NWA Director's Debut Thrills Viewers with Gory Horror Feature
“The Forest Through the Trees” is sweeping awards on the festival circuit
By Mickey Mercier
BENTONVILLE — “The Forest Through the Trees,” a campy new horror movie by Arkansas director Jason Pitts, is sweeping awards at film festivals and heading toward streaming platforms.
Pitts led a determined crew of 30 filmmakers who shot the feature-length movie in three weeks. The low-budget indie effort premiered at a sold-out theater in Fayetteville this January.
It’s a supernatural monster movie depicting a bloody battle between a working-class family and the bird demon Malphas – who is second in command of Hell only to Satan.
The film won the prize for best horror movie at the 2025 Santa Barbara Film Festival in California. It received a half dozen awards at Italy’s Florence International Film Festival including best director, actor, actress and screenplay.
The movie will play at the Rock City Film Festival in Little Rock in May. In June, it will run at Cleveland’s Horror Hotel film festival. Pitts said New Jersey distributor BayView Entertainment will represent the film for the commercial market.
FAST FOOD AND STRAIGHT WHISKEY
A beloved wife and mother runs away from home after receiving a cryptic summons in a flower delivery. Her twenty-something daughter Chloe, played by Annie Sullivan, and husband Ken are bereft. Ken gorges on fast food and bangs shots of whiskey at a tavern. Chloe’s in bed, snogging with tattooed gf Eva (played by scene-stealing Alivea Disney).
A deranged leader of a demonic bird cult, Julian, lurks in the dim barroom. Played by Scott Doss, he looks like a cross between Freddy Krueger and the Spy vs. Spy character from Mad magazine.
Events lead Chloe and Eva to a rustic cabin where the bird cult binds them with chains. Chloe is afflicted from birth with heterochromia – one blue eye and one brown. The cult wants to sacrifice Chloe because her mismatched eyes are a portal for summoning the bird demon. The altar awaits – with a blood chalice, crocodile head, incense and horns.
Ken, played by James Stokes, is on the trail of the missing women. Cultists bludgeon him with a crowbar and bury him alive. Ken digs himself out and unleashes B-movie backwoods revenge on the villains. He isn’t above ripping out their fingernails with pliers.
This movie has no guns, for a change. However, that’s made up for by the knives. The production had its own knife maker, Jonathan Nichols. Ken and his cultist adversaries all brandish impressive daggers.
The muscular, tatted Ken takes to the pale cultists with a machete. The carnage commences – neck snapping, impaling, decapitating, disemboweling, throat-cutting mayhem. The detailed work of half-dozen special-effects artists led by Sahlah Tepes depicts eye-melting gore.
The party is just getting started as missing mother Kathy reappears. Plenty of plot twists and bloody action are still to come in the 107-minute feature as Chloe struggles to find the forest through the trees.
FREDDY KRUEGER, ROLE MODEL
Director Jason Pitts was a horror fan from childhood. One influence was the first “Nightmare on Elm Street” movie by Wes Craven.
“Forest Through the Trees” is the first full-length feature for Pitts. His earlier efforts include the 60-minute horror pic “Voorhees Night of the Beast” in 2021 and a well-received 2022 short “When the Stairs Creak.”
Pitts, who lives with his family in Fayetteville, keeps his technical skills sharp as a television director for 40/29 News. He earned a degree in television and film from the University of North Texas in Denton.
Horror has always been an early-career genre for filmmakers because it has legions of enthusiastic fans. With luck, “Forest Through the Trees” could find a large streaming audience if it delivers the suspense and gore those fans expect.
The movie required a cast and crew of around 30 people – actors, photographers, sound and light techs, designers, graphic artists, prop masters, producers, writers … and assistants for everything. They shot the movie at locations like Siloam Springs and Clifty. The cost was around $80,000, Pitts said.
Pitts was effusive in acknowledging the skilled crew who filled some gaps in his own skills. Arkansas is on the map for its local filmmaking talent – creatives, cinematographers, technicians. They come from drama and technical programs at University of Arkansas and other colleges. There’s a screenwriting support group and a cinema society. A constant flow of new movies, festivals and events happens around the state, from El Dorado to Rogers. Independent studios are popping up.
Filmmaking’s potential needs to be better understood and nurtured by state leaders. Successful homegrown productions like “Forest Through the Trees” help make that case.
AN INGENUE’S JOURNEY
When Jason Pitts offered Annie Sullivan the lead role in his horror film, she was wary. “I wasn’t sure if I was the right person for the role,” she said. “I was a scaredy-cat growing up.” She was afraid of ghosts, of the unknown, and of feeling out of control.
A University of Arkansas graduate in theater performance, Sullivan lives in Los Angeles. Her career is going well, with supporting roles in Lifetime and Amazon productions. Her next project is playing a public-relations flak for a misbehaving football star.
Sullivan has acting chops and blue-eyed, dimpled good looks. She’s an athletic 5’8” brunette whose smile is something special. Between roles, she’s a server, along with some other actors, at the Taiwanese restaurant Din Tai Fung.
She arrived in LA at the time of Covid lockdowns, fires and industry strikes. But the larger struggle was more personal, she said. Actors need to believe in themselves and project confidence at packed auditions. They must handle rejection without taking it personally.
She’s from Dallas and studied abroad at Shakespeare’s old Globe Theatre in London. The students were allowed a single rehearsal on the historic boards. “It was surreal to be on the stage where so many legends have performed,” she said.
Sullivan returned to Arkansas to shoot “Forest Through the Trees.” It was her first film as the top-billed actor – even though the movie turned out to be an ensemble piece with a half-dozen leads. And it was the first time she confronted a demon – on camera at least.
Much of the grueling shoot was at night, and she became sleep-deprived. That somehow helped her to feel less inhibited during terrifying scenes. She was pushed around, tied up and threatened with blades. She wore prosthetic contact lenses that obstructed her vision. “You need to give a guttural scream from your stomach – let yourself go and not overthink it,” she said.
In the end, Annie Sullivan’s work on “Forest Through the Trees” earned her a taste of movie glamor. Now almost famous, she returned to her college town of Fayetteville on a chilly winter evening. Flushed with excitement and cold, she posed for photos in a low-cut red dress outside the theater. Her name was on movie posters at the premiere of her first movie as a leading lady.
“It was overwhelming in a good way,” she said.
FUN WITH FILMMAKING
With “Forest Through the Trees,” director Jason Pitts has proved that he can show-run a big production and deliver a full-length movie. He’s most proud of the twisty, heterochromia-themed script he wrote with co-author Charlie Brady who was also director of photography.
Startling sound effects complement a resonant musical score by Italian composer Simone Cilio. A hard-rock theme song by Norwegian-born guitarist Kjetil Landsgard sets a mood.
As in any splatter movie, the special effects are critical. The gore in this movie is shocking and screamworthy, not simply disgusting.
The centerpiece of the sacrificial altar, a longhorn steer’s giant horns, was splashed with too much fake blood during filming. Production designer Carla Nemec had to use a special industrial bleach to remove the stains before returning the prop to the collector who loaned it to the production
The man-sized villain wears a decent crow costume with a creepy head made by Tony Buck.
The film avoids the horror-movie deathtrap of taking itself too seriously. It has an over-the-top spirit, and the filmmakers seem to have had fun making it. That fun leaks to viewers.
Most important, “Forest Through the Trees” maintains suspense until the finale – and that’s a bloody accomplishment.
Text copyright by Mickey Mercier.
