Comrades In Horror: Domonic Smith

Domonic is a lover of horror.  He uses his actual fears to fuel his creativity.  It was a great journey discovering what drives him as a horror fan and as a film maker.  Take a look and find out what makes him a great choice for June’s Comrade In Horror.

DP: What do you find more effective: gore or suspense? Why?
DC: I think suspense is so much more important than gore. But at the same time, I think gore plays a very important part of horror when done right. If I look back at some of the films that stuck with me longer, it was always films that properly built on suspense, and my psych. I’ve always said true horror, is about more than scaring me in the moment. But creating proper emotional ties that stick with me well after the movie is over. Most recently, the film Hereditary is such a great example of just that.

DP: What scares you?
DC: Honestly, this is going to sound super cliché and as if I’m some hard right wing Christian. But HELL scares me more than most things. The films I can think of that have truly freaked me out as a kid, have typically shown some kind of image of hell. Tales from the Hood absolutely destroyed my childhood. And when I saw As Above, So below in theaters. It did an amazing job at destroying my adulthood for a few weeks. I think the root of the idea is just being afraid of enduring eternal torment. Having all your bad decisions in life being used as the ending tool to destroy you. My other huge fear is being without control. Some of my favorite horror films that stick with me, have created scenarios where a person has lost complete control.

DP: As a film maker, where do you get your inspiration?
DC: I draw a lot of inspiration from music and from my dreams. I’m told by friends a lot that I dream in movies. Sometimes I dream in metaphors and abstract imagery. But a lot of times, I actually dream in complete stories. Or at least what my brain conceives as a complete story. Aside from being with my daughters, my dreamscape is my favorite part about living. And I think that’s why I love movie so much, because it’s my way of escaping reality without having to close my eyes.

DP: What would be your dream film project?
DC: My dream project would actually be a film called Chasing Dawn. Funny enough, it’s not a horror, but an action drama that touches on the horrors of child trafficking. It’ll be filmed in the tone of Paul Walker’s Running Scared. But that’s as much information as I could give on that project at the moment. But closely after that would be doing A Nightmare On Elm Street film.

DP:Where did you get the idea for the Freddy Krueger fan piece? How have the Elm Street fans reacted to the news?
DC: I actually just pulled it all from my imagination. I put a lot of thought into what I would prefer to see as far as how I’d love to see the Nightmare films brought back. I re-watched the series a dozen times and put a lot of thought into what I hadn’t seen done yet story wise. Especially with going with a not just a lead male character, but a lead Black male character. Horror films have a huge habit of victimizing women. And I wanted to see how it would be to change the course a little bit, and it also served as a true challenge as a writer.
The fans have received the trailers pretty positively. I’ve received around 75% of positive responses, 10% are of fans who just say if it doesn’t have Robert Englund then they don’t care, 10% who say that I’m just a left wing libtard who wants to destroy their childhood by forcing diversity in the films they grew up on, and finally 5% who just truly think it’s trash.

DP: How do you involve your family with your film projects?
DC: My daughters are very aware of majority of the films I do, and I do my best to bring them on set as much as I can. I have twin girls, and if you know anything about twins, they trade personalities like shoes. Some days my daughter Melanie loves watching horror films with me, and Marissa wants nothing to do with them. And other days Marissa will come home and beg to binge watch Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? with me. I do my best to teach them about makeup techniques and special fx, so they understand that it’s all pretend. I really hope one day they’ll find an interest in this field, whether in front or behind the camera. But I’m not forcing anything on them, I just love letting them see what daddy does.

DP: What future projects are you excited about?
DC: I have two projects that I’m pretty amped about that I should be filming at some point next year once financing is in place. Both of them are horror feature films. One is called LUCID, that follows a lucid dreaming experiment gone horribly wrong. And the other is called Dead Drop, that follows one guy hired to do a dead drop, and he brings two of his buddies along, and the item he’s paid to drop off ends up being a bit more horrific than he could have ever expected.

You can see the trailer for Domonic’s Nightmare project below.  He has quite a vision for the infamous Dream Slasher.  You can find out more about Domonic and his creative works on his YouTube channel and his Google+ page.