I have always been a big fan of found footage, and to me, nothing is better than Stephen Cognetti’s Hell House LLC series. Cgnetti is gearing up for the release of his new (not found footage) movie, 825 Forest Road. We were able to sit down with Stephen for an in-depth interview.
PopHorror: When did you first find your love for horror movies?
Stephen Cognetti: I think everybody who loves horror movies got into it when they were way too young to get into it. That’s gonna give me nightmares for a long time, and that’s how love always begins, and for me, it was the 80s, when I was way too young. Friday the 13th was something that my brother and I would sneak and watch in the basement, or something, and Nightmare on Elm Street was a huge one that gave me nightmares forever. However, the scariest thing that I’ve ever seen in my life was The Exorcist by far. That’s stayed with me ever since.
PopHorror: Did the filming process of 825 Forest Road differ without the illusion of found footage?
Stephen Cognetti: Yeah, it was a very tough It was longer, shoot, there was a tougher shoot. Any time you have coverage in general film, filming narratively. It’s longer scheduled, tighter days
Because found footage is always just one single camera. Every scene was shot in a traditional narrative. We’ll have many camera angles for every single scene. So making your days is a lot tougher, but we did have more days to shoot. The average Hell House film takes about I would say 12 to 14 days to shoot. I did have 22 days to shoot on this. So I feel like It was a good amount of time. However, it’s still more of a challenge just because we have much more to do on a film like this
PopHorror: I grew up in the coal region myself, and a lot of us have a darker persona. Is that how you wanted the movie to be perceived in the town?
Stephen Cognetti: Yeah, it just I was just for me. It was always just wanting to do something about small town folklore, like the every town every small town has its legends. It’s old-fashioned stories. It’s tall tales Mythologies, and just like what is this town’s tale? So I think where I grew up, in Pennsylvania, and I think every town has its story, and you know most of them, I think not 9/10 times; they’re not true. However, it’s fun to think if they were, I just wanted to make that kind of “What is the local legend in this town?” But what if it were actually true, not just something, something actually traumatic that people are currently dealing with, not just something that’s fun? They laugh and tell stories about their legend to the newbies
PopHorror: Was there a certain reason you chose Jim Thorpe as a filming location?
Stephen Cognetti: Yeah, there was a certain reason. I think it was best for what I wanted the town to look like and feel like, and it was also more accessible to me. So Jim Thorpe is only like an hour and a half away from where I was, and so when I first wrote this film, I would just drive the Jim Thorpe on my own before I even knew if I was making this film or not. I would drive through Jim Thorpe.
I would look at houses up and down those streets and check things out and just kind of visualize the film in this town, and then once we finally got back in and Epic Films came, and I was able to meet the producers who wanted to back the film I told them about Jim Thorpe and they were very enthusiastic they said yeah, Jim Thorpe is a great idea. Let’s do it, and Jim Thorpe is a very friendly town. They’re great to us, so many good places to eat, the catering for everybody, the casting crew, and places to stay. It’s such a good town. If I could film another movie there tomorrow, I would.
PopHorror: Jim Thorpe is notorious for hauntings. Were there any weird experiences?
Stephen Cognetti: Yeah, it is. I was hoping we were able to film something odd. I think one of the best places is the old jail cell. It’s got this old, like really creepy jail cell with a place where they would hang people as well, and I always kept on trying to think of scenes to happen in there
And then would we be able to get access to that place? I wanted to film in there, but nothing ever happened to us. Well, we were there because, unfortunately, I don’t think ghosts exist, but it’s always fun to believe
PopHorror: Were you influenced by Silent Hill?
Stephen Cognetti: Not very much at all. I think for me, it’s just it was just my own personal nightmare. I think what influenced me the most is just my love of simple haunted house stories, going back to when I read one of the first horror novels. It was Matheson’s Hell House, and that’s a very old haunted house. That’s actually a haunted mansion tale, and I love that story so much, and I think that’s always stuck with me, and I always wanted to make a haunted house tale, at its bones, a very simple concept film, but what happens within that concept was fun to explore for me
PopHorror: What was your big takeaway from stepping out of found footage?
Stephen Cognetti; Well, I enjoy non-found footage the most. I enjoyed traditional filmmaking more. I think it’s where Hell House happened in found footage because that’s what made the most sense for Hell House. The scares are better in Hell House because it was found footage, and not every story should be told. Just because I did the Hell House and found footage doesn’t mean it fits every subsequent story I write after that; it fit really well for Hell House.
It wouldn’t fit right for this, and I enjoy traditional filmmaking a lot more. We shot 825 Forest Road between Hell House 3 and Hell House 4: Origins. We filmed this in 2021, and it was a lot of fun to step away from Hell House: Lake of Fire. It felt good to do something outside of the Hell House world and outside of found footage. It was a lot of fun
Thank you for your time, Stephen! 825 Forest Road is streaming now on Shudder! You can read our review here.
