Hideout Pictures has provided ComicBook with a first look at the trailer for Howard's Mill, a new documentary(ish?) film with echoes of true crime, suspense, and horror. Howard's Mill centers on an abandoned piece of farmland in rural Tennessee, that may hold the key to multiple missing person cases spanning over 40 years. Framed as a documentary looking into a local missing person's case, and evoking some Tiger King energy (like Carole Baskin, someone's spouse goes missing and they are assumed to be behind it), Howard's Mill appears to be the latest in a line of films that blurs the lines between horror and reality.
It's probably no coincidence that the voiceover, from director Kaiser Whitmire, sounds a bit like something that might have come out of The Blair Witch Project. While this isn't nearly as transparently fanciful as that movie was, the campaign feels the same. The existence of Kaiser Whitmire itself is dubious, as she has no social media footprint and Google results return only an unrelated person whose first name is something else, with "Kaiser" and "Whitmire" apparently being her maiden and married surnames.
That doesn't take away from the fun, though, and if this is a put-on, rather than just a couple of first-time filmmakers, they've gone a long way to sell it, with IMDb having Whitmire listed in the credits alongside Shannon Houchins, best known for his work with Kevin Smith.
You can see the trailer below.
Opening on the man whose wife went missing, the trailer features a number of interviews with small-town locals talking about various mysterious goings-on in Howard's Mill, including a 1990s missing person case involving a young girl, and another involving a young boy, for which an alleged kidnapper is already in custody.
The movie uses the documentary format to give the audience a kind of access to the inner lives of the characters that's just opaque enough to keep you guessing, although the poster art for Howard's Mill, which shows a hand coming up from the ground Night of the Living Dead style, certainly suggests that some of the supernatural theories hinted at in the trailer will come into play in a big way as the movie unfolds.
You can get Howard's Mill now for sale or rental via digital platforms.
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