SARA
Short Film
Project Type: Short Film
Project Status: Pre-Production
Writer, Director, Co-Editor, Score: Tex Gresham
Production Designer and Co-Editor: Erin Kelly Smith
Cinematographer: Mike Thompson
Lead Actor (“Brian”): Tinus Seaux
LOGLINE
A short horror film about a man in a life-or-death, cat-and-mouse game with his new stepdaughter––a 10-year-old American Psycho.
SYNOPSIS
Brian is a man in trouble. He loves his new wife dearly... But he's totally convinced his stepdaughter, SARA, wants to kill him.
Jobless and injured, Brian is stuck alone at home with SARA while his wife, Lizzie, works to support the family.
In between having to cater to her aggressive food allergies and restrictions and listening the endless stream of Russian death videos on YouTube playing on SARA's iPad, Brian locks himself in the only place where he can be at peace––the bathroom.
But things are getting worse. He can't hide anymore.
Brian must do something about SARA.
MORE ABOUT THIS PROJECT
SARA is a psychological horror story about domestic paranoia, fractured perception, and the instability of trust inside a blended family under emotional and economic strain. It follows a man recovering from injury who is now out of work and who becomes increasingly convinced his teenage stepdaughter is planning to harm him.
Thematically, the film explores quiet adversarial tensions that can exist inside domestic life—particularly within blended families where attachment, authority, and belonging are not fully resolved. It also operates as a metaphor for an encroaching apathy and the ever-growing distrust of one’s neighbor. We’re witnessing various levels of fascist-adjacent behavior at every turn, both online and in real life. And SARA operates as a means to converse with that extreme behavior.
The story is informed by my actual lived proximity to these types of dynamics, love and conflict occupying the same space without resolution. Rather than treating this like an autobiography, the film transforms my experience into a psychological structure: how misperceptions forms, how roles become flipped, and how a home can shift from a place of care into a site of misinterpretation and threat.
I am uniquely suited to make this film because my work consistently operates at the intersection of literary storytelling and genre form. I am interested in horror as reaction to environment.
SARA is timely because it reflects a broader cultural condition of mistrust and fragmentation within intimate life, where belief is increasingly conditional and fragile.
Meet The Filmmakers
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Tex Gresham
Writer, Director, Co-Editor, Score
Tex Gresham is the author of Get Gone, Violent Candy, Sunflower, and POP!. His work has been widely published both online and in print. Tex wrote, directed, produced, and starred in the micro-budget feature film MUSTARD, an absurdist horror-adjacent exploration of identity and collapse in the age of infection and isolation. He was also a co-writer on The Callisto Protocol: Helix Station, a narrative audio series based on the AAA video game. The series won the 2023 Webby People’s Voice Award for Best Fiction Series. In 2020, Tex received the Humanitas David and Lynn Angell Comedy Fellowship for his screenplay, Fix Daddy. His screenplays have been recognized by prestigious competitions and fellowships, including the Academy Nicholl Fellowship, Script Pipeline, Screencraft, and Cinestory. He currently lives in Los Angeles. -
Tinus Seaux
Lead Actor (“Brian”)
Tinus Seaux is a multidisciplinary artist with a background in improvisation, stand-up, and theater. He has showcased his versatility across national commercials and award-winning cinema. He produced and starred as the lead in the feature film John Valley’s The Pizzagate Massacre, portraying a high-strung conspiracy theorist-a stark contrast to his grounded performance as Paul in Act of God, which won the Audience Award at SXSW 2022.
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Erin Kelly Smith
Production Designer and Co-Editor
Erin made her directorial debut with her short horror film Thank You You’re Welcome (watch the whole thing here). Erin’s script Thin! was a Killer Shorts 2021 Semifinalist and a Filmmatic Horror Season 6 Quarterfinalist. In addition to her own work, Erin edited director Maddie Downes’ short A Home Invasion, which won Best Comedy Short at 2022 Atlanta Shortsfest. Erin has also worked as an assistant/associate editor on documentary features and series for Netflix, YouTube Originals, PBS, ESPN, Red Bull, Oxygen, and Quibi. Remember Quibi?!
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Mike Thompson
Cinematographer
Mike Thompson has written and directed over 30 award winning short films and music videos. Mike is an active part in the Las Vegas film and music community. He is currently the Vice President of Light Forge Studios, where he has been working since 2008. In 2009 he finished his first feature length film “Thor at the Bus Stop” and in 2014 he finished his second feature length film “Popovich and the Voice of the Fabled American West” both of which screened in film festivals all over the world. He’s currently writing a third feature film and a novel.
Your Help
SARA is a fiscally sponsored project of Cinematography for Actors, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Your donation will be tax-deductible!