Folk horror film The Sermon – soundtracked by Bizarre Rituals

Here’s the trailer for the new short film, The Sermon, written and directed by Dean Puckett.

Bizarre Rituals’ Brain Rays and Cape Khoboi (AKA, Benjamin Hudson and Jimi Stewart) created the soundtrack, and Blazar (AKA Stoogie Houzer, AKA Matthias Peters) created the titles and VFX for the film.

The Sermon is a short ‘Folk Horror’ dealing with sexuality, faith and oppression, shot on 35mm film in the tradition of such films as ‘The Wickerman’ (Robin Hardy, 1973) , ‘The Blood On Satan’s Claw’ (Piers Haggard, 1971) and ‘The Witchfinder General’ (Michael Reeves, 1968). These British films from the late Sixties and early Seventies that inspired Dean, have become known as the ‘Unholy Trinity’ and are characterized, in general, by isolated communities that have created their own societal rules often dominated by a strong male figure and ending with an explosive act of violence or a ‘Happening’. So the Sermon is not only meant to be an engaging drama about our protagonist Ella’s secret life, but also a political fable which seeks to reflect, through metaphor, the current British and US socio-political climate. Written in a frustrated daze after the double whammy of Brexit and the Election of Donald Trump, the film is set in a kind of ‘nowhere time’, a parallel reality almost like a dream that could be in the past or perhaps, if we are not careful, our future!

The Sermon website: www.thesermonfilm.com