KENT COUNTY, Michigan — A new comedy horror film titled Moon Ghost is premiering Thursday night at Celebration Cinema North, and it was filmed almost entirely in the greater Grand Rapids area. Joshua Courtade, the film’s writer and director gave 13 ON YOUR SIDE a breakdown of what people can expect.
“Moon Ghost is a very absurd horror comedy,” he said. “It's essentially a monster movie, but it goes in kind of a Looney Tunes direction. It gets really goofy by the end. And so it's got all the requisite horror movie stuff. There's lots of blood and guts and stuff, but it's all played for laughs.”
Courtade also wrote and directed the feature film Carrie and Jess Save the Universe, which premiered in Grand Rapids last year.
“By Hollywood standards, it was tiny,” he said. “But for me, it was huge. And so for this one, I wanted to scale back and do something much smaller. So it was real run-and-gun guerrilla style shooting, very fast, and just very, very wild and nutty.”
Danira Stanojevic, the lead actress in Moon Ghost said she was thrilled for the opportunity to be in this movie, especially because it combined horror with comedy.
“Horror is actually my favorite genre,” she said. “I've watched a lot of horror movies, and so I enjoy that anyway. It's easy for me to kind of switch into that. But it was interesting because this is kind of a horror comedy. My character is more grounded in the horror seriousness while everybody around me is kind of doing the comedy part. So it was interesting doing that juxtaposition.”
Stanojevic, who studied theatre at Aquinas College and is currently in a band called Strange Skin, said this is not her first time collaborating with Courtade.
“I did the music for Josh on his last film Carrie and Jess Save the Universe,” she said. “I wrote the lyrics, and then I performed the vocals.”
Moon Ghost started filming in March 2023, and multiple locations in West Michigan were used for scenes. Courtade said this film would not be possible without the local community, and he hopes people will continue to support the project.
“As a small indie filmmaker, one of the things that I've really come to appreciate over the years is the value of community support, and I love seeing people coming and watching these films,” he said. “With where things are with Hollywood, and with streaming and all this other stuff, there are $200 million movies coming out, and I hear people complaining about the lack of originality in Hollywood and all that. The reality is, there are lots of creative original films being made if you go find them. So whether it's my film or somebody else's film, the more people can support small independent film, the better.”
Moon Ghost premieres tonight at 7 at Celebration Cinema North, and it will play at that theatre for the next week.
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