SCP: CONTAINMENT BREACH Short Film Unleashes the Horrors of Site-19

Things go spectacularly wrong at Site-19 in SCP: Containment Breach, a proof-of-concept short film that serves as the opening 10 minutes of a planned feature-length adaptation of the iconic horror game.

Inspired by SCP: Containment Breach and the massive collaborative SCP Foundation horror and sci-fi wiki, the live-action film begins with another routine day at the secret facility before multiple paranormal anomalies break containment and turn the place into a nightmare.

Fans will get to see familiar threats and artifacts including SCP-173, SCP-079, SCP-963, and more brought to life as the chaos spreads through Site-19.

The story follows two very different survivors caught in the disaster. Zach Lona plays Dr. Elias Shaw, Site-19’s immortal and eccentric director, while Charlie Bain plays SCP-181, a D-Class test subject gifted with anomalous luck. Both have to navigate deadly creatures, a hostile conspiracy, Foundation bureaucracy, and paranormal horrors capable of weaponizing human attention as they try to stay alive.

There’s a lot of SCP mythology packed into these first 10 minutes, and hopefully this proof of concept eventually grows into the full movie its creators have planned.

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. I’ve included an interview with the director of the film below.

Without spoilers, tell us what your film is about, its characters, and its themes. Is it a proof of concept, or a standalone story? 

SCP: Containment Breach is a proof-of-concept short film—the first 10 minutes of what will hopefully be a feature-length adaptation of the iconic video game of the same name. Based on the SCP Foundation wiki (a sprawling online collaborative horror/sci-fi writing project), the story sets up a routine day inside the Foundation's Site-19 that shatters when multiple paranormal anomalies break loose and plunge the facility into chaos. The film sets up two protagonists: the eccentric director of Site-19, and a "D-Class" human test subject as they each attempt to survive mounting threats, bureaucratic nausea, a hostile conspiracy, and horrifying monsters that weaponize human attention.

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

I've been a big fan of the SCP Foundation for a while, shortly after it was first incepted in 2008. My producer August Gibson and started wondering why, for such a popular internet horror IP, it has precisely zero big-budget adaptations—unlike kindred IPs such as Slenderman, Five Nights at Freddy's, and the upcoming Backrooms movie.

Turns out that many others fans have always wanted a big studio adaptation too, but there's a big problem with that. Simply put, all SCP content must be released under a Creative Commons license. So while anyone is legally free to adapt SCP stories, this makes it impossible for Hollywood to do business under.

But that doesn't mean indie filmmakers and fans can't rally behind a worthwhile effort to finance and produce an real-deal SCP movie as a community. So we made this film to demonstrate that this is totally possible—to finance a long-form, cinematic vision for the Foundation compliant with the CC license.

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

I'm a normal kid from suburban Chicago. Greek & Indigenous Mexican heritage. I completed my BFA in 2016 at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and studied painting, graphic design, & creative writing in college. I've also worked as a UI/UX designer in tech for close a decade. I started producing my first feature film "He Who Lives In Hidden Lakes" in 2018 and it released in 2021.

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

I'm innately fascinated with the weird stuff. My first feature "He Who Lives In Hidden Lakes" was hugely inspired by the SCP Foundation. It's a mockumentary about a hobo demon living in a suburban park. Cryptids, UFOs, religious esoterica, I breathe all of that. And the thing is, they're all primarily *memes*.

There are monsters and discrete entities living in the collective unconscious, and they're real, but maybe not in the ways you'd expect. And they're coming into our world, because we're nurturing them and letting them in without even realizing it. I'm finding these things, dissecting them, and probably not helping.

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

I gotta be honest, I don't really have one. Probably just feeling the movie magic on set & the creative flow amongst the team. But it's still just work and kind of automatic for me. Post in particular took over a year and it was mainly just me hunched over my monitor.

The whole thing was kind of grueling. What's been really rewarding is seeing the very positive early response from the SCP fanbase re: our trailers and conversations on Reddit. That tells me we're doing something right by the community and giving them something really cool, high-quality, and worthwhile.

What are you most proud of with this film?

I really feel that we've produced a distinct, complete vision for the SCP Foundation that no one has quite seen yet. There's no shortage of incredible, high-quality SCP fan films on YouTube, and I'm going to list just a few of my favorites because you need to see them: SCP: Overlord, 096, There Is No Antimimetics Division (a miniseries based on the book), SCP Academy, SCP: The Corpse.

There are plenty more. Each one has a distinct niche in the SCP world, from military field operations to psychological horrors to Backrooms crossovers. And I hope our film can stand alongside them while offering something unique of its own: a really fucking chaotic, good-old-fashioned containment breach romp. There may also be some notorious characters that fans have never seen on camera yet...

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

Probably the story behind why my character's finger is wrapped in gauze - that was real, not a wardrobe choice! First thing in the morning on day 2, I accidentally stabbed myself cutting some zip ties (I was also production designer).

It was bleeding a lot and I was grappling with the possibility that I'd need to go to the hospital and the whole shooