Every Halloween, hundreds of highly controversial, religiously themed “Hell Houses” open their doors across Middle America. During the first night of a Texas high school’s Hell House, a shocking and mysterious event occurs, leaving behind a small number of survivors. This motley crew is forced to battle their way out of the collapsing structure, while fighting against a terrifying and unspeakable force desperate to consume their very souls.

We spoke with writers, Chad Feehan and Ryan Dixon about HELL HOUSE.

Horror News Network: Where did the concept of this story come from?

Chad Feehan: While I was in post-production on ALL THE BOYS LOVE MANDY LANE, Ryan approached me about creating another teen horror film. Similar to MANDY, we began searching for an isolated location to trap our protagonists and Ryan suggested a religious-themed haunted house, known in middle-America as HELL HOUSES. After doing my research, I knew it would be an incredibly unique and controversial approach. From here, we turned to our shared love of zombie films and began to meld the ideas. The result is an amalgamation of SAVED! and DAWN OF THE DEAD. Since the story is both larger than life and provocative, a graphic novel seemed to be the most logical format for introducing our work to an audience.  

Ryan Dixon: My original intention was to set our story not in a Hell House, but at the type of regular haunted house you'd visit at Halloween. The original treatment of the story revolved around the creator of said haunted house getting revenge on a group of teens in a variety of gory ways. It was a combination of Sweeny Todd, Something Wicked This Way Comes and The Funhouse with other various slasher elements thrown in. I pitched the story to Chad and he basically told me that it was as deritivative as I secretly thought it was. So, I went back to the drawing board. Over that Christmas holiday I was brainstorming while walking through a mall in Johnstown, Pa and passed a table where an Evangelical group were handing out fliers and the idea of setting our story in a Hell House dawned on me. I had dragged my unwilling friends to a Hell House in Pittsburgh a few years previously and had found the experience both horrifying (not in a good way) and hilarious and thought that these two twin emotional responses could be transferred successfully to our story. Thus, Hell House was born.

Horror News Network: What was the collaboration process like between you guys?

Chad Feehan: Ryan and I have known each other for years and share similar taste in film and ideas regarding religion. Thus, creating the story was relatively easy. From here, our strengths in writing prove to be both challenging and rewarding. I tend to be specific, while he is broad, which worked to our advantage. However, we are both very passionate and often times, we would butt heads like most collaborators. While difficult at times, it forced both of us to think about every choice and defend the direction. Ultimately, the work flourished as a result.   

Ryan Dixon: Like any collaboration, the first months are about testing the partner out. While Chad and I have about 90% similar tastes in books and movies,  we have wildly divergent tastes within that remaining 10%. So while the process of coming up with the characters and story was, for the most part, very smooth, the times where we didn't agree often led to long, protracted debates. Of course, once we had finished the first draft of the book, we looked back and often couldn't even remember what we had spent so much time arguing about or which side on a particular issue each of us had taken. This, more than anything else in our collaboration, I take as a sign of a successful artistic partnership.

Horror News Network: Tell us a bit about the main characters in this story.

Chad Feehan: Our protagonist, Michael "Hitch" Hitchens, is an outsider looking in. He is an atheist trapped at a Christian high-school, who is initially forced to fight for his ideas amongst his peers, then on a much larger scale. His love interest, Darby, is torn by her desire to acclimate to the masses while struggling with the doubts inside. Finally our antagonist, Pastor Craig, is modeled on hypocrisy; a man who presents the facade of selflessness, but is secretly depraved. All three constitute a well-known triangle, which sparks a lot of conflict.     

Ryan Dixon: Around the time we were originally writing the story I had become a huge fan of Christopher Hitchens and I thought that a protagonist who shared a similar fighting spirit of Enlightenment values would be ideal to juxtapose against the host of the deeply religious characters in the story. Thus Michael Hitchens was born. In the other corner is Pastor Craig. He's based on any number of religious leaders, like Rick Warren for example, who manage to hide their often hate-filled beliefs under the guise of a sunny, charming exterior. Between them is Darby, who I imagine most readers will find most like themselves in terms of their own beliefs. Darby is someone who wants deeply to believe, to give into the comfort of having faith in a Christian God, but she can't shake the shred of doubt in the back of her mind that what she's believing is a fraud and deeply untrue.

Horror News Network: Can you give us more information on these creatures that the main characters are up against?

