If you've already seen Dear David, the horror movie based on a viral Twitter story, you might be wondering: How haunted was this movie actually? Read on for some behind the scenes facts about the film.
1. Augustus Prew, who plays the lead Adam Ellis, said he was drawn to this film because he has a long history of being haunted himself.
2. The lights would go out on the Dear David set for no reason, for example while Augustus was in hair and makeup with nobody else around.
3. The production was filmed in a house that was supposed to be empty, but a few crew members found some people hiding in the attic of the house and had a jump-scare themselves.
**WARNING: Some spoilers ahead**
4. René Escobar Jr., who plays Adam's boyfriend Kyle, said the creepiest thing on set was one of the actors who played a grown version of Dear David actually practicing contortionism in full demonic makeup.
5. Augustus Prew had to wear a rat costume in a scene, so as a prank, everyone on set dressed up as rats for "Rat Friday."
6. The rocking chair that David sits on when he haunts Adam actually started moving for no reason, and crew members said they could see an outline on it, as though someone had been sitting there.
7. Justin Long plays the head of BuzzFeed, and in one scene, you can see on his computer an article about a guy that fakes having a boyfriend. This is a reference to another Lionsgate and BuzzFeed Studios film, My Fake Boyfriend.
8. And if you've seen that movie, you might recognize Tricia Black, who plays Adam's coworker Norris in Dear David...
...and also Peyton in My Fake Boyfriend!
9. The office scenes in Dear David were set at the BuzzFeed headquarters in New York, and the actual office building makes a cameo when Adam arrives for work in the morning.
10. Adam Ellis, whose experience the movie is based on, also has a cameo in the film.
11. The original article Adam wrote for BuzzFeed about his experience is shown in the film.
12. A lot of Adam's original tweets are shown in the film as well, like this one, which started the whole thread:
And this one, when things started getting really spooky:
And this one, about Adam's cats gathering at the front door when they sensed someone (or something) was on the other side:
13. The filmmakers actually recreated the scene with the cats exactly, as well.
14. To film the fire scene at the end, specialists used pyrotechnics and electric matches so that things would light automatically...
15. ...and painted the kitchen cabinets with special gasoline paste and used other exploding devices to depict the haunted fire...
16. ...and the whole set actually burned down.
17. But don't worry, they had professionals on hand, and everyone was safe.
18. But despite the hauntings, stunts, and pyrotechnics, Dear David producer Naysun Alae-Carew said the thing he found most challenging about the production was...the cats.
