{"id":624470,"date":"2026-05-05T07:43:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T07:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/624470\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T07:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T07:43:11","slug":"ghost-story-from-better-than-this-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/624470\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghost Story from ‘Better Than This’ Team"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cIt Doesn\u2019t Get Any Better Than This\u201d duo Nick Toti and Rachel Kempf, who made waves by vowing to never release their word-of-mouth hit horror film<\/a> onto streaming, VOD or physical media, are back with their newest indie feature.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe duo is releasing the trailer for their follow-up film \u201cHomebody<\/a>\u2018 exclusively with Variety, and are currently planning how they will officially premiere the work.<\/p>\n

\n\tPer the official synopsis, \u201cMeg, a young widow whose husband recently died of cancer, is stuck in the life they were supposed to be building together. One night, Meg meets a woman who lives on the street and claims she can talk to ghosts. She tells Meg things only Cory could have known. Meg invites the woman home to live with her on the condition that she has to keep channeling Cory, no matter how painful it becomes. And it will become painful.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u2018Homebody\u2019 was written, produced and directed by Kempf and Toti, and stars Julie Linnard, Elizabeth Joanne, Eric Stevenson, Meredith Sladek, Shane Mullen, Avery G. Tillett and Bob Mielke. Matt Latham edited the film, which features music by Pocket Vinyl and special effects makeup from Jeffrey Sisson.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to the clip and poster, Toti shared his vision for how he\u2019d like to continue work on \u201cHomebody\u201d in an unconventional way.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHomebody\u201d is a movie that I\u2019m already super proud of. I absolutely love the movie we made, but I also know that it\u2019s a weird movie that was made in a weird way. We wanted to make a movie that fully embraced its DIY aesthetic, so we shot it on miniDV (which we later transferred to VHS to give it even more analog awesomeness) and in black and white. It\u2019s glitchy and strange and looks unlike any movie I can think of. We also worked with a lot of (though not exclusively) non-professional actors, and we had an extremely minimal crew, with sometimes only two or three people on set.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen we were planning the movie, we said that we wanted to make something that felt like the \u201cdemo version\u201d of a movie. Specifically, I wanted to make a movie that felt as intimate as the demos and B-sides of the band Teen Suicide, which I listened to obsessively while we were in production. I think we accomplished what we set out to do, and the movie feels uncomfortably intimate and aesthetically raw. Watching \u201cHomebody\u201d is like reading someone\u2019s diary and then immediately feeling guilty about it. It\u2019s a movie that makes you feel bad, but in a good way. Sometimes you want to live inside of bad feelings. Catharsis doesn\u2019t always come easy.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut having made the \u201cdemo version\u201d of a movie leaves us in a unique place. The natural question now is: What would the \u201cstudio version\u201d of this movie look like?<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat we\u2019d really like to do next is remake \u201cHomebody\u201d on a larger scale, with a budget of $3-5 million. We\u2019ve already made it once with a budget we scraped together working day jobs and saving every penny. We made a scrappy underground film that\u2019s full of big feelings and bold ideas about what a movie can be \u201cHomebody\u201d is already a pure artistic expression, so now we want to see what the bigger budget version of it would be.<\/p>\n

\n\tWould the vision become compromised, or would it result in a film that\u2019s even more powerful?<\/p>\n

\n\tIf anyone reading this finds this idea exciting, reach out to our management (Lauren Dinely and Matthew Dartnell at Writ Large) and tell them you want to see \u201cHomebody\u201d and set a meeting to discuss. My own dream is for there to eventually be a Blu-ray release with both versions of the movie, so that viewers could decide which version they like best. This is an idea that, to my knowledge, no one has ever attempted before. Things are weird in the film industry right now, so why not embrace that weirdness?<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd while this may risk sounding like a pompous ass, Rachel and I do have a pretty strong track record with this type of thing. Our last feature, \u201cIt Doesn\u2019t Get Any Better Than This,\u201d was released only-in-theaters (never to be released on streaming or home video) in 2023, and we have since booked well over 100 screenings worldwide, turning a profit without distribution, marketing or a PR team. More recently, we made the short film \u201cDead Grandma,\u201d<\/a> which won the Slamdance Jury Award and has currently been viewed more than 4 million times across platforms online, even though we don\u2019t personally use social media. Maybe we\u2019ve just been lucky, or maybe us two dumb kids from the Midwest have figured something out. Watch \u201cHomebody\u201d and judge for yourself.<\/p>\n

\n\tWatch the trailer and see the full poster, designed by\u00a0Evan Jordan<\/a> and with a painting by\u00a0Lindsey Dunnagan<\/a>, below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of DieDieVideo<\/p>\n