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For inspiration for his new horror movie, Nicolas Curcio thought back to the media of his childhood.
“A lot of filmmakers who grew up on weird kids TV shows of the ’90s are coming of age, and they instinctively want
to make movies about that,” the director says. “I’ve reexamined so many TV shows from my youth and they were incredibly bizarre. There were shows like ‘Rocko’s Modern Life,’ where I look back and some of those Nickelodeon shows are weird and kind of disturbing. I think it’s just in the DNA.”
The result is “Play House,” a tense horror feature that balances scares with an emotional through line. In the film, Elliot (Will Harrison) is directionless after a breakup with his girlfriend (Jessica Sula), so he buys a fixer-upper house in a wild swing to prove he’s emotionally mature enough for her. Unfortunately, he finds a bag full of videocassettes in the basement featuring an unsettling kids show starring Mr. Morton (James Urbaniak) and a group of puppets who seem very frightened to be there. As he recruits his ex and best friend (Jordan Gonzalez) to try to find out more information about the program, things get very dark very quickly.
While there is a spooky atmosphere and discomforting imagery throughout, the relationship between the three main characters is central — something Curcio and his co-writer (and wife) Kirby Gladstein were comfortable taking a chance on.
“The biggest lesson for me during the small test screenings we did … people would say, ‘Cut to the horror, cut to the horror,’” he says. “I had moments where I was wavering because it’s my first time ever hearing feedback from a large group of people about one of my projects. Kirby was always the one who said, ‘Hey, the movie’s about a relationship. There’s all kinds of different horror movies.’ I think it’s just sticking to what you intended to do. As we went on, the cut got better and also we got more sound design in the actual horror components. Then people slowly started to say, ‘I love that you’re bringing back character-based horror.’”
Luckily, many other people also understood his vision from the beginning. Curcio had success as a screenwriting content creator, as well as scripts that made The Black List and a basketball animated comedy he wrote called “Goat” that was actually being developed by DreamWorks Animation and getting an early 2026 theatrical release. But he was eager to make something for himself.
Enter Fantastic Pitches. The collaboration between Austin’s annual genre gathering Fantastic Fest and indie studio Chroma allowed aspiring filmmakers a platform to pitch their ideas. The winner would walk away with $100,000 toward production, with an equally daunting and exciting ticking-clock component: The film premieres at the next year’s festival and guarantees some sort of theatrical run via Alamo Drafthouse. Curcio pitched and won last year’s inaugural competition, and then was faced with the challenge of getting his microbudget film completed in less than a year.
“It was really intense,” he says, speaking from his car days before the premiere, en route to a color-correction session. “It was really fast. Kirby and I, we wrote the movie together and we produced it together. Our whole pitch was, ‘The movie’s about a relationship and we’re in a relationship.’ We didn’t want to tell them we were getting married in February because we thought they would think that we didn’t have time to get married and also make the movie. So we didn’t tell them that, but we got married a week after we wrapped. It was like we were in production on the movie and production on the wedding. It was completely insane, but it was amazing. The wedding was like a reward for finishing the movie.”
The pitch also got the attention of buzzy horror-focused production duo Adam Hendricks and Greg Gilreath, aka Divide/Conquer (“M3GAN,” “The Black Phone 2”), who offered guidance on the project before they were officially on board as executive producers.
According to Ahbra Perry, director of Fantastic Fest Pitches, “Play House” ended up being the perfect first title for the program.
“I launched the Pitches program to introduce the world to new voices in genre cinema,” she said in a statement. “The moment Nic won, he became a megaphone for that mission. Deep into production on his first feature, he was already using his platform to champion new talent. He’s making a huge impact, and he’s just getting started. The Pitches have given us a direct line to the heart of the horror community, and I believe we’re going to see incredible things come from within it.”
A further vote of confidence in Curcio? He’s not only premiering his film, but he’s on this year’s Fantastic Fest pitches jury to pick the next winner.
Although Curcio’s career is headed in several different directions — ranging from scripting the film adaptation of the iconic kids property “The Magic School Bus” to selling an erotic thriller script he wrote with Gladstein to Paramount Primal — he sees himself largely staying in the horror lane. Ironically, it might be because of his love-hate relationship with the genre from his childhood that inspired “Play House.”
“I was a really scared kid,” he says. “I think I will always just connect fear and childhood. I loved Halloween, but I was terrified of it. Going to Party City at Halloween was my favorite part of the year, but I was terrified to go inside. Those two things have always been connected for me, being scared and being a kid, but just loving it.”
Watch the exclusive first clip of “Play House” below.
