KDSN RADIO News
Iowa filmmakers bring killer scarecrow to Ottumwa horror movie fest
A pair of filmmakers who are southeast Iowa natives will be showing their movie “Field of Screams” at the Halloweenapalooza Horror Film Fest in Ottumwa later this week.
Evan Runkle and Alix Moad, who now live in Colorado, set the film on a rural Iowa farmstead. Runkle says the plot follows a man who inherits an old farmhouse after his grandfather’s death and as he and his friends arrive to get the house ready for sale, the scarecrow comes alive.
“That was just us channeling our inner Iowa, honestly,” Runkle says. “We wrote it while we were still living here and took a lot of inspiration from all the farmland and just the different ways we grew up around different relatives. I know my grandparents had a farm and a lot of that went right into the script.”
Moad says she had a good friend who lived on a farm when she was a middle schooler.
“Every year, I’d help her family with the corn and getting the husks off the corn, so I spent a lot of time running through corn fields,” Moad says. “I think it just instilled in both of us this kind of fascination with farms and that kind of area, and scarecrows are pretty central to that.”
It’s both a comedy and horror movie, and Moad says they really “leaned into” the comedy, as one of the main actors is a comedian. As for their villain, Moad says they thought other horror movies have featured scarecrows that look too human, especially in how they moved.
“We wanted to incorporate some disjointedness into how our scarecrow moves,” Moad says, “because it’s a living scarecrow, but he hasn’t been alive very long, so we thought that was kind of interesting and wanted him to move more like a toddler would move, rather than just a full-blown being that runs at you.”
Both graduated from the University of Iowa’s film program, Runkle in 2016 and Moad in 2018. “Field of Screams” was shot over just 12 days last summer, and it was ready for the screen earlier this year, with a few public showings in Iowa already. Runkle credits his UI education for making him a well-rounded filmmaker who knows how to work quickly and efficiently.
“Definitely at Iowa, we learned to get things done fast in order to get assignments done on time, honestly,” Runkle says. “And then both Alex and I did some work with different regional news stations and that sort of thing, and that’s always a really quick turnaround. So I think a lot of the cast and crew was a little surprised at how quick we could get things done.”
Moad, too, applauds her time in the UI film program as she came out knowing how to do a little bit of everything, including screenwriting, directing, shooting, editing, and producing.
Their movie screens at Halloweenapalooza on Saturday (October 11th) at 6 pm. Both filmmakers will introduce the film and have a Q&A afterwards. Can’t make it to Ottumwa? “Field of Screams” is available for rent or purchase on Apple TV and Amazon Prime, and it’s free on Tubi.
