'Dark Hollow,' Directed and Produced by Columbia Alumni, Hits Theaters and Streaming
Dark Hollow, a new horror film directed by Film alum Daniel Byers '22, has been acquired and distributed by the independent film distribution company Brainstorm Media, with a limited theatrical release starting on September 4, 2026. In addition to Byers as director, the project was assistant directed by Will Pinke '22 and line produced by Fernando Gonzalez Ortiz '22.
In Dark Hollow, a monster emerges from the depths of an Appalachian coal mine, forcing a young mother to hunt down the creature and protect her home and family. Inspired by Byers’s upbringing in West Virginia during the mining boom of the 1990s, the film examines the history of exploration of the Appalachian people by the mining industry. The film relies on actual video footage of pit miners—the crew did three days of shooting underground in a coal mine in Beckley, West Virginia—and many of the events mentioned in Dark Hollow are based on real historic events.
The film is already generating buzz, having won best horror screenplay at the 2023 Austin Film Festival. It was one of 11,000 script entries of that year, and the spark of the success in Austin led Byers to get Dark Hollow made. Byers, whose previous feature film Eradication came out in 2022, credits Dark Hollow as his first attempt at incorporating personal experiences into his work. “We filmed much of the story on Spruce Knob Mountain where I grew up, a remote area hours away from the nearest store. The whole cast and crew were camping out on a mountain, working overnight through the spring thunderstorms,” said Byers before adding, “The West Virginians didn’t mind so much, but for our New York crew, it was no picnic.”
In addition to the personal nature of the story, Byers’s own family comprised some of Dark Hollow’s team. “My dad was the armorer on set, keeping the production’s gun scenes safe, and trained our lead, June, to load and shoot our Winchester 97 pump action shotgun, a WW1 trench gun still commonly used for hunting in WV. Improper gun handling is all too common in movies, but the WV audience would definitely notice if the gun play wasn’t true to life.” Byers’s sister composed several original Appalachian folk songs for the film, inspired by Shape Note choirs relying on Appalachian instruments like the psaltery and mountain dulcimer, and the film’s score was inspired by an Appalachian hymn from the 1800s, Idumea.
Since this film is a true indie production, budgetary limits meant that in a film with over 330 visual effects, Byers ended up doing around 280 of them, “spending almost a year working overnights in the production studio as it wasn’t available during the day.”
“I'm very grateful to have been a part of this project,” said Gonzalez, who last collaborated with Byers on his thesis film for Columbia. “The first time I collaborated with Daniel, I was intimidated because he always has big ideas, and I doubted myself, yet he is a great collaborator and a true artistic force that pushed my limits and made me a fearless producer. It was the same way for this film. When we shot on the stage and the LED volume in NYC, I would ride the train late at night, covered in dirt, dust, and dry fake blood, yet no one batted an eye. By the end, I was very tired, but I knew we were making a great creature feature.”
As for what's next, both Byers and Gonzalez find themselves enmeshed in new projects. Byers has a new original horror script in development with Talking Wall Pictures and is at work developing a new feature. In October, Byers will embark on a road show to West Virginia to show the film in six cities across the state where Dark Hollow was made. Meanwhile, Gonzalez is producing a documentary called Brujas, written and directed by Andrea Ro Riggen, about a thesis on abortion from 1915 written by Riggen’s grandfather in Mexico. “It is after finding it that she questions why nothing has changed in Mexico regarding abortion law, women's bodily autonomy, and women's rights in general. We are currently finishing post-production and aiming for a festival run in 2027.”
Dark Hollow opened in select theaters on September 4, 2026, and is available for rent on all major video-on-demand (VOD) platforms, but Byers notes that watching on Amazon helps the most “in terms of making the movie a success!”
Read more about Dark Hollow here.