EXCLUSIVE: Aaron Jay Rome Interview - Talks Horror Films DEAD DAWN and SILT
Two horror films, one shared ensemble, and a filmmaker looking to rewrite the rules of independent distribution. More Horror interview's director Aaron Jay Rome ahead of the November 7 double-feature premiere.
On Saturday, November 7, filmmaker Aaron Jay Rome brings two very different horror films to the big screen at Lumière Cinema in Beverly Hills. One follows a small-town postal worker whose life takes a violent turn. The other sends a fractured group of friends into an isolated lakeside nightmare involving ancient mysteries, buried guilt, and Tommy Wiseau.
The films, DEAD DAWN and SILT, (Get Tickets Here) share a director, a producer, and several cast members. Their stories occupy entirely different corners of the genre, giving audiences a double feature that moves from pitch-black comedy into cosmic dread.
Rome, whose previous directing credits include the psychological thriller END TRIP, wrote and directed DEAD DAWN, a 103-minute horror-comedy centered on Anna-Beth, an overlooked post office clerk struggling with a demanding boss, difficult customers, and a controlling ex. When her circumstances spiral into something considerably darker, Anna-Beth discovers a side of herself that changes everything.
The film stars Ashley Lenz, Olivia Grace Applegate, Malcolm Goodwin, David Anders, Krishna Smitha, Michael Papajohn, and Isaiah LaBorde.
SILT, meanwhile, takes audiences somewhere considerably stranger.
The 110-minute cosmic-horror thriller follows a group of friends attempting to reconnect during a weekend retreat near a secluded lake. Their mysterious caretaker, Bartleby, claims the water contains "the genes of the Gods." As old wounds resurface, the group begins confronting forces that challenge their understanding of reality.
The role of Bartleby is played by Tommy Wiseau, the filmmaker and actor whose THE ROOM achieved an almost supernatural level of cult-film notoriety.
Rome directs SILT from a screenplay he co-wrote with producer Isaiah LaBorde, based on an original story by Vernon Davis and Tiffany Toney. Davis, the former NFL tight end turned actor and producer, also appears in the film.
The cast includes Andrea Sixtos, Tommy Wiseau, Malcolm Goodwin, David Anders, Olivia Grace Applegate, Krishna Smitha, Vernon Davis, Michael Papajohn, and Isaiah LaBorde.
One particularly interesting aspect of the production involves the crossover between the films. Rome assembled much of the DEAD DAWN ensemble before SILT entered development, then brought several performers into the second production to portray entirely different characters. One actor even returned to set with only three days to prepare for an unexpected replacement role.
The filmmaker also has ambitions extending beyond these premieres.
Through Demand the Screen, Rome and his collaborators are experimenting with a direct-to-audience theatrical model designed to give independent filmmakers greater control over distribution and revenue. The project draws inspiration from filmmaker-led distribution efforts and challenges the familiar obstacles separating independent productions from theatrical audiences.
Ahead of the Beverly Hills premiere, More Horror spoke with Rome about both films, the unexpected casting of Tommy Wiseau, the influence of Kevin Smith's DOGMA, the making of two features with a shared ensemble, and his belief that independent filmmakers can reclaim more control over how their work reaches audiences.
Exclusive Interview: Aaron Jay Rome
SILT: Cosmic Horror, Tommy Wiseau and the Secrets Beneath the Water
MORE HORROR: SILT originated from a story by Vernon Davis and Tiffany Toney. What initially drew you to the project, and how did you and Isaiah LaBorde develop that original concept into a cosmic-horror feature?
AARON JAY ROME: We were deep into pre-production on DEAD DAWN when it landed in our laps. Isaiah had worked with Vernon before, and Vernon came to him with a script he’d written and an offer to fund it if we could put it together. Funding is the hardest thing to find in independent film, so we knew we had to move while the iron was hot.
The script needed a rewrite, but the bones were really good. Vernon and Tiffany had some genuinely cool concepts, and it mostly needed structural work. That was a first for me: bringing my own sensibilities into a story someone else had started. At the same time, we already knew where we were shooting DEAD DAWN, so we went out on a location scout and found a place that felt made for this movie. Within about a month of getting the script, we had a story and a location that fit each other perfectly.
MORE HORROR: The film originally carried the title LAKE VERNON before becoming SILT. What inspired the change, and does the new title carry a deeper significance within the story?
ROME: Short answer to the second part first: yes, it carries a much deeper meaning. You’ll have to watch the movie to find out what it is.
Originally, Vernon wasn’t planning to be in the film at all. He just wanted to see it come to life. But Isaiah and I looked at it and thought: Vernon is an actor and a pro football player with a big fan base that would love to see him on screen. So we wrote him in, invited him to the table read, and it fit perfectly. At that point, though, we had a movie written by, produced by, and starring a guy named Vernon, and calling it LAKE VERNON felt like a bit much.
I’m a big fan of subtle, character-driven genre films, the kind A24, Neon, and Bleecker Street put out. SILT felt quieter, more intriguing, and more sinister. When I pitched it to Vernon, he was on board right away. It just fit the movie.
