Dublin actor Aoife Hogan will be appearing in another overseas screening this Halloween, after the horror short U Never Listen was selected by the Los Angeles Hollywood Dead Film Festival, British Columbia’s Fake Flesh Film Festival, the Alt FF Alternative Film Festival – and now will play in Louisiana for a festive screening in the Hammond Horror Fest.
U Never Listen, filmed in Los Angeles, London and Brighton, also screened at Dublin’s Underground Film Festival, and was a semi-finalist in the Irish International Film Festival.
As well as screening at the UK’s Horror-on-Sea and St Leonard’s Horror Film Festival, it was awarded an Honourable Mention by the Los Angeles Underground Film Forum.
The 27 year old actor from Harold’s Cross, said: “It’s great that this four-minute horror with a tiny budget will have another overseas screening this Halloween. None of us in the crew thought this ever would happen when we were filming it on one tiny camera in a deserted Brighton underpass at 7am!”
Aoife added: “I love Halloween as it’s a great excuse for everyone to dress up and be a big kid. That’s why there’s always the chance something bad is about to happen in any horror.”
“I’ve done a good few horrors and I always play someone twisted – I love playing devious! Some of my favourite Irish horrors are Shrooms and Ross Noble’s Stitches.
Aoife, who studied the Meisner technique of acting in New York City and London, is currently studying in Dublin and plans to travel in Vancouver next year. She will appear in “The London Detective”, the first British virtual reality feature, as well as in an upcoming horror short filmed near London.
Writer and producer of U Never Listen, Nina Romain, explained why she chose Aoife to play the heroine Gale, a 21st century grownup version of Dorothy from “Wizard of Oz”.
She said: “Aoife is perfect in horror as you can never decide if she’s a villain or victim. When you first see her character Gale, she seems to be just a happy-go-lucky partygoer at a Halloween fancy dress party…but at the end you realise she’s masterminded everything that happens in the underpass.”
Nina Romain added that the inspiration for the four-minute short came when she was staying in an LA hostel.
“I was walking on Venice Beach filming on my smartphone to show my friends back in London what a lovely place it was. Suddenly I thought, as “Wizard of Oz” was of course filmed in the States, what would happen if we were in a modernday horror version set in Venice Beach?
“So when I got back I used the LA footage on my phone with the bad guy’s voiceover by Marina Prozac, and borrowed a friend’s camera to shoot the rest in Brighton, with Aoife and the other two leads Roberto Zeden and Daniel Kewn. I was also lucky enough to work with Brighton horror icon Billy Chainsaw, who played our bad guy.
“The shoot only had a budget of about £600, so to see it screen to horror hounds in LA was amazing – and to have it win “Best Bang for Your Buck: Best Horror made under $1000” was great! I’m so proud of Aoife, and it was amazing seeing her on the big screen in her home town in Dublin Underground Film Festival and having it selected for Irish International Film Festival.”
