The Horror of Being Unseen: Why This Film Exists

There are monsters you can fight.

And then there are monsters you can’t even name—because the people around you refuse to admit you exist.

That’s the core fear that started this project.

EXILED was born from one question that wouldn’t let go:

What happens to a person when a whole community decides they don’t deserve acknowledgment?

Not “dislike.” Not “disapprove.”

I mean full erasure—social, emotional, spiritual. The kind where eye contact becomes rebellion, and silence becomes law.

This story isn’t built on jump scares. It’s built on pressure.

It’s about a town that treats silence like purity.

About belief that hardens into certainty.

About what people will do to protect their world from anything that threatens it—even if that “threat” is simply someone who survived.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why I felt compelled to make Exiled.

On the surface, it’s a horror film.

But it didn’t come from horror movies.

It came from real life.

Growing up, I saw what happens when someone is quietly erased.

I went to school with Amish kids who taught me about shunning in their community and how long time family members were no longer spoken of or visited. Friends or family there one day… gone the next.

No explanations to the kids, no conversations.

Just silence.

Like they’d never existed.

And I remember how strange and heavy that felt. not just the loss, but the way everyone pretended nothing happened.

Later in life, I experienced my own versionsof that feeling.

Family fractures and alienation- Family members I wasn't allowed or supposed to talk to without knowing why for many years... and the loss of lifelong friendships.

Moments where you feel like you’re standing in a room full of people and somehow you’ve already disappeared.

And now we live in a time where that feeling seems everywhere.

Public shaming.

Social purges.

People exiled from communities overnight.

“Canceling” that sometimes feels less like accountability and more like ritual.

It often feels religious.

Not divine, but dogmatic.

Absolute.

All or nothing.

You’re either inside or you’re cast out.

That idea stuck with me for years.

So Exiled became my way of exploring that fear through horror.

What if being saved was the curse?

What if surviving meant being erased?

What if the worst thing wasn’t dying… but being treated like you never existed at all?

This movie explores social erasure and the fallout it can leave behind.

That’s what this film is really about.

Not monsters.

Not jump scares.

But the quiet terror of being unseen.

And honestly, it’s the most personal thing I’ve ever written.

We start filming this fall