By GRACE DETWILER
Following the underground phenomenon that is It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This (2023), DIY filmmakers Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti are thrilled to announce that principal photography has wrapped on their next feature, HOMEBODY. Fresh off an announcement that their previous film is headed to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2024, Nick Toti was kind enough to share the following comments and behind-the-scenes pictures from the set of HOMEBODY with RUE MORGUE.
As Toti explains in his notes on the film, “Rachel and I moved from Los Angeles to the rural Midwest at the end of 2020. It was clear that the film industry was dying, so we decided to move somewhere that was cheap to live and where we could make our own movies, the way we wanted, without needing anyone’s permission. Rachel had one script in particular that we thought we could pull off in our new hometown, Kirksville, Missouri. It was called HOMEBODY.”
In HOMEBODY, Cory has died at 35 of cancer. Now Meg, his widow, is stuck in the life they were supposed to be building together. One night, she meets a woman who lives on the street and claims she can talk to ghosts. She tells Meg things only Cory could have known. Meg invites the woman home to live with her on the condition that she has to keep channeling Cory, no matter how painful it becomes. And it will become painful.
“The first thing we needed was a location. HOMEBODY takes place in a duplex, and we found the perfect place. We bought it for a very low price, but we had to take it as is, which included having no water or electricity (due to all the pipes and wiring being stolen). The duplex was also covered in graffiti of all sorts: Satanic symbols, Bible verses, swastikas, skulls, a mural in honor of crystal meth and Walt Disney, etc. We knew that we would have to fix the place up before we could shoot HOMEBODY, so we did what anyone in our situation would do… We got out the camera and started improvising a found-footage horror movie about a haunted duplex. That movie was called It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.”
“While all this was slowly unfolding, Rachel and I continued working toward our original plan: to produce HOMEBODY. On March 31, 2023, a touring band called Pocket Vinyl (which has two members, a married couple named Eric [Stevenson] and Elizabeth [Joanne]) played in Kirksville at a DIY arts space that Rachel and I help run. While they were performing, I leaned over to Rachel and said, “I could see those two playing Meg and Cory in HOMEBODY.” A few weeks and multiple emails later, we had cast our first two leads. We cast our third lead, a character whose name is never revealed and is just referred to in the script as “Lady,” shortly after meeting with Julie Linnard, an actor I had worked with nearly ten years ago on a web series called Master Class. When Jules expressed interest, we told her the part was hers. No audition needed. The last key member of our team was Jeffrey Sisson, our makeup effects artist.”
“We made HOMEBODY by breaking every “common sense” rule of filmmaking. We spent our own money. We worked with animals, children, and non-actors. We opted for practical effects over CGI. We used the wrong equipment, shot without permits, and sometimes had a crew of only two people. We may be stuck owning this dilapidated old duplex for the rest of our lives. We want this movie to crawl inside the viewer and live there longer than you might be comfortable with—which is appropriate since this is a movie about the fear of having your personal space invaded. It’s a movie for anyone who’s ever dreaded having family come to visit or had a guest overstay their welcome, or felt they had to smile when they didn’t feel like smiling. It’s a movie for introverts. It’s a movie that creates a safe space for feeling bad.”
HOMEBODY is now in post-production. Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti’s IT DOESN’T GET ANY BETTER THAN THIS is an official selection of TIFF’s Midnight Madness and will screen at the festival in September 2024.
