A Houston Horror Film 12 Years In The Making
It's been a long and challenging road for one Houston filmmaker, but his latest horror flick really takes a stab at social media
A very long time ago, I interviewed Houston horror author Marcus Sabom about why he wrote novels. He told me that it was because filmmaking had become too hard, referencing a recent failure to complete his movie, The Good Friend. More than a decade after the film was shelved, Sabom is premiering it this week and on streaming in December.
Despite accidentally creating a period film by simply waiting long enough for it to become one, Sabom feels the movie will hold up.
“There’s a few shots in the film where we see somebody’s car and we can clearly see their registration stickers that have the numbers ’11 or ’12 or ’10 or something like that,” he said in a Zoom interview. “It’s one of those things that I have no choice but to embrace. That’s just something I’m going to have to live with.”
Certainly the film’s premise hasn’t aged a day. The Good Friend follows a young woman who posts an emotional story of her boyfriend breaking up with her. What starts as a mild vent in the online space turns into a killing spree as she and her friends watch bodies pile up.
Sabom wrote the film around 2011, back when Facebook was still in diapers and the worst thing social media had done was launch the career of Tila Tequila. It was filmed between 2011 and 2013, long before GamerGate and other organized online harassment movements that would make doxing a household word. Still, Sabom recognized that capacity for horror even then.
“It’s simple to put my woes up on Facebook,” said Sabom. “It’s equally simple now to do searches and pay $20 and find out where a person lives, what their phone number is, what their e-mail is, where they work. Well, The Good Friend just does something a little more.”
From the start, the production almost seemed cursed. Camera operator, producer, and actor Joe Grisaffi had emergency heart surgery just weeks before he was scheduled to shoot. Sound designer Billy Pon had to stop work because he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Leukemia. In all, six members of the cast and crew died between when cameras stopped rolling and it’s 2025 release, including Sabom’s mother who was an extra, and Laura Heuston, who was killed after a truck struck her while walking in downtown Houston.
With the production in tatters, Sabom turned to photography and novels. He released a prose version of The Good Friend in 2017, following it up with Nikki and Melting Point. He also formed his intense artistic partnership with Rebecca Torrellas.
It would be faster to list the roles that Torrellas did not perform in front of and behind the cameras on The Good Friend, though her most impactful contribution in the 2025 release is as editor. It was her job to untangle the cinematic detritus of so many years ago.
“I’m pretty stubborn,” she said in a Zoom interview. “There were two things that really kept me going. Marcus’s story. He wrote a damn good story. And, I felt the acting was very, very good too. Some people gave their best performances on this thing and it needs to be seen. I remember Joe telling me, just finish it for the people that worked on it.”
Over the past five years, Sabom and Torrellas have been specializing in full-cast audiobooks of both Sabom’s horror novels and the fantasy novels that Sabom contributes to. It’s given them the tools to re-tackle the film version of The Good Friend. Torrellas in particular has used editing skills she’s learned since then to modernize the look of the film.
It also makes The Good Friend somewhat unique in fiction. Very few artists make their work available in so many formats, and least of all ones they have such artistic control of. Houston’s Gary Watson did something similar with his Christian nationalist dystopia story After Twilight, turning the short film into a six-issue comic book, but Sabom’s dedication to The Good Friend across media trumps even that.
Nonetheless, Sabom feels this was his last hurrah as a filmmaker. He shot one horror short recently, A Shadow’s Whisper, which will be included as an extra on the eventual Good Friend DVD, but he’s lost the drive to be a director.
“I hate to say it, but it was a very disillusioning, disheartening experience overall,” he said. “It got to the point where I would just show up on set and I and it would be like I was at work. When I’m making art, I want it to be fun.”
For Torrellas, finishing the film was surreal. She found it weird to edit a love scene starring herself from almost 15 years ago. Not to mention that many of the people who will be at the screening watching that scene will be people whose children played with her son.
Her faith in the film remains strong, though. The Good Friend was made at the tail-end of the Houston indie horror boom of the late 2000’s, and many of the talented people who drove that wave of indie horror will get a chance to see their work at last. As part of Texas horror history, it’s good to have it finally done.
“It’s not a Marvel of filmmaking by any means,” said Torrellas. “You know, it’s not Black Widow. Or Endgame or Infinity War, but it is a good story.”
The Good Friend premieres Thursday, October 23 at 7 p.m. at the Terranova West Clubhouse, 17623 Moss Point Drive, Houston, TX. Free, but spots must be reserved at EventBrite.
