So far, 2018 has been a great year for horror. One of the high points thus far was a little micro-budget mindbender called The Endless. The film tells the story of two brothers who had escaped a seemingly dangerous cult, only to be lured back in years later.  Easily one of the more satisfying movies of the year, The Endless was created on a next-to-nothing budget by filmmakers (Justin Benson) and Aaron (Aaron Moorhead). This being only their third film together, the two have established themselves as capable filmmakers who know their strengths and how to play to them.

The Endless arrived on Blu-ray and DVD last week and we HIGHLY recommend seeing it. Today though, we share our conversation about The Endless with filmmaking duo Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead about their movie, filmmaking, and what it takes to just stop making excuses and start shooting your movie.

HorrorBuzz: What inspired you to tell this story?

Aaron: Well we made our last movie, SPRING, and it did well, so we thought that, and I don’t know why we thought this, that we would make a big movie. We wrote the script for it, we pitched on it, but then we realized that we were just taking a bunch of beatings, all day. We looked back and we thought, “We shot SPRING at the end of 2013. What the hell are we doing?” So we thought, “Alright. Let’s just go make a movie,” you know? Like “Damn the consequences and we will just learn that making another small movie is not a step back or a step sideways, and just make something that we love. So we put this together with the intention of doing everything ourselves, act in it, operate the cameras. We even practiced shooting scenes in selfie-mode in case nobody else was around.we were gonna really bootstrap this film together. Luckily though, our producer Dave found us some big boy financing and, you know, it’s still a micro-budget movie. SAG categorizes it as “Ultra Low Budget” and they don’t have anything smaller. BUT! It was more than what was in our bank account. So we were able to actually hire a crew and pay our collaborators a shameful wage, and five months later we were shooting a movie.

Were you writing the script with yourselves in mind or were you going to cast someone later?

Justin: Yeah, a few things. We conceived the idea to be as self-reliant as possible, so we were always going to play these two characters. We also played these two characters in our first film, RESOLUTION, which most people have not seen or probably will never see…

Aaron: But it would have been, for those three people that HAD seen the movie, that these characters were all of a sudden different people.

Justin: Yeah, that would have been weird (laughs). But there was also the desire, that we wanted to do it ourselves. We both as filmmakers, we had 10 years of do-it-yourself filmmaking experience before we had even met. Now we are into 10 years of a partnership, so that’s like twenty years of experience of do-it-yourself filmmaking where you are the craft services person, then you are the electrician, you are the boom op sometimes. Acting is just another job on the set, just like anything else.

Aaron: Yeah it’s all just filmmaking.

Justin Benson (Left) and Aaron Moorehead (Right) from The Endless.

HB: When did you guys meet?

Justin: I grew up in San Diego, and Aaron grew up in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Aaron: You remembered the name of it!

HB: Was the storyline for The Endless inspired by the Heaven’s Gate Cult?

Aaron: Yeah, we, not the storyline, but it is revealed (Minor spoiler) that Justin invented the slander of the cult in order to get his brother to leave, and that slander that he invented is a lot like Heaven’s gate, so that’s what we based it off of.

HB: The film also explores complacency and cycles. Is that something that either of you struggle with?

Justin: Well, I mean, for better or worse we are having fun as filmmakers. We would probably have a lot more money if we were a bit more complacent. But I think everyone tries to flag it before it happens. There’s always a blind spot that you catch thinking,”Oh I’m doing the same thing over and over and it upsets me every time.”

HB: What you guys have made, two very good horror films. Would you call this a horror film?

Justin: Yeah I’d call it a horror film. But I mean the genre doesn’t really matter. If it scares you it’s a horror film. If it mind-bends you then call it a sci-fi movie. If you want to be like, “This is a story about two brothers.” and call it a family drama, that’s cool too. I don’t like to watch movies that fit into a genre, I like to watch films that are good.

HB: As filmmakers who just bootstrap it, what is your advice?

Justin: What we did was we just basically made a list of what we had available to us; Props, vehicles, locations, talented people. Taking all of those things that you come across and…

Aaron: Some things I just do…

Justin: Yeah like Aaron does effects, he can do 2D compositing, you know, stuff like that. Then think about an amount of money that is reasonable amount of money for you to save up working fourteen jobs that hopefully aren’t too shitty and that don’t make you miserable, Then write a story that uses all those resources and a script that will accommodate that saved up money and those resources then plan everything out meticulously. Leave nothing to chance. NEVER utter the words “We’ll figure it out on set.” because you won’t. I mean, you will HAVE to figure things out on set no matter what. Also, save about $300 for film festival submissions and then submit to the top tier festivals that already have publicity and marketing machines built in and hope you get into one. I’m just regurgitating what we did. And if you don’t get in, then start back at step one. You go make another movie.

Ultimately the idea is to make movies, to be a movie maker and that’s your only job. Your goal should not be to go to film festivals and be lauded, your goal should be to make movies. If you make your first movie and it’s not getting into festivals, the answer is not “Okay I need to push this film harder.” The answer is, “Go make another movie.” If the doesn’t work, go make another one. Never wait on somebody else to give you the green light, whether it’s that you are waiting on money, you are waiting on cast, whatever it is that you are waiting on, that is the biggest mistake. It took us two relatively successful indie movies before we could get someone to invest in our movie and even that was a small amount of money.

HB: What is next for you guys?

Aaron: Right now we have all the carrots on a stick that we chase, we are still chasing them, and they may totally still happen. We’ve got four feature films we are working on and any one of them could go at any moment, same thing with about three different T.V. shows. They’re all in different stages of development. They are all our own things, thankfully we didn’t take anything that was like, “Well it will be a paycheck.” No, everything we are working on are things we are totally behind.

The lesson? Remove the obstacles, play to your strengths, and make your movie.

The Endless is NOW AVAILABLE on Blu-ray, DVD and VOD