Congregation Shaarey Tikvah in Beachwood. I had produced all these other projects with other companies. None of us had come together and made something of our own and to put our names on a feature film, and show to the world that this is something were capable of is a big deal.

The pair said they hope the movie sells after gaining recognition from FrightFest and they plan to show it in future festivals like the Cleveland International Film Festival.

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Former Beachwood resident Stone premiers horror movie at London's FrightFest - Cleveland Jewish News