Chad Feehan: Nephilim are ambiguous beings mentioned in Genesis 6:4 and Numbers 13:33, which Ryan and I molded in a terrifying force for the purposes of this book. In our world, they are zombie-like creatures, who are are sent to Earth by Satan to capture "left-behind" souls after The Rapture occurs. In essence, they are supernatural, blood-thirsty powerhouses, who reek havoc on the living.  

Ryan Dixon: In the Hebrew Bible, the Nephilim are mentioned in the book of Genesis and Numbers and are considered by most biblical scholars to be fallen angels who mated with human beings. While we kept the underlining mythology, we added our own elements and decided that, after the events in the Hebrew Bible, the Nephilim were sucked back into Hell where their souls and bodies were tortured. Now, with The Rapture,  the original group re-emerge onto the earth and, like some sort of Satan-funded zombie force, spend their time seducing and killing the living. Those who are victims of the Nephilim then become a human/Nephilim hybrid; able to stay cloaked in their human form until the time is right to attack another potential victim.

Horror News Network: What can we expect from this book in terms of blood and gore?

Chad Feehan: A hell of a lot. 

Ryan Dixon: When it came to blood and gore, Chad and I removed the word "restraint" from our lexicon. Our use of an obscene amount of blood and gore was done for two reasons. The first was that we wanted a way to satirize the overwhelming gore found in the re-enactments at real Hell Houses. We wanted the religious characters who took pleasure in watching someone "go to hell" for having an abortion be forced to then confront a real and horrible fate, the only appropriate punishment for the type of religious hypocrites found in our book. Secondly, we wanted to create the sort of gore-induced high where the reader will be squirming in terror and laughing in delight at the over-the-top killings featured within the pages of our book.

Horror News Network: How is it working with artist, Tsubasa Yozora?

Chad Feehan: As readers will see, Tsubasa Yozora is an extremely talented and undiscovered artist. He effortlessly translated our words into a beautiful book and was a pleasure to work with. 

Ryan Dixon: We had been working with another artist originally and while there were many positive aspects about his work, Chad and I both thought that the pages weren't quite clicking, so when Viper editor Jessie Garza hired Yozora, it was like a breath of fresh air. From first pages he submitted on, we both felt that he absolutely got the project in terms of tone and style.

Horror News Network: What has impressed you the most with his artwork?

Chad Feehan: About halfway through, the book transitions dramatically from the real to the surreal. Rarely are artists able to capture both, and Tsubasa made it seamless. 

Ryan Dixon: Until Yozora came aboard, Chad and I were never really satisfied with the designs of the Nephilim. They seemed to look like either monsters from a bad 80's Saturday morning cartoon to just boring, generic zombies. When Yozora sent his first Nephilim renderings, Chad and I called each other up and, after a long moment, just said, "Yes!" He exceed all of our expectations and delivered some really cool, original and scary looking monsters.

Horror News Network: Where can our readers find out more about you guys?

Chad Feehan: I recently wrote and directed an independent film, titled WAKE, starring Josh Stewart, Jamie-Lynn Sigler, Chris Browning, Angela Featherstone and Afemo Omilami. IFC acquired distribution rights shortly after our world premiere at South by Southwest, and will be releasing the film through IFC Midnight in 2011 on VOD and DVD. In the meantime, readers can visit our website: www.bringoutthetruth.com. 

Ryan Dixon: I write a weekly "blogumn" entitled "Fierce Anticipation" for the website Fierce and Nerdy. Essentially my "blogumn" is an irrelevant look at what to do/see/read each weekend. It gives me an outlet  to explore my obsessions, which run the gamut from bad Broadway musicals to the glories of Hickory Farms Beef Stick. I'm also working on a comedic fantasy novel entitled The Last Miggiloo with Josh Gad, who's a correspondent on The Daily Show. And, of course, Chad and I are busily plotting Hell House sequels. My official website is under construction, but readers (and any potential stalkers) can follow my comings and goings on my google profile page: www.google.com/profiles/ryanbdixon. Or, you can also follow (or stalk) me on Twitter @ryanbdixon

Horror News Network: In closing, what would you like to say about Hell House?

Chad Feehan: I suspect Ryan and I will encounter many questions regarding our personal beliefs, which I understand. Religion is hot-topic and incites a lot of fervor from both sides of the coin. Neither of us subscribe to the traditional ideas of God and the after-life, most specifically The Rapture, which I want it noted. With HELL HOUSE, our main goal was NOT to advance or debunk a specific viewpoint. Instead, our objective was to create a unique story, which hasn't been seen before and hopefully, entertain in the process. 

Ryan Dixon: Buy the book please. It'll be the best $10 you spend all year. I promise.

Horror News Network: Thank you for your time guys.

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