MORE HORROR: One of the film’s more intriguing concepts involves a mysterious lake that supposedly contains "the genes of the Gods." Where did that mythology come from, and what interests you about exploring the intersection of human desire, supernatural power, and consequences?
ROME: Any time you write characters who go into the woods, you’re one step away from a cabin-in-the-woods movie. I knew right away I didn’t want to fall into that. My goal was to bring the mysteries of the universe into what could easily have been a paint-by-numbers creepy-forest movie.
I was inspired by films like Talk to Me, where you follow fully realized people, so you actually care what happens to them. The stakes feel real because these characters have the same problems as the person sitting in the theater. The cosmic side stays a mystery, because it’s unsolved by science. But I like grounding everything I write in logic, so I built my own understanding of what the lake is, what it does, and what happens when people play with something they don’t understand.
And honestly, watching Tommy Wiseau fall in love with nature, then anoint the other characters in a ritual while he tells them about the genes of the gods, was too good to pass up.
MORE HORROR: You’ve previously described SILT as exploring the unreliability of the human mind and the "Monkey’s Paw" effect of seemingly miraculous events. How do those ideas connect with Hadria’s unexplained guilt and the secrets surrounding the other characters?
ROME: That’s exactly the question I want audiences asking. Every character walks onto that land carrying something, and the lake has a way of giving people what they want. Whether that’s a gift or a punishment, and whether they can even trust their own minds about what’s happening, is the whole ride. Anything more would spoil it. You’ll have to see it.
MORE HORROR: Casting Tommy Wiseau as Bartleby is an intriguing choice, particularly given his unique place in cult cinema. How did he become involved, and what was your experience directing him? Did he bring anything unexpected to the character?
ROME: If you know anything about Tommy, you know everything he does is unexpected. That’s why he has a cult following.
I didn’t write Bartleby with Tommy in mind. I wrote a very eccentric character who owns a strange piece of land with a mysterious lake on it. We originally went to Christopher Lloyd, who Isaiah had worked with on Cold Moon (highly recommend it if you haven’t seen it), but the travel was too much for Chris. So we went through our network, and Tommy rose to the top fast.
From the outside, I knew it might look like a risk. But Isaiah and I quickly realized that if Tommy was born to play any role, it was Bartleby. When you see the movie, I think you’ll agree. As for directing him: he takes his work as seriously as any A-lister, and I really respect that.
MORE HORROR: Speaking of Bartleby, the name carries an interesting literary association with Herman Melville’s Bartleby, the Scrivener. Was that intentional, or does the name have another origin within the film’s mythology?
ROME: The real origin is much humbler. I’m a huge Kevin Smith fan, and Dogma was one of my favorite movies growing up. I think it was the third DVD I ever owned. I loved Bartleby and Loki. During the nine days I spent furiously rewriting this script, the name Bartleby came to me and stuck.
MORE HORROR: The film’s isolated setting, locked gates, strange wildlife, and mysterious lake create a strong visual atmosphere. How did you approach building that sense of cosmic dread through cinematography, sound design, and the surrounding environment?
ROME: We got very lucky with our location. Instead of trying to fake production value we couldn’t afford, we leaned hard into what we had. That instinct goes back to where I started. My first film, which I co-directed and co-produced with my wife, Ashley Lenz (she also stars as Anna-Beth in DEAD DAWN), cost us $1,000 to make. When your roots are in shooting around what you have, you keep doing it even once you have more of a budget.
The property was a deer preserve behind three separate gates, with 800 or 900 deer running around us at all times. The atmosphere was already there. My job was to frame it as a mysterious place that could be anywhere, cut off from the rest of the world.
Sound was the next layer. I worked very closely with our sound design team so that the audience feels surrounded by nature for the entire film, the same way the characters do.
The last piece was the lens. We shot on the Angénieux Optimo 24-290mm. In those big, open landscapes, it let us go wide or push into a tight close-up without losing time swapping lenses. At the long end, it compresses the background so the trees tower over the characters and look far taller than they really are. At the end of the day, this movie is told from nature’s point of view: nature watching tiny humans who think they’re important.
DEAD DAWN: Small-Town Desperation and Pitch-Black Comedy
MORE HORROR: DEAD DAWN follows Anna-Beth, an overlooked small-town postal worker who eventually discovers a darker side of herself. What inspired this character, and how did you approach transforming an ordinary person’s frustrations into a pitch-black horror-comedy?
ROME: DEAD DAWN didn’t start as a comedy. It started from a very dark place. I wanted to make something that honestly showed the guilt a person would feel after accidentally killing someone close to them, and what it would take to hide that from the world.
In most horror movies, people get killed, friends get maimed, and the final girl walks into the sunset with a sigh of relief. I’m much more interested in what happens after: someone living with the fact that they took a human life.
Then an actor friend of mine, a tremendous comedic performer who was originally attached to the role, got me thinking: what if this wasn’t so dark? What if it was a comedy?
Suddenly it slotted into a small-town tone somewhere between the Coen brothers and Edgar Wright, with my own twist. Once I saw the film through that lens, it just worked.
MORE HORROR: DEAD DAWN and SILT share several cast members while exploring very different corners of the horror genre. Was that creative overlap intentional from the beginning? What were the biggest challenges in developing two distinct films with a familiar ensemble?
ROME: I’d had the DEAD DAWN cast together for a long time before SILT came along. Once SILT fit so neatly into the same shooting window and location, it made sense to keep as many of those actors as we could. They’d spent so much time together on DEAD DAWN that they had a chemistry you can’t fake, replace, or imitate. When I finished the SILT draft, we held a table read with a lot of the DEAD DAWN cast, and it clicked.
The biggest surprise was Krishna Smitha, who plays Anna in SILT. She wasn’t supposed to be in the film. She’d wrapped DEAD DAWN and flown home to Dallas on the one day off between the two shoots. Then the actor cast as Anna had to step away for family reasons, which was completely understandable. I called Krishna and asked if she wanted to come back and shoot another movie. She had three days between that call and walking on set as a brand-new character she’d never read, one who communicates in ASL. She absolutely stole the show.
That’s the real story across both films: the actors are nearly unrecognizable from one to the next. Olivia Applegate plays Dawn in DEAD DAWN, and I don’t think most people would realize she’s in SILT unless I told them.
Independent Horror, Creative Freedom and a New Approach to Distribution
MORE HORROR: Your earlier film END TRIP explored psychological terror through an intimate, confined scenario. SILT expands into ensemble storytelling and cosmic horror. How has your approach to directing horror evolved, and what continues to attract you to the genre?
ROME: END TRIP came out of a tiny budget and a new camera. The Sony A7S II had just come out, and it could shoot in near darkness for about $2,500. That got me thinking about a film built around the trust we put in big tech companies, and rideshare, which was still fairly new then, was the perfect vehicle.
What connects END TRIP and SILT is the people. I try to fill my stories with deeply nuanced human beings. But SILT was my first chance to step a little further into sci-fi, which I’m really drawn to and which my next film, HUM, goes all-in on. SILT was the right middle ground for those first steps.
As for why horror: drama can get very dark. And in a world already dealing with so much darkness, it’s ironic, but horror lets you explore ideas that would be too heavy for audiences to sit with any other way. You can wrap almost any subject in horror, and that gives you an enormous amount of freedom.
MORE HORROR: You’re bringing both films to audiences through Demand the Screen, an audience-driven theatrical campaign. What inspired this distribution approach, and what do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities facing independent horror filmmakers trying to reach theaters today?
ROME: Two big inspirations: Markiplier’s Iron Lung, and Mark Toia’s self-distribution of Monsters of Man.
I also run a company called One Grand Film, where we help filmmakers make their first features. (Humble brag: about 40 filmmakers have shot features with us in the last 13 months.) I built that company on paid ads and traditional marketing, so I know firsthand that independent distribution is broken right now. Minimum guarantees are hard to get, and at this budget level they’re a drop in the bucket. My team and I agreed that if we were going to do most of the marketing anyway, we should keep most of the profit instead of handing it to a distributor in exchange for their logo at the front of our movie. (That said, Blumhouse, A24: my inbox is open.)
Mark Fischbach proved audiences will demand theatrical screenings of a film they’re excited about. But he did it with tens of millions of subscribers. Demand the Screen is about proving that model works without a built-in audience that size, using paid ads and traditional marketing, and then building the infrastructure so other filmmakers can follow the same path. DEAD DAWN and SILT are our crash-test dummies. Once the model is proven, we want to offer it to any filmmaker who wants to distribute independently and keep 90% of the profit.
That’s the opportunity. For decades, studios have stood between filmmakers and audiences. Now we’re in a creator economy where you can go direct to consumer. If you have an audience, you can put up a landing page, tell your fans where it is, and earn far more than the fractions of a cent per hour you’d see from streaming.
MORE HORROR: With both films heading to Beverly Hills on November 7, what are you most excited for audiences to experience? And when someone walks out of SILT, what’s the one question or feeling you’d love them to carry home?
ROME: The twists and turns. When I write, my goal is to give audiences, and myself, something we’ve never seen. If I’ve seen it before, I steer away from it, and hopefully that adds up to a genuinely new experience.
And you couldn’t have phrased that last question better. When someone walks out of SILT, I want them asking themselves one thing: Would I have done the same thing?
DEAD DAWN and SILT: November 7 Beverly Hills Premiere
Audiences can experience both films on Saturday, November 7, 2026, at Lumière Cinema at the Music Hall, located at 9036 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California 90211.
The evening begins with the red carpet at 5:00 PM, followed by doors opening at 6:00 PM.
DEAD DAWN screens at 6:30 PM, followed by SILT at 8:45 PM, with filmmaker Q&A sessions accompanying the screenings. All times are Pacific.
The double feature also marks an important step in the filmmakers' Demand the Screen theatrical initiative, inviting audiences to support independently produced horror directly.
Tickets and premiere information: https://demandthescreen.com/la-premiere
Watch the Official Trailers
DEAD DAWN:
SILT:
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