The Bench (2024) Snapped Up By Amazon Prime

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The Bench has been released on Amazon Prime

The Bench, a low budget horror movie that has been 17 years in the making and was heavily inspired by The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, has been snapped up by Amazon Prime, which you can watch now.

The film is written, directed and stars Sean Wilkie, and co-stars Jennifer Byrne, Matt McClure, Ilaria Nardini, and while I have not seen this one yet (It is on my list). [The Bench on IMDB]

The film faced many challenges on its way to completion, as Sean explains.
Initially we had some finance for the movie but it fell through shortly before filming so we had to take out a low interest loan to cover some of that cost.

Then two of our main cast members had to pull out due to scheduling conflicts and the roles had to be recast.

We started filming, initially as a block of eight or nine days spent on location the whole time, staying in tents.

But we were unable to get everything we needed from that location in the nine days so we had to come back during weekends, and we ended up having equipment stolen from our cars and had blizzards come out of nowhere.

Eventually, around mid-2008, the film was mostly finished but we had two editors who were supposed to be working together to edit it who left and it took a year until I was able to get a computer powerful enough to edit it myself.

When I did I realized we had some scenes and shots still needing filmed. By then crew members had moved on and cast members had moved away to other countries, or had given up acting, so it got harder to get them to come back.

We planned several weekends of pick-ups but many got cancelled last minute due to crew or cast pulling out or a change in weather.

The camera we were using stopped becoming available to us and it was hard to find somewhere else that had one. Eventually Andy Cassells of Moniton Pictures was able to help.

It was mid-2011 before we finally had all the footage we needed. I finished the edit but then it needed colour graded as well as a score and final sound mix.

All of this took time as the people doing it were doing it on no budget, in their spare time, so it was 2015 before it was completed.

By then I had lost all of the energy to try and sell the film and had no idea what to do with it. 
So it sat in a drawer for seven years until Ryan Hendricks approached me about remastering the film and releasing it. Even that process took another two years as it was in between other projects
I think, in a way, it looks as though we had a bigger budget because we shot it in 2007 but coming out now it looks like a period piece, with lots of Blackberries, old clothes and outdated haircuts!

The audiences really liked the vibe of the film as well and how it paid homage to the slasher films of the 70s like Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
The synopsis reads:
A cabin with a bloody past. Alex Summer and her newfound friends face a nightmarish reality as they are picked off one by one, drawn to the sinister bench below. 

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