Little Toy Boat Radio Pictures

The very genesis of Other Halves came from Stephen King’s formulation of the three basic horror monsters: the vampire (embodied by Dracula in the classic canon); the un-killable monster (Frankenstein’s monster, naturally); and the werewolf, or the monster-within (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). Vampires have been done to death, and the un-killable monster has morphed in the last decade or so into the zombie horde, but it seemed to us that there hasn’t been a good Jekyll and Hyde story in a long, long time.

Initially, we had discussed the chemistry students or something like that, but a chemical formula seemed like a 19th Century kind of idea. In searching for a modern concept, we came up with an app, instead. Originally, it wasn’t even a dating app. It was a photography app.

It was basically an Instagram knock-off, which became a running gag in the film itself. But we didn’t think photography had much to do with the theme of the movie.

I was fascinated with the keyboard app on my phone, SwiftKey. It knew literally everything I’ve written in the last three years. We talked at length about other uses for this technology. Then my wife walked by and said, “It sounds like you’re talking about a dating app.” And that wound up in the movie, too!

Other Halves is a film for adults; it’s a horror movie about sex and death and was never meant to be anything else. 

There’s plenty of nudity and violence in the film, although it’s never pornographic or gratuitous. We felt it would appeal to a certain mature horror fan base.

Apparently, Amazon agreed, far more strongly than we realized.

Being an independent film, Other Halves didn’t have a large, theatrical release, but it did play in several festivals and at a few local theaters (where the filmmakers had hometown connections). We won some awards and garnered some great reviews from the horror press.

At that point, we released the film online on the usual streaming sites: Google Play, iTunes, Vudu. None of these venues had an issue with the content of our movie.

Then there was Amazon Prime. Amazon placed the movie behind an “age gate.” This meant Other Halves wouldn’t show up in a search of Amazon, even Amazon Video. Instead, just above the search results, there was a tiny line of text reading ‘Excluding adult and mature items,’ followed by a link that read ‘Show all results.’ 

If you know anything about website design, you know a second click is death. No one clicks a second time when searching for something. (How often do you go to the second page of Google search results?) Essentially, no one would accidentally stumble on our film; they had to know the direct link. For an independent movie with no stars, this basically ruined our chances of finding an audience organically.

What was most surprising is that there are seemingly hundreds of low-budget horror films with plenty of gore and even more nudity than Other Halves. So why was our film hidden from search results when others weren’t?

Turns out, it was because we had a nude man.

We were told by our distributor that if we removed the shots of the naked man (a grand total of only seven seconds), the age gate would be removed and Other Halves would appear in normal searches on Amazon.

This was pretty astonishing, since Other Halves has several scenes containing nudity, including a lengthy shower scene. The objection wasn’t to sex or nudity per se, but specifically male nudity.

So, we dutifully removed the “offending” shots, and resubmitted the film to Amazon Prime. Lo and behold, it’s now available for any Prime subscriber to watch for free!

But the film is incomplete. One of our goals with the film in general, and these shots in particular, was to play with genre expectations. Instead of a hot girl taking off her top and getting stabbed, it’s a hot guy. Yes, there’s a shower scene, but it also passes the Bechdel Test. And yes, there’s a naked woman covered in blood, but there’s also a naked man.

This small, but thematically resonant portion of the film, is now absent. The cuts don’t render the plot incoherent or undo character motivations, but they don’t represent the filmmakers’ vision for the film.

The irony of the situation is not lost on us: While we were striving for equality, we were forced into a double standard in order for the film to be seen at all.

Amazon is a private business, and they have every right to set their own standards for what films they wish to appear on their streaming service. But as a customers who subscribe to that service, we’re disappointed to learn that Amazon treats male and female nudity differently.

To begin with, it’s a film about a dating app; to not have any sex in it would be artistically dishonest. Being a horror film, Other Halves is already geared towards adults. There was no reason to avoid nudity for ratings.

