Fun Horror Short Film YOU HAVE REACHED YOUR DESTINATION Goggle Maps Leads a Man Astray

Here’s a fun little horror short film for you to watch titles You Have Reached Your Destination, and it’s about a man whose google maps phone assistant is leading him astray, possibly on purpose.

It's described as “four minutes of daytime horror with terrible phone AI, creepy children, balloons, and a bit of surrealism.”

The film was directed by Ryan Couldrey, and we included an interview with the filmmaker below for you to read through, so you can learn about the short and the filmmaker.

This short film is shared in collaboration with the FilmQuest Film Festival, where we are looking to expose some of the great indie genre films and shorts that filmmakers are creating.

What was the inspiration for your film? How did you come up with the idea?

The bones of the film came together in a flash when I came across some graffiti in Toronto, depicting a dead-eyed child holding a balloon (included in the JPG uploads). Once I'd finished what'd be the final draft of the story, I could see some of my own fears and paranoia around things like AI bubbled up quite obviously to the surface.

Tell us about yourself. What is your background? How long have you been a filmmaker? Please keep fairly brief.

I'm a director, editor, and full member of the DGC in Canada in the directors' caucus, based in Toronto. I've directed 17 short films (I think...), a youtube series that mixed real cake making with genre inspired skits, and a feature film adaptation of the graphic novel 'Snow'. I've been doing this for about 10 years all from Toronto, Canada.

What inspires you to work within genre cinema and tell these kind of stories?

Genre cinema allows me to dig into what terrifies me most while (hopefully) being a little less explicit about it thanks to the genre trappings we can put in and around the stories. A lot of things terrify me, and I'm very much the horror-lover who gets genuinely terrified by many of the movies I watch — it's like a roller coaster for me, I scream and think I'm gonna die but as soon as it's done I want it to start again. I get a lot of catharsis both out of watching and making genre film.

What was your favorite part of the filmmaking process for this project?

We shot this film with almost no crew and with my neighbours as the main actors. I love working with larger crews, but sometimes it's nice to shoot an entire film in 5 hours with a few friends who all get home in time to make and eat dinner with their families.

What are you most proud of with this film?

Watching it open up Midnight Madness at FilmQuest and hearing the audience of my peers — whose work absolutely SLAYED at FQ, seriously, 100% bangers at the fest — laugh and gasp and cheer at all the moments I hoped they would. I leaned into some stranger choices with a few parts of this film and it felt like trusting my gut paid off when it screened.

What is a favorite story or moment from the making of the film you'd like to share? 

I thought I had a fantastic plan for the balloons; I added fishing weights on translucent fishing line to keep them weighted down so they wouldn't fly away outside. The problem, though, is that they would whip around violently at the slightest breeze.

So, I grabbed a boom mic pole, added green painters tape to it, and taped each balloon to it one at a time and had Althea (who also plays the woman in the house in the opening scene) hold up the balloons on the pole — I'd later comp her out in post.

Seriously I spent a few hours prepping those balloons just to throw out the whole plan and figure out a fix right on the spot (which also worked way better in the end)

What was your most challenging moment or experience you had while making your film?

The child performer, Zoe, had never performed on camera before. I had planned ahead for this by having limited blocking and dialog for her role, but trying to get a rambunctious 6 year old to just stand still for 2 minutes was harder than anything else!

Zoe's fantastic, though, and I can't blame her for just wanting to run around with the balloons. In the end she gave us everything we needed and more — apparently, Zoe would love to act again but "only if Ryan's directing". Three cheers for her mom, Athena, listed as "Zoe wrangler" in the credits.

If it did, how did your film change or differ from its original concept during pre-production, production, and/or post-production? How has this changed how you'll approach future projects as a result?

Nothing really had to be changed — I've worked with child actors before and will again in the future, you just need to be prepared to work with kids a bit differently than you might with professional adult. Plan ahead, and make sure part of that the plan is to wrap them as soon as possible as you get diminishing returns for every hour they're on set when they'd rather be playing with their friends or their dogs!

Who were some of your collaborators and actors on the film? How did you start working with each other?

My co-producer on the film was Liz Whitmere whom I've been dying to work with for years, and following this film I helped her shoot her hilarious short film Adoptation that I hope will be getting some festival love later this year. Liz also introduced me to the film's makeup VFX lead, Natalia Andrea Pozo, having also worked on Liz's Salem Horror Fest film 'Cold'.

My neighbours play both the man and the creepy child — it's nice when you get along with your neighbours and they're game to be covered in a gallon of blood! The film's composer, Daniela Pinto, is not only my go-to for everything i make but she's also my housemate — I find it pretty convenient to be able to knock on her office door saying "Hey Dani I have some notes on this cue" while in my pyjamas (she might have a different opinion on that...).

What is the best advice you've ever received as a filmmaker and what would you like to say to new filmmakers?

Plan A should be you make your film no matter what, plan B is that you get funding to make it happen. If you don't get the funding, find a way to do the things you need to do without asking other people to do it for you for free — every task you learn to do, whether it's prop making, prosthetics, VFX (practical and digital), music composition, EVERYTHING will make you more dangerous as a filmmaker later on when you do have more realistic budgets.

What are your plans for your career and what do you hope this film does for it? What kind of stories would you like to tell moving forward?

The success of screening at both FilmQuest and Fantaspoa was a huge boost to my confidence, specifically when it comes to trusting my gut when it comes to making less obvious choices with story, character, and direction. Coming up, I'm working with three different writers on four features, all of which vary pretty wildly, and I'll be so jazzed if we get to go to camera on them.

What is your next project and when can we expect to see it? 

The next short is called 'Time Eater', which follows a senior woman with undiagnosed dementia whose house is broken into by a demon. It'll be my first proof-of-concept short. I'll also be picture editing three digital series this year — and directing one of them — though I can't say much about them just yet.

Where can we find more of your work and where can interested parties contact you? Do you have a website or YouTube/Vimeo channel? Social media handles?

Most everything I've filmed is on youtube at http://youtube.com/ryancouldrey Instagram.com/rycouldrey Twitch.tv/ry_tron (mostly retro video gaming and model kit building) Discord id: rytron (no underscore)

Bonus Question #1: What is your all-time favorite film?

I change my mind almost daily... today my favourite film is 'RAW' by Julia Ducournau

Bonus Question #2: What is the film that most inspired you to become a filmmaker and/or had the most influence on your work?

I'm gonna have to give two: Del Toro's 'Pan's Labyrinth' and Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. I don't think either of them necessarily influence my work (lately I've been more influenced by anime like Higurashi: Gou and Paranoia Agent) but they're the films that always destroy me and make me wish to make something that might have the same affect on others, some day.