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Making Horror Personal: What Puzzle Box Taught Me About Storytelling

Laneikka Denne in Puzzle Box (2023), Jack Dignan

People often ask the question “what kind of films do you make?” This sounds like an easy enough question to answer, it’s almost always stemmed from genuine curiosity and support, and yet it’s a surprisingly loaded question. Am I a horror filmmaker? Maybe! Do I see myself working exclusively within the horror genre? I don’t know. What types of stories do I like to tell? What’s my style? Are my films funny or serious or a bit of both? Am I the twist ending guy? The jump scare guy? The gore-fest guy? It’s hard to say. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m allowed to answer that question myself, and yet to sell myself in this industry I must, and it was only very recently where I finally figured out my answer.

My first film, After She Died (2022), was a small budgeted indie horror flick made entirely with funds I raised myself. We had a decent budget, all things considered, and total creative freedom to do what we wanted. I set out to make a film I was passionate about, with a script I’d been working on for a few years, and a style I felt was the direction I wanted to take my career; a style I felt was emulating recent horror hits like HEREDITARY and US, while also harkening back to some of my favourite classics like AUDITION and MISERY. I’m very proud of what we pulled off with that movie, and while there are definitely things I would do very differently two years out from its release, it’s the best movie I could have made at that time. But that’s the thing, right. I shot that film when I was 21 and released it when I was 22. I thought I’d figured out the types of movies I wanted to make, but I hadn’t. Not yet.

The Transition: Figuring Out My Filmmaking Identity

I’m 24 now. That sounds silly writing it down. Is 24 more experienced than 21? I’m still young, still figuring a lot of things out, and still have plenty of room to grow and evolve. In post-production on After She Died (2022) I found a style I wanted to lean more into; a style that popped up sporadically throughout that film without ever completely being committed to. I intended to make that film very grounded and naturalistic, and as we were filming I slowly started leaning more into the bright, colourful and stylised. I stand by the film’s tone and intention, but as I wrapped post and was gearing up for my next film, I felt I hadn’t yet discovered what I really wanted that next film to be, or in a broader sense, what type of filmmaker I wanted to be.

I began to get a little skeptical of my own abilities. After She Died (2022) had a mixed reception. Were people going to be interested in what else I had to offer? Did financiers see me as a strong enough filmmaker? Would I ever make a movie people would like? I didn’t know! It made me nervous. What I thought was set to be my next film was going to be much bigger in scope and lean much further into the otherworldly horror elements, and I was worried I hadn’t yet found a strong enough voice to tell that story.

A surreal, ominous depiction of a house shaped like a camera lens.
Laneikka Denne in Puzzle Box (2023), Jack Dignan

Why Found Footage Horror is My Creative Challenge

So I came up with an idea.

What if I were to strip away all financial resources and use the tiniest of micro budgets to make something that relied solely on storytelling and scares without the flashy distractions of style and hyper-reality? Could I do it? Was I a good enough filmmaker? A strong enough storyteller? I wanted to prove to the world I was capable of making a good horror movie, but more than that, I wanted to prove it to myself. Who was I as a filmmaker? What kind of films do I make? I started to have an inkling, but I wanted to make damn sure I knew the answer to that question before I went around begging studios for millions of dollars. I wanted to make a film in its purest form to really, truly understand the nature of cinematic storytelling. So… I decided to make Puzzle Box (2023).

Some of my “gateway horror movies” (aka horror films that help ease me into the genre at a young and impressionable age) were found footage movies. I was the perfect age when the Paranormal Activity movies gained popularity and the found footage craze took over the world, and it not only helped introduce me to other more notable horror films, but it also inspired me to pick up a camera and make a series of found footage horror shorts myself, where I’d film them either on my own or with friends on the weekends from school. My friends enjoyed watching them, I enjoyed making them, and that’s all that really mattered to me at the time. With all of this in the back of my mind, it inspired me to take a step back in time and explore what was, for the last several years, essentially a dying sub-genre.

Found footage horror has started to make a comeback recently, which has excited me greatly as these are, as I mentioned earlier, horror stories in their purest forms. You can’t rely on as many fancy filmmaking tricks traditionally shot movies have the luxury of utilizing. You need to create scares through a visceral, personal point of view. You are the eyes of the protagonist, and the world you’re traversing needs to feel as authentic as possible, or else the audience won’t buy into the whole “found footage” nature of it all. This style might sound like a lazy style of filmmaking, but I assure you found footage is not as easy to pull off as you might think. Cheap? Absolutely! Easy? Not at all.

A fragmented, shattered-glass poster featuring overlapping faces of characters, highlighted by a glowing red light, sets the chilling tone for the film.
Laneikka Denne in Puzzle Box (2023), Jack Dignan

Creating Puzzle Box: A Storytelling Experiment

Once I had the story downpat for Puzzle Box (2023), I was determined to bring this film to life. This was my shot to find out what kind of filmmaker I really was. If I failed with this movie, it was going to plant a seed of doubt inside my mind that I wouldn’t be able to shake. If I can’t do this right, if I can’t live up to the challenge I’ve set myself here, why should I be trusted with bigger budgets and bigger films? The pressure was on. The need was there. So I just started working.

The Lessons Learned and What’s Next

In the end, making Puzzle Box (2023) was the most creatively rewarding experience of my life. It was everything I hoped it would be and so much more. We had a cast and crew you could count on two hands, and a shooting schedule of less than two weeks. Between inception of the concept and locking the final reels, less than a year had passed, and I was feeling elated. Every day working on this film was so creatively rejuvenating. I was not only blessed to have had such an amazingly talented group of people championing it and putting so much hard work into it, but it was so freeing to tell a story in this style. We were not bound to any rules or any traditional structures of filmmaking. It was pure experimentation and creativity day in and day out, all the way through to the editing and the sound design. If something felt interesting, we’d try it out. If it didn’t work, we’d try something else. We planned for everything and figured it all out as we went along, moving at such a rapid pace in such a short period of time and yet still managing to finish ahead of schedule and under budget.

I’m very proud of this movie. It’s as scary as I wanted it to be, as mind-bending as I hoped, and oh-so-much fun to not just watch, but make as well. I learned a lot making After She Died (2022), but it was on Puzzle Box (2023) where I got to put these lessons to good use and create a film I think genuinely rules. If nothing else, this film helped me find myself as a filmmaker. It helped me discover the style and tone I want to explore in upcoming pictures. It helped me find the vibe I want to bring to all my sets, and the types of collaborators I want to work with again in the future. I took away the luxuries of a transitional set, and the resources you can rely on when you’re feeling less than inspired, and I made something visceral, authentic and creative. This film is very special to me. It helped me find who I am as a filmmaker. I hope you give it a chance. I hope you give me a chance. I hope you enjoy Puzzle Box (2023).

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Written by Jack Dignan

Described by The Australian as "the new [James] Wan", Jack Dignan is the award-winning writer, director and producer of found footage horror film ‘Puzzle Box,’ released 2024 by Welcome Villain Films, and 'After She Died,’ released globally by Good Deed Entertainment. He has also directed a segment in the upcoming Untitled Terror Films Anthology Feature.

Jack began his career as a well-regarded Australian film journalist, while also working on globally recognised short films such as ‘It Feels Like Spring’ and ‘Does Nobody See The Gun?’. Jack then spent years working on high-profile Hollywood productions, such as ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga,’ ‘Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,’ ‘Elvis,’ ‘Mortal Kombat 2,’ 'Thor: Love and Thunder', 'Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings' and more. He's collaborated and worked with numerous Oscar winners and brings that knowledge and experience into his own filmmaking career.

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