John Fallon is a fine actor (i.e. Saw II, Deaden, Alone in the Dark, 100 Feet, Dead Shadows, American Muscle), who has also produced and written many interesting films like Recon 2022, Recon 2023. American Muscle or Billy Trigger. Moreover, he's the founder of the successful horror movie website Arrow in the Head (http://www.arrowinthehead.com). John's latest project, The Shelter, which stars the legendary Michael Paré (Streets of Fire), premiered at the Cannes 2015 market and is currently being sent to festivals plus being shopped for distribution all over the world.


The Shelter is your directorial debut. How did you come up with the idea of making this film?

I was coming back from a hockey game in the winter and saw a homeless man on the street. I gave him some money and walked on. On my walk I wondered: Who is this man? How did he get there? Where is he going? When I arrived home, I wrote down those questions and that acted as the creative seed that would eventually sprout The Shelter.


What's the message behind The Shelter?

The Shelter works on many levels at the same time and who you are and how you were raised spiritually will define to some degree what you'll get out of it. With that said, themes of faith (or lack of), betrayal, taking responsibility for one's actions, personal demons and forgiveness are all present. That is the obvious; there's also another more subtle and weirder layer happening all at the same time that I won't discuss much.

Trailer for Shelter:





Did you know from the start that Michael Paré should be your lead actor? How did you get in touch with him?

I wrote the script with him in mind but didn't think we'd get him. So I was very happy when he read the script, enjoyed it and wanted to be a part of it. I met Mike in 2008 on the set of 100 Feet, so we knew each other beforehand. He was a pleasure to work with.


Being an independent filmmaker, did you find many setbacks in your way to shoot this film?

The critical setbacks didn't come during production. We had a fairly smooth shoot. But post-production proved to be very challenging. A lot of weird technical things kept happening, which slowed down the film's progress considerably. It got to the point that we all started to think that we were messing with things that we're not supposed to be messing with. I can almost write a book about the very strange things that happened around The Shelter; mostly during the writing and post-production stages.

Shooting a full-feature movie like The Shelter is always very expensive. Did you launch any crowdfunding campaign?

Yes I did launch a crowd funding campaign, which was a lot of work, more so than I thought it would be. And although I appreciated everybody who contributed, the campaign was a failure. We only made 5 thousand dollars and lots of it went to me paying for the prizes I had created for said campaign. So I wound up financing the film with my life savings and JoBlo Movie Productions came in and financed the Post Production.


Is horror your favourite film genre and the path you want to follow as a filmmaker? No, I love the action genre and some dramas just as much. I'm more interested in doing action or sci-fi/action than straight horror to be honest. I think working Arrow in the Head for 15 years is the cause of that...


You are a horror critic on JoBlo.com known as "The Arrow". How did you find the time to work on so many things?

I'm a workaholic, always have been, always will be. On that, I've considerably toned down the work I do on Arrow in the Head and will continue to do so until I am totally in the background. After 15 years of working on the site, I want to fully move on.

Any plans to go back to acting?

Yes, if a good role falls in my lap, I'd do it.


Many of your screenplays have been produced into films. Do you feel more comfortable writing, directing or acting?

I'm always comfortable writing and directing my first feature wound up going way smoother than I thought it would. I felt in my element. I'm probably rusty in terms of acting right now. So I'd take some workshops beforehand if a good role were to surface.

What are your next projects?

I'm working on getting two films off the ground at the moment. One is a sci-fi action film in the tradition of Predator called THE SHADOWING and the other is a Barbarian adventure/whodunit film called THE PRIZE. It's Conan meets 10 Little Indians! So my focus is on those and finding distribution for The Shelter of course.


How can our readers contact you? Any web pages and/or e-mail address you want to share?

You can follow me on my blog
www.john-fallon.com and on Twitter
https://twitter.com/johnhfallon. You can also follow The Shelter here:
https://www.theshelterfilm.com and on Facebook here:
https://www.facebook.com/thesheltermovie
Thank you for the talk and the support! God bless!