A little girl skips innocently through a meadow, plucking pink and white flowers in dazzling sunshine. Not far from her, a hulking man stalks his next victim. Covered in blood, he wields a shovel sharpened into a crude pitchfork…
Shovel (2018) is a gem of short film that I was lucky enough to come across recently. Chosen as a Special Invitation Selection for the 2019 American Horrors Film Festival, it effectively disturbs in its few minutes while denying horror conventions, leaving the viewer craving for more. I decided to take my own cravings to writer and titular character Doug “Groovey” Newville and director Ryan Policky to see what more I could learn about this fascinating flick.
Both Groovey and Policky have always been interested in horror. “I probably hit the ground and the first thing I said was, ‘Let’s watch a horror movie,'” Groovey laughs. He recalls his childhood room in Wisconsin decorated with classic Universal Monsters posters, going to Friday Night Frights and watching Dr. Cadaverino. “It’s continued on to this day; I’m an old man and love it as much as I did when I was six years old.”
Policky remembers drawing up Choose-Your-Own-Adventure haunted houses for his friends as a kid before going on to work in haunted houses when he was older, even writing a script for a horror movie in high school. His constant work in horror was what led him to create Shovel’s production company, Bloodshed Deathbath: “I was working at an advertising agency at the time, and deadlines and rounds of revisions were driving me nuts so I just wanted to do Bloodshed Deathbath where I’m in control of it, I say what’s approved.” The Colorado native is always on the lookout for creepy filming locations around Denver, and has released numerous “fantastically weird” movies through his company.
I wondered what such aficionados of the genre considered to be their most influential horror film. Groovey appreciates the different storytelling styles of 80s films like Redneck Zombies and Killer Klowns from Outer Space, but names Alien as his favorite. “Whether you consider Alien a horror movie or not, it’s actually terrifying.” For Policky, the avant-garde ideas behind Jacobs Ladder and the original Suspiria elevate their status to works of art. “They’re so weird compared to everything else that was going on at the time,” he enthuses. “Psychological horror I like the most.”
According to Groovey, the idea for Shovel came from a thought experiment: “I do a lot of writing in my day job so before I go to sleep I tell my brain to write everything I need to the next day and all I have to do is move my fingers when I wake up. I really wanted to write something that sort of turned horror clichés and tropes on its ear, so I asked my brain to come up with an idea while I slept.” Although the film is not meant to imitate any certain production styles, Groovey admits he was likely influenced from several horror classics, “I’m sure my subconscious pulled in Texas Chainsaw, probably The Hills Have Eyes, things like that.”
“I wasn’t really thinking about any other films,” Policky adds, “I just have a natural tendency to shoot dark, scary stuff. It all combined to be pretty disturbing overall. I don’t know, the people are already disturbing in this thing, all you need to do is press record.”
It’s clear that family is an important theme in Shovel, something that will be expanded upon in the full-length movie planned to be made. “It’s actually all about family. And families,” says Groovey, who will reprise his role as the garden-tool-wielding demon. “Shovel was a man at one point. He was a horrible, horrible person, the worst to walk the earth. And then in a very horrible way he kills a bunch of people and kills himself and comes back as a demon. And the little girl summons that demon because she’s dealing with some stuff and she needs a demon to take care of those bad men you see.” The girl, played by Aeona Cruz, uses the flowers she picks as currency to pay for Shovel’s deeds because “little girls don’t have bank accounts and can’t write a check to a demon.” The pair didn’t give away too many details on the feature film, but hinted that the character holding a broad fork at the end will have a vital part. Policky envisions it being stylistically similar to David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ and wants to have the likes of Willem Dafoe or Viggo Mortensen on board.
With only one spoken line, Shovel presents itself more as a silent film and music video than a short. But instead of detracting from the storytelling, the lack of dialogue brings more attention to its details and allows the viewer to be drawn into the unsettling soundtrack created by Policky’s band, Genessier. Surprisingly, the score came before the film, combining an older track with a newer, unreleased song. “Since we make moody, weird landscape-y, horror industrial music, it just worked perfect with the pacing of the visuals,” Policky says. “We didn’t even really have to edit it. The way that we made it somehow works.”
Not everything came easily for the creators, though. The technical aspects of making Shovel were the hardest parts for Policky: “Matching production from one year ago to now with the same characters and making it not look like they’ve aged and all that. There’s so many details to try and keep it all consistent.”
“This is how detail-oriented Ryan is,” adds Groovey. “We would go shoot a scene at our buddy’s farm, and he would check the time and it would say 3:43 this scene’s happening, right? But we knew the next scene wouldn’t be for two weeks just because of logistics and everything else. He would gauge the time two weeks from now – say the first was 3:43, well the next one needed to be at 4:01 to match the exact same time that the sun was at.”
So what was the hardest part of making Shovel for Groovey? “The makeup sucked, it got in my eyes, it burned like crazy,” he gripes. “It was truly the best of times/worst of times kind of thing. It was filming with all my friends who are all amazingly talented, but the whole time I was covered in horrible skin-rotting makeup and molasses, even when it was 25 degrees outside.”
Groovey’s appearance as Shovel elicited honks and stares from passersby while filming, but the creators were more concerned about being busted with a dangerous weapon than attracting attention. “That shovel was made by Sam Marcus, who’s an amazing prop maker,” Groovey explains. “It is a weapon like you wouldn’t believe. That is real metal. And barbed wire.” Luckily, however, witnesses weren’t terrorized and the cast and crew were left in peace. “Denver’s a weird place anyway as far as filming it,” muses Policky. “You can kind of get away with anything.”
Shovel is available to watch on Amazon Prime and will be streaming on the American Horrors Roku channel.
