I'M HERE TO DIRECT YOUR NEXT VISION.

Nothing to Lose came directly from my personal life. I was struggling with alcohol and opioid addiction, and I knew where that road could lead. I created a veteran facing lung cancer and his own addictions — a man trying to save his daughter by making the world a better place for her before his time runs out. I knew exactly what I was writing about. I was him. The daughter he was trying to save represented the part of myself I needed to save. The film was me confronting what was happening to me through storytelling.

Unforgettable started as a straightforward murder-and-revenge story. During the rewrite, I rebuilt it on the page around multiple realities. In one version he kills his wife. In another, the man she cheated with. In the final version, himself. The confusion was intentional. I wanted the film to be a complete mind fuck.

Olivia grew from me questioning my own faith. I wanted the faith underneath the film to be subtle, never a sermon. Then she is abducted and the science fiction opens the real question: are these beings God — or is God, God? I wanted the unknown to create the question, not answer it.

Adam came from my curiosity about people who describe themselves as experiencers. He is a victim of the aliens, tortured by the memory of watching his friend dissected and put back together. I wasn't trying to prove the experience; I was interested in the tortured soul left behind by it.

Master Lock grew out of my obsession with Danger Girl and the character designs of J. Scott Campbell. As I got older, I wondered what that kind of story would look like if the characters got older too. The team separates. Life moves on. Then members of the old team start getting murdered. I wanted to drag that heightened comic-book DNA somewhere much darker.

Old Gods — From Beyond was a film-school project and a genuine team creation. Jeff designed the set and established much of the original visual concept, including the overhead element. I took those ideas, storyboarded how we would photograph them and added my own creative differences and ideas. We built on each other's ideas.