He Started Filming Horror in a Small Kentucky Town. Blumhouse Called It a Cult Hit. Blumhouse Called It a Cult Hit.

P.J. Starks was five years old when he became a horror fan. The gateway was Ghostbusters. The deeper pull came from his grandmother — Gi-Gi, as the family called her — who read Stephen King and watched horror sci-fi with the kind of loyalty most people reserve for religion. He absorbed all of it.

By his early teens, he knew he wanted to be a visual storyteller. What he didn't know yet was exactly what kind.

That answer came in 2008, when Starks wrote and directed Hallows Eve: Slaughter on Second Street — his first narrative feature. It was a horror-comedy, which surprised even him. His taste ran toward serious horror. His grandmother's shelf was full of Stephen King, not Evil Dead. But something about the combination of genuine scares and comedic release clicked in a way he hadn't expected.

"After that I was hooked," he says. "What I find ironic is, despite my love for serious horror films and how often I watch them, the only two narrative features I've written and directed are both horror-comedies."

He had discovered something that serious genre fans already know: horror is the most malleable storytelling format in cinema. It can carry grief, comedy, social commentary, and surrealism in the same frame. That flexibility became the foundation of everything he built next.

Building the Scene Before Building the Company

In 2012, before Blood Moon Pictures existed, before the Volumes of Blood anthology had found its audience, Starks did something more community organiser than filmmaker: he created Unscripted.

The event — a short film showcase at the Daviess County Public Library in Owensboro, Kentucky — was designed to give local and regional filmmakers a place to screen their work. It became an annual tradition. In 2014, PBS featured it.

It was at one of these screenings, during a zombie night, that Starks met Eric Huskisson.

"Eric showed up and entered the contest thinking it was a cash prize," Starks recalls. "He was sadly mistaken — but I liked his make-up, and we started talking."

Starks invited Huskisson to help on a video he was producing for a local radio station's zombie walk. He was also co-coordinating the Scarefest Film Fest out of Lexington, Kentucky at the time, and brought Huskisson into that too. Fast friends followed. In December 2015, they co-founded Blood Moon Pictures, LLC — an independent production company committed to bringing professional filmmaking to Owensboro while supporting local and regional talent.

Volumes of Blood and a Cult Franchise

The Volumes of Blood anthology series became Blood Moon Pictures' calling card. Blumhouse — the production company behind Get Out, Paranormal Activity, and The Purge — described it as a "Cult Hit Franchise."

Along the way, Starks collaborated with television producers David Breckman (Monk, SNL) and Lee Goldberg (The Glades, Psych) — connections that would have seemed improbable from the starting point of a horror shoot in Owensboro, Kentucky.

The New Fears Eve feature marked a new level of local buy-in that had taken years to earn. Starks credits something beyond hustle for the shift.

"I give a lot of that credit to God, because I know things did change after I was saved in '22," he says. "Prior to that, the struggle to get bigger hometown advocacy was always an issue."

When the community showed up, it showed up. LeAnne Musick of Musick Studios, Jeremy Mulligan of the Owensboro Police Department, Ben Skiadis from Famous Bistro, Jon Condray formerly of The Pub on Second Street, and Mark Calitri at the Daviess County Convention and Visitors Bureau were among the local figures whose support proved instrumental.

"It showed me that anything can be realized when you have the right people in your corner."

The Sequel Is Locked

The script for the New Fears Eve sequel is finished. Starks will keep revising it through production — that's how he works — but the structure is set.

In true Halloween II fashion, it picks up almost immediately after the first film ends. The gore has been ramped up. There are fewer deaths, but each one is more elaborate. The humour is pushed further, with more over-the-top comedic set pieces for audiences who came for the laughs as much as the scares.

And then there's Leslie.

"I wanted to focus more on Leslie and her story specifically," Starks says. "While audiences will be introduced to a handful of new characters, there are overall fewer in the sequel, so the narrative has room to breathe. I wanted to give audiences a chance to get to know our core group more personally — that way the stakes were much higher."

The sequel also answers the questions the first film left open, and goes deeper on The Doctor — a character that lingered in audience conversations after New Fears Eve found its viewers.

What He'd Tell Any Independent Creator

Two decades into a career built on low budgets, local support, and sheer persistence, Starks's advice is not about craft or distribution or finding an audience. It's about the psychology of continuing.

"Never be afraid to fail. I've seen the fear of failure or the act itself destroy someone's confidence, but it's never the end. Failure is just a doorway to another way of trying to get what you want."

He believes the mistake most independent creators make is treating failure as a verdict rather than data.

"Shift your thinking. Shift your methods. Redirect your goals so they can become more obtainable in an unorthodox approach. A single achievement is standing on the shoulders of hundreds of failures."

For a filmmaker who started with a horror-comedy in Kentucky and ended up with a Blumhouse co-sign and a sequel in development, the point is not lost on him.

Until you're physically incapable of following your passions, he says, there's no excuse to stop.

P.J. Starks is the co-founder of Blood Moon Pictures, LLC, based in Owensboro, Kentucky. His work includes the Volumes of Blood anthology series, Hallows Eve, and New Fears Eve. The New Fears Eve sequel is currently in development. Follow him at @p.j.starks and bloodmoonpictures.com.