While struggling to emotionally detach from the deceased, a crime scene cleaner believes a monstrous presence is toying with him.

Director’s Vision for ‘Stomach It’

The idea for Stomach It came about when I first read about crime scene cleaning. Intrigued, I started digging deeper. Every company shared the same qualification needed for the job: a strong stomach. That gave me the idea for a character; a person who struggles stomaching their job.

I became fascinated by the psychological aspects of crime scene cleaning and how you are expected to emotionally detach. A crime scene cleaner in Louisiana told me that he would turn photos of the deceased around when he was on the job. Crime scene photos I saw were filled with personal objects left behind by the deceased.

I resonated with this notion because of my grandmother. My grandmother died by suicide in the 1980s, but I didn’t know that until I was a teenager. Growing up, I learned about her through my father’s stories, photographs, and Super 8 footage. That helped me paint a picture of somebody I never actually knew.

The main character in Stomach It, Joel, fixates on objects left behind by the deceased such as a toy horse at an accidental shooting or a colorful toy at an overdose. Joel tries to detach by turning photos around, disposing of final meals, covering photos on mirrors, and covering personal objects like stuffed animals, but it doesn’t work. Joel has an incredibly difficult time trying to digest his trauma.

Besides sound, I wanted to visualize the character’s internal issues. Drawing from the practical effects in 80s horror movies such as A Nightmare on Elm Street and Videodrome, I worked with a special effects make-up artist, who made a stomach air bladder. When inflated, the bladder replicates a pulsating stomach. I knew I wanted a bloody mattress to protrude out in the background, so I hired a carpenter to make a 3D wooden stomach. We attached rods to the stomach and puppeteered it through a fitted sheet.

This body horror story is meant to be anxiety producing, visceral, and gross. I hope you have the stomach for it…