Get ready to scream and laugh in terror on Saturday, January 14, and Sunday, January 15, as local filmmakers and cousins Kale and Charles Eickhof will present their horror film LOON! at the Grand Theatre in Crookston. The movie, which was shot entirely in and around Union Lake and Crookston, features an all-local cast and crew.
Charles and his cousin Kale Eickhof wrote, produced, and shot the movie at Union Lake and the Crookston area. Local actors Mario & Jill Schisano, Anna Huck, Lynnette Mullins, Anders Berggren, Henry Fischer, Hayden Spivey, Dan Svedarsky, Bo Brorby, and more star in this indie horror film! The film will star co-producer Charles Eickhoff as Jake Border, a rookie game warden who has spent so much of his life protecting loons and the environment from hunters. But, when the loons suddenly attack people, he must find a way to stop the loons with his knowledge and expertise of the beloved state bird.
The movie was originally thought up as a joke by Kale and Charles after they heard their mother joke about a parody of loons on the Titanic, which then changed over time into a horror film idea about the state bird during satanic. “It all started as a bit of a joke. I think my mom randomly said, “Loontanic,” so we started joking about making a movie that would be like “Titanic” but would have loons instead of people on it. Then that shifted into Satanic Loons, and that idea just festered between Charles and me, and we kept telling each other, “Let’s stop telling people about it,” but we kept telling people about it,” co-writer and producer Kale Eickhof explained. “It got to the point where we had the narrative beats all laid out, and once we had that, we took that and started writing the script. In just a few days, we had most of the script and finished the whole thing start to finish in six days.” Kale explained that historically, many horror films with supernatural elements and monsters as the threat have a deeper or cultural fear they draw upon, like war. For their film, the killer birds are a metaphor for COVID-19, as it was made during the pandemic.
The process of making the movie was a labor of love for Kale and Charles, who drew on the support of their community to provide talent and logistical support. The two filmmakers worked closely together, often serving as each other’s source of motivation and encouragement when the going got tough, as they had begun shooting the film near the end of the summer of 2020 while the COVID-19 pandemic was still going strong. Yet they were amazingly able to finish shooting the movie in just 18 days! “It definitely presented its challenges. Looking back on it, there was this brief moment in that later part of summer where people thought we were coming to the end of the tunnel with COVID before some of that variant stuff started coming on. Nonetheless, I remember we did have a COVID scare or two. Fortunately, nothing that materialized into anything serious, but we wouldn’t be able to call those people the way we did without different mutual connections and relying heavily on communication via phone and text,” co-writer and producer Charles Eickhof explained. “Doing it in such a short amount of time, there were a lot of late nights and early mornings. There are a lot of pieces that had to fall into play, but I think one of the pieces that made us successful was that Kale has some great history in producing things, to begin with, so we were right from the start in getting the narrative sent out and storyboarding it, so we knew what we needed to accomplish, and it was laying all out in front of us, and we just chipped away one piece at a time.” While it is a horror film and is not yet rated, the Eickhofs says the film is more of a PG-13 B-horror comedy movie that families can see with its cartoonish violence and seeing some familiar faces star in it.
Don’t miss this heart-pumping indie film showing at the Grand Theater on Saturday, January 14 at 7:00 p.m. with a matinee showing on Sunday, January 15 at 1:00 p.m., and at the River Cinema in East Grand Forks on Friday, January 20, for a limited two-week run, but associate producer and Crookston Grand Theatre Manager Bo Brorby revealed that the movie could run for much longer and in more theatres if the interest by the public is there. “We’re doing a premiere at the Grand Theater, but the two-week run at the River Cinema is going to the big launch for it. We had to create dcp files, a special file for movie theater servers to read. So, starting at the River Cinema, hopefully, we’ll be able to get this movie playing throughout the region, to Fargo, Duluth, and everywhere else around here that we have a file format for theaters to be able to run it,” Bo Brorby explained. “And how we do showings and movies at the River Cinema is with how a movie is performing is how long it runs out. We plan to run it for two weeks, and if we’re still getting some people coming out, we can have it run on for a little longer.” The cousins also reported they are currently working to have the film get showings in theaters in Minneapolis at the end of January and in other areas outside of Minnesota at the end of February. For those interested in seeing the film even more after its showing, it will be added to some streaming services when it’s finished running in theaters.
Kale and Charles are excited to share their work and want to extend a special thank you to everyone who was involved in the film, as well as the Crookston Community Theater for its support. The 2023 version of LOON! is packed with new special effects and original music. Get your tickets today. A trailer image for the film can be seen below, and you can see the full trailer for the film on the Crookston Grand Theatre’s Facebook page at www.facebook.com/grandtheatrecrookston.
