A new twist on the haunted-house theme is explored in THE LOST TREE, a supernatural thriller coming later this year. Fango got an exclusive first pic and words with the film’s creator.

THE LOST TREE stars Thomas Ian Nicholas (pictured below) as Noah, “a grief-stricken man who has suffered a major tragedy and blames himself for it,” writer/director Brian A. Metcalf tells Fango. “He moves out to a secluded cabin to get away from his former life, and starts exploring the place and its surroundings. He soon discovers that it holds dark secrets, and the story becomes a personal fight between Noah and the cabin. Michael Madsen plays Noah’s father; Lacey Chabert plays Noah’s co-worker, who starts to question the place where he’s residing; Scott Grimes plays Alan, the real estate agent who leased Noah the place and has his own secretive agenda; and Clare Kramer plays Noah’s wife.”

Metcalf is a visual FX artist whose first feature-filmmaking venture was 2011’s FADING OF THE CRIES, which he recalls as “a troubled production in a variety of ways. Our investors cut our preproduction time in half, which greatly hurt our planning process. We had a number of incidents such as the Santa Clarita fires causing serious scheduling issues, heavy rains washing away our equipment and being kicked off sets early. Because of these problems, there were a number of scenes we weren’t able to shoot for CRIES, which forced us to re-edit the film with the footage we had, thereby creating a different story than we imagined.”

The writer/director and Nicholas, who produced LOST TREE, did their best to assure these snafus didn’t happen again. “We sat down and created backup plans for many of the possible issues that could arise. Thom helped me get the resources I needed to properly make this movie without the same problems. The weather was far more accommodating, as were the locations. I was able to plan out the shots a lot more, and I also operated the camera to make sure I was getting precisely the shots I imagined. I really wanted to take control over this project to avoid the problems with the last film.”

Collaborating with his cast also made the LOST TREE experience a positive one. “I had grown up watching all of them,” Metcalf says, “so when they came on board, it was like a dream come true. They all showed up well-prepared for their roles and dedicated to the project. It was a great deal of fun to watch these actors bring their characters to life with their own creative sense.”

As opposed to the visual-FX-heavy CRIES, Metcalf didn’t draw on his own background so much for THE LOST TREE. “There are a number of visual effects shots, but not as many as in CRIES. Many of the effects are much more subtle, so hopefully the audience won’t even recognize them.” THE LOST TREE’s official website (just a homepage at the moment) can be found here, and its Facebook page here. 

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