By WILLIAM J. WRIGHT
In 2017, social media platform Twitter (now X) played host to a supposedly real-life haunting. Buzzfeed cartoonist Adam Ellis went viral with a series of posts documenting a series of terrifying encounters with the ghost of a child he believed was haunting his New York City apartment. Beginning with a cryptic post reading, “So, my apartment is currently being haunted by the ghost of a dead child and he’s trying to kill me,” Ellis’ frightening story unfolded with accounts of recurring nightmares, sleep paralysis, bizarre phone calls and shocking photographic evidence. The diminutive ghost, whom Ellis referred to as “Dear David,” a name revealed to him by a little girl in a dream, appeared as a little boy with a hideously misshapen head. Ellis also learned in the dream that “Dear David” was indeed a dead child. Cryptically, the girl informed him that David would answer two questions. However, a third query would result in Ellis’ death.
A photo of the entity known as Dear David from Adam Ellis’ original Twitter feed. Is it real? Does it matter?
Over the following months, Twitter users were captivated and terrified by the escalating paranormal activity in Ellis’ apartment, much of which was recorded with a nannycam and posted online. However, by February of 2018, Ellis’ tweets slowed to a trickle. The following November, it was announced that New Line Cinema had acquired the film rights to Ellis’ story. Whether “Dear David” was true or an expertly crafted hoax remains open to debate. Ultimately, it’s immaterial. Ellis’ saga is an amazing piece of storytelling.
Now, six years after Ellis’ first haunting post, Lions Gate and director John McPhail, best known to genre fans for the big-hearted holiday zombie musical Anna and the Apocalypse, are bringing his story to the big screen. Starring Augustus Prew (The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power) as Ellis, DEAR DAVID expands and revises the Twitter thread’s original mythos with a detailed backstory and more fleshed-out narrative from screenwriters Mike Van Waes and Evan Turner. Ahead of DEAR DAVID’s theatrical release (coming, appropriately, on Friday, October 13), John McPhail took some time from his busy schedule to talk to RUE MORGUE about this dark tale of the internet.
Thanks for speaking with RUE MORGUE. Let’s talk about DEAR DAVID. How did you get involved with this film? Were you aware of Adam Ellis’ story going in?
Director John McPhail behind the scenes of the horror film, DEAR DAVID, a Lionsgate Release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
I came across the Twitter feed in 2017 while it was happening. I saw it in one of those clickbait articles, like The Scariest Things on the Internet, and kind of got hooked on it. I suffer from sleep psychosis myself … And also, I found Adam really funny. I love comic books. His comic strips were really, really funny, and I was enjoying his content, but it wasn’t until the script landed on my desk that I remembered “Dear David.” When I was reading the script, I was like, I know this! I know this! [The script] came from a friend of mine, Naysun Alae-Carew, who produced Anna and the Apocalypse with me, and he was working on a couple of films with BuzzFeed. He said they’ve got this horror script I think you’d really dig it. It was DEAR DAVID. He pitched for it and was lucky to get it.
The film departs substantially from the original “Dear David” thread. How do you think those changes improve or expand upon Adam Ellis’ original story?
Obviously, we’re gonna take a bit of dramatic license with it and with the way that the internet plays such a big part in the actual story. I could see the parallels between a haunting and a trolling in the sense that you’re getting these outside forces invading your home, your safe space, you know, whether it’s a ghost or your phone buzzing in your pocket or pinging on your screen.
I know I’m guilty of having read a comment or something, and it’s just sort of stuck in the back of my head. And I know, I can’t not reply, and that’s terrorizing me, haunting me. I was like, oh, this, this could work really well. We sort of integrate them and use the story but make it feel like a guy who’s having a bit of a mental breakdown. The question that everyone always asks themselves is did this happen? Or did the guy make up it? Is he having a mental breakdown? Is this happening? Those were sort of parallels we wanted to have.
Image from the horror film, DEAR DAVID, a Lionsgate Release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
Was Adam Ellis involved at all in the film?
Mike Van Waes was writing the script in 2017 when [“Dear David”] was happening. He’d be messaging Adam back and forth and things like that. [Adam Ellis] put certain things in the script, but that script consulting went somewhere else and went everywhere. Some things changed and had different iterations.
When I came on board, I got Buzzfeed to connect me and Adam because I kind of wanted to know him. I wanted to know what kind of music he’s into, what movies he likes and if he could send me some of his cartoons that we could include in the film as well as pictures of his old apartment so that I could get the furniture similar and the fans of the original Twitter thread would get some sort of winks and nods and things that they would like, which will sort of transport them to his apartment. Again, we’ve taken a little bit of license. We make it a little bit more cinematic, but there are a lot of things that are all very, very, very similar to his original apartment.
(L-R) Augustus Prew as Adam Ellis and Cameron Nicoll as David in the horror film, DEAR DAVID, a Lionsgate Release. Photo courtesy of Stephanie Montani.
DEAR DAVID reveals the origin of the ghost but still manages to keep a degree of mystery about the specifics. Without giving too much away, did you have a more fleshed-out, detailed backstory for David and his family and their lives before the events of the film?
With the family and their previous life, we were trying to have those parallels [with Adam]. We added them so that there’s connective tissue. With the family aspect of it, I kind of wanted to show the worst thing that could happen to someone. It’s a mother who’s witnessed these traumas, is put in a mental institution and then her legacy is being laughed at on the internet. That was really horrific and quite horrible and a horrible way for it to go. And I see a darker side that includes the internet as well.
Augustus Prew as Adam Ellis in the horror film, DEAR DAVID, a Lionsgate Release. Photo courtesy of Lionsgate.
DEAR DAVID, along with some other films like Rob Savage’s Host, seems to form a new subgenre of horror in which the internet is a vehicle for the supernatural. How do you feel about how the internet and social media have affected the way we tell stories, especially ghost stories?
I think it’s just part of the times, you know? Think about how horror stories were originally told in short stories and poetry and novels, and it grew from there into things like the Hammer horror series. Horror has evolved and will continue to evolve, and I’m sure in ten years’ time, there’ll be some other way of being able to do that. As long as people are telling stories, for me anyway, that sort of matters because that’s what I love.
DEAR DAVID premieres in theaters, on digital and on-demand on October 13.