Additionally, we liked the idea of playing around with horror movie tropes. Frequently, there’s a hot girl who takes off her top and then gets stabbed. Instead, we have a hot guy (played by Carson Nicely, and yes, that’s his real name) walking around shirtless for most of the movie. Whether or not he gets stabbed is something you’ll have to watch the movie to find out.

And, of course, there’s a key scene in the beginning that features both a man and a woman naked. It’s not nearly as sexy as you might think. [More on this in the section about Amazon Prime.]

Later on, we see a lengthy exposition scene that takes place in a locker room shower. But it’s not your usual “sexposition” scene. The camera doesn’t linger on their bodies; rather, it’s shot exactly as a normal conversation. It’s just two women, the leads, in fact, who are very comfortable with each other, discussing code. 

It might be the first full-frontal scene to pass the Bechdel test.

I was, thankfully, married before dating apps were really a thing. Kelly may or may not have had some bad experiences that may or may not be reflected in the film. Maybe.

I am an avowed horror fan, and watched everything from Halloween to Susperia to 28 Days Later to prepare for filming. The oddest choice, however, may be The Social Network, to study the way Fincher and Sorkin delivered technical exposition.

Most of which fell on the shoulders of Lauren Lakis. It seems to have turned out well, according to the Austin Chronicle: “The dialogue is witty, sparky, and brought to best life by Lakis as Devon, the firm’s CEO and self-acknowledged second best coder.”

We wanted to tell the story over the course of one night, from sundown to sunrise. We felt restricting the events to a single time and place would increase the intensity of the suspense.

On the other hand, showing a twelve hour span in a ninety minute movie requires some ellipses. It’s difficult, filmically, to show the passage of time when the same group of characters are in the same location. The flashbacks were a way to break up The Night It All Happens.

By showing the flashbacks in reverse order, we get to see how things got to this point. At the end of the film, after all the murder and mayhem, we see the origin of the app, back when everyone was still friends. It adds a note of melancholy to the horror.

One of the biggest decisions about the characters, which we made early on, was to create a predominantly female cast. The tech industry has been making a conscious effort to foster gender equality, and we wanted to reflect that.

Likewise, mainstream films have a dearth of great roles for actresses. The tradition of the Final Girl is an admirable one, but the rest of horror cinema has a poor track record of representing women (cf. earlier comment about the busty blonde who gets knocked off first).

Again, we enjoyed playing against type– a team of coders, who are not all nerds; women, naked but not sex objects; minorities, but not stereotypes.

The cast of Other Halves certainly took note of these efforts. Mercedes Manning said, “They’re smart, funny, compassionate, and also selfish, calculating, and cruel. They are their own agents, rather than passive victims, who actively participate in the horror at hand.”

Melanie Friedrich agreed: “None are pure good or evil which makes them really human. We’ve all got good and bad sides and sometimes make terrible decisions – it’s part of life. The whole script tells a story of what one step in the wrong direction can do through these female characters.”

Megan Hui chimed in: “I think the female cast of Other Halves is unique because we are from all over the world (Germany, U.K., America, and Canada). There are so many different accents in this film!”

The script did not mention a race or country of origin for any of the characters. Casting was entirely color-blind, based solely on who we thought best fit the characters.

Three of the actresses are from outside the United States– Lianna Liew is British; Melanie Friedrich, German; Megan Hui, Canadian. They all auditioned with American accents; when we met in person to discuss the roles, we were surprised they weren’t from the US!

We decided to let them speak in their native accents for a couple of reasons. One, it would allow them to focus on the performance rather than the manner of speaking. Two, it helped differentiate the characters, both within our film and from other movies.

The changes to the script were minimal, although the re-write did frequently include the phrase “[German expletive]”, whenever we wanted Melanie to ad-lib something. Also, Lianna refused to say, “Blimey,” despite our constant pleading.

The international flavor extends behind the scenes, as well. Cinematographer Toby Deml is Austrian, Composer Erick Del Aguila was born in Peru, and many of the visual effects technicians who created the codebrain effects hail from East Asia.