What is The Quantum Terror?

Part 1: Answering the call to make a Lovecraftian metaphysical horror movie.

Dec 16, 2021

Click Here To Watch The Quantum Terror

I got the idea to make The Quantum Terror seven years ago but honestly, this movie has been brewing in my head since I was a teenager. It just so happens that synchronicity (more on that, another time) finally brought it together, which for me makes it more than a movie. It’s a form of life that used me to will itself into being.

Poster art by Oskar Ankarudd. Logo design by David Paul.

What’s it about?

Well, the plot is fairly simple. A young woman named Sam, fresh out of a relationship with another woman named Lucy decides that it’s time to leave her “party life” behind and start focusing on being more like her much more accomplished twin sister, Sylvia. However, her identical sibling has gone missing, leaving behind only books from her quantum mechanics classes, strange occult drawings, and an abrasive boyfriend named Jacob whom everyone suspects did something to her. With all the clues pointing to her possibly being lost in the local underground wash system, Sam follows him down into a subterranean world of monsters and madness… but that’s just the plot, not what it’s really about.

Here’s the trailer.

What kind of movie is this, anyway?

I wanted to make a horror movie that is special. You’d think that this would hold true for all filmmakers and I can’t speak for what motivates others to make their movies but for the most part, I felt like I was seeing a lot of uninspired and half-ass productions, directionless and unimaginative, made by people dreaming of what they could do if someone would only give them a few million dollars. You can’t think that way. If you’re going to put in all of that time and effort, it has to be because you have something more to offer than what’s already there. If you’re looking for that in the film’s budget, you’re looking in the wrong place.

I wanted to make the kind of movie that if you scratched at the surface even a little bit, the deeper meaning would come bubbling up at you, uncontrolled, turning into a flood that would sweep you away, hopefully for a lifetime.

Since I discover them, I have always loved directors like Stanly Kubrick and David Lynch who would give you just enough where the audience could ascribe their own personal meaning to the events that transpired on screen. You were invited to decide what motivated characters, if what you were seeing was reliable or perception, to feel the subliminal narrative on a primal level, and walk away with something to think about, to wonder if it might be useful as you go on with your life.

I wanted to make a movie like that.

What I didn’t anticipate was what an incredibly life-changing decision that would be. I didn’t understand that I was heading down as deep a rabbit hole as I intended to take my audience into.

When I sat down to write the script, I was drawing from a lot of places, my love of monster movies for one. I of course loved the first two Alien movies but had felt deep disappointment in Alien 3. As a teenager, I had tried to convince a friend to take his dad’s VHS camcorder into the local drainage tunnels and help me make a better job of it. This was the pre-internet fan film era so it didn’t fly. I was always hungry for more horror movies. I read all the time, Lovecraft, Clive Barker, Ray Bradbury, H.G. Wells, and so forth. Years later, while I was thinking up my story I was also feeling amused at what I had come to think of as science sensationalism. Our TVs and computers were feeding us not quite science and not quite science fiction but rather a useless kind of tabloid news claiming to be fact. I was also observing the cult-like social trends that have now spiraled out of control into hysteria. All of this and more were tied together in ways I didn’t yet fully grasp, nor did I understand how they were affecting me so profoundly until nearly the end of making The Quantum Terror.

I’m getting ahead of myself.

Portrait of Christopher “Moonlight” Cooksey by Val Mayerik

Self Discovery

I knew I needed to set some ground rules for creating the story and that’s where the journey really started. I had a limited amount of puzzle pieces to work with but like some strange non-euclidean geometry, I soon discoved this was far more than enough to create a complex and revealing portrait of my own psyche, that would change how I saw myself and the world, forever.

The first rule was to map out my resources. I had camera equipment, lenses, some limited audio recorders. I had raised money through Indiegogo from some of the most wonderful and supportive people I could ever ask for. I had my house, a garage, a wash tunnel across the street, and a handful of talented friends who were excited to help. I would allow myself no more than six actors and limit the amount of crew to save on money and personnel management.

With these limitations established I would write the script, which brings me to the second rule. Establish a vocabulary! That’s the dangerous part, trust me.

In my mind, this involved two major factors.

The first was simply pacing. You have to hit certain story beats to keep the audience engaged and to keep yourself from needlessly meandering on plot points for too long. Easy enough, if you’ve paid attention to how other movies do it. However, where the story really comes to life is the second factor, which is Symbolism and Subliminals.

The human brain sees and understands a lot more than we consciously realize. Where we often think of observation as the things we take note of and draw conclusions from, there’s a whole other layer of stuff we reflexively act on. Underneath our waking thoughts are a network of unconscious observers, reading the room, and adjusting our behavior and reactions accordingly.

I believe that if we try to learn these mechanisms of the human mind, we can create a vocabulary that tells a whole other story that we are somewhat unaware of, yet feel and comprehend intuitively.

This is something that psychologist Carl Jung also believed, so I decided to base my own film’s metaphorical vocabulary around what I had learned from studying his works. What I didn’t anticipate was that to dive into a story with this lens was to dive into one’s own personal madness, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Without going too deep in detail, when you draw a story up from the depths of your own soul (and yes we do have a soul) and bring to it all we think we know of the subconscious mind, you are forced to look at places within yourself that you never knew existed, that you can never ignore once you see them, and understand that there is far more at work within each of us then we might like to acknowledge.

I put all of this into this movie, along with all of the responsibilities that come with it, from the beginning of this production until the end. In a way, it felt like an unintentional confession, opening me up not to anyone who might watch it, the layers are too numerous for that to happen unless maybe you’re among my closest friends and family, but to myself. However, I think that when you watch this movie, it may open up something in you, too. Not everyone will be ready for that, especially if they don’t realize it’s happening.

Within this mythology, you may find yourself standing in the midnight of the soul. I can’t think of a better way to scare an audience.

Read Part 2, here:

Christopher’s Newsletter

What Is The Quantum Terror? Part 2

Inspiration The first time I attempted to make a movie I was a mere sixteen years old. I remember having no conception of the amount of work that went into making one and in hindsight, that was always the right way to go into these things. It was in May of 1992 after seeing an advanced screening of…

3 years ago · 2 likes · Christopher Moonlight