SYNOPSIS
SAMANTHA (SAM) COLE returns to her childhood home when her mother suddenly passes. In place of familiar spaces and memories, Sam finds only uneasiness and confusion. Things are missing, the environment seems unnatural, and the neighbor (NOAH) who discovered her mom's body is suspiciously obtuse. Isolated with these mysteries, a scavenger hunt her mom had prepared for her upcoming birthday, and rising red flags from Noah, Sam wrestles with her sanity and certainties.
In her journey to untangle the truth, she finds herself at a dangerous crossroad: How far can she trust instincts that may be clouded by grief, guilt, and desperation?
Shudderbugs is a psychological thriller about the strange ways we cope with loss, and the many sides of ourselves that engage in the struggle.
OUR STORY
Shudderbugs was born while quarantining with my parents in my childhood farmhouse in spring of 2020. Our frustrations and confusions during this unprecedented time were tempered by throwing ourselves into an incredible challenge. We’d make our own feature, start to finish. With the soaring pandemic in New York came vast limitations. As our locations, crew, on-screen talent, and other key elements of traditional filmmaking were stifled, we replaced those pieces with what we did have available: the natural beauty of our isolated environment, time, excessive planning, the three of us, youtube tutorials, cinephilia, and bugs. Lots of bugs.
Shudderbugs is our attempt to capture the psychological experience of a woman unraveling, and to portray our minds' abilities to inform and adapt our realities, beyond logic and reason, often by necessity. In equal measure, we were drawn to telling a story of grief: the weird ways we wrestle and wrangle it, and the very different ways we learn to live with it. In the spaces between childhood and adulthood, memory and present, imagination and reality, live all the versions of who we are and how we may behave in the scariest and most difficult of moments.
We hope Shudderbugs may offer a voice in our collective portraits and conversations on isolation and grief.
- Johanna, Brennan & Jamie