Fantastic Fest 25: “Silver Screamers” Brings Horror to the Nursing Home
Making a movie with a crew of experienced people is hard enough as it is, but what about throwing your grandmother in the mix? How well do you think she’d fare rigging a human-eating, haunted rug? Quite a few peoples’ grandparents make up the subject of Sean Cisterna’s Fantastic Festival-premiering Silver Screamers. Part documentary about the hurry-up-and-wait mentality of a film set and part capsule of the stories of the film’s subjects, Silver Screamers is for the film lover in all of us. The ones who have loved movies since birth and the ones who are discovering that love closer to the other end of the spectrum.
Cisterna appears in the film to briefly discuss how hard it is to make a film in the current economic climate. Money is drying up left and right, but Cisterna has stumbled across a source of funding for enriching activities for senior citizens. It’s this discovery by chance that gets the wheels in Cisterna’s head turning. What if he enlisted help from members of various nursing homes to be the crew of a short film? He gets to make two films for the price of one and give a creative outlet for an older generation that is often forgotten.
courtesy of Mythic Productions
“I need this project to fill my time. My husband passed away a short while ago and I need it,” says one of the film’s participants. There are many cultures around the world that put a lot of stock in ensuring the elderly population is cared for and has a much healthier relationship with death. In other countries, older people are seen as a burden who are using resources without contributing to society. It’s a baffling mindset to take. We should all be so lucky as to grow old in good health. We don’t lose our worth and importance when we get past a certain age. Silver Screamers is proof of that not only to younger generations who may think less of their elders, but also to the peers of the subjects in the film.
When we first meet the brave volunteers from various senior centers across Ontario, they are withdrawn and on the quiet side. The longer they work on The Rug, their horror short film about a rug that eats people, the more out of their shell they come. All of a sudden, they’re cracking jokes about how long they’ve been on set and giggling like the teenagers they once were. It’s incredible to see how a simple premise has the ability to fundamentally change the attitude of people. The same can likely be said for the younger mentors who help the seniors understand their new roles in the film. Silver Screamers is a testament to intergenerational community building, how it benefits the young and the old as long as everyone comes to the encounter with open minds to learn something from someone different than them. It’s humanity at our best: people pursuing their passions with the support of a community.
The funny thing about Silver Screamers is almost none of the senior participants are horror fans. Yet they signed up to be prop masters, make-up artists, sound recordists, art directors, and more for a bloody little short film. Silver Screamers does an excellent job at introducing the audience to each of these people and their long, full lives that led them here. Charming hand-drawn storyboards fill in the blanks of what childhood pictures and videos are missing and add this personal touch to an already experiential film. The subjects will remind you of people in your life, ones who may not be around anymore, but whose passions and love for life didn’t end when they turned eighty years old. Silver Screamers is endearingly heartfelt in its pursuit of making something frightening, a mirror of sorts to life itself.
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