Oak Lawn Brothers' Horror Flick Set In Beverly Lands Streaming Deal
OAK LAWN, IL — A pair of Oak Lawn brothers – Carmelo Chimera, 38, and Nick, 22 – have made one of the most terrifying Halloween flicks dropping this month on streaming services worldwide.
Their movie, “Name the Demon,” described as the “most terrifying single-shot exorcism film ever made,” tells the story of a young wife and mother, Anna, who gets possessed by a demon, and her husband David’s desperate attempts to help her.
Reminiscent of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1948 psychological thriller “Rope,” or the World War I epic “1917,” the Chimera brothers’ “Name The Demon” uses a single shot to follow the characters around as they race to save Anna.
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“It starts when they turn on the camera and ends when the battery dies,” Chimera said. “The battery is a ticking time bomb. It has the timestamp as if it were someone’s home video recording.”
The story takes place in 2019, a year after the Vatican announced that exorcisms had quadrupled worldwide. The movie is presented as found footage, much like the “Blair Witch Project.”
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“When I heard about the exorcisms, I wanted to revisit one of my favorite movies, ‘The Exorcist,’” Chimera said. “It’s important because we wanted to connect the film to a real life event. Given that it’s Halloween it’s creepy and real.”
This isn’t the Chimera brothers’ first collaboration in horror, who wrote and co-directed “Sin Eater,” about a woman who stumbles upon a town harboring a dark secret.
Watch the ‘Name the Demon’ trailer
They wrote the script for “Name the Demon” and co-directed the movie in 2022, which was shot in seven days in a home in Beverly. Their friend, Beverly resident Jaison Chahwala, produced the film.
Chahwala and Chimera bonded over their love of Spider-Man when Chahwala randomly walked into Chimera’s LaGrange comic book ship, where a No. 1 edition of Spider-Man turned up. At the time, Chahwala was working on a Spider-Man book, “Regards Ditko,” based on his correspondence and phone conversations with Steve Ditko, the artist who created Spider-Man.
“There have been hundreds of stories based on real-life accounts of priests who perform exorcisms,” said Chahwala, who grew up in Auburn. “We brought in one of the most famous horror special events artists, Joe Castro. He’s done over 30 horror movies in the past 25 years, mostly indies.”
After the film was finished, the team spent the next year shopping the film around to major distributors. One of the lead producers based out of Colorado had a relationship with Indie Rights, a distribution company specializing in securing streaming deals for independent films.
“We had some difficulty securing a deal because we’re a bunch of nobodies,” Chahwala said. “We’re a very DIY crew. They watched the movie and liked it. They said we could make some serious money off this.”
“Name the Demon” was shot with a $50,000 budget. Chimera said they’ve already made it back in pre-release.
“The thing about horror that is important from a business perspective, is that unlike other genres where sales are driven by the name value of actors and fame of the talent. In horror, audiences care if the movie is scary, not about the actors,” Chimera said. “You can make a horror move on a micro-budget, but still make big budget profits.”
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The movie stars Danny Bohnen (“The Last Son,” “Murder at Yellowstone City”) and Jessie Nerud (”Artie and Paul,” “Sin Eater”).
“Name the Demon” has been shown in 11 film festivals, including the Horror Hound Film Festival in Cincinnati, Crown Point International Film Festival, and the Paradise Film Fest where it won an award.
Some may remember Carmelo’s store, Chimera Comics on 95th Street in Oak Lawn, which he gave away in 2019 in a contest. He still has his day job as a corporate transactional attorney. Nick is in law school. Both brothers are graduates of Brother Rice High School.
They’re already at work on their next horror film, “Director’s Cut.”
“It’s a low budget horror movie where the director decides to kill his cast for real,” Chimera said.
“Name the Demon” released worldwide on Amazon Prime, YouTube, AppleTV, PlutoTV, Sling and other streaming services on Oct. 4, also known as Demon Day.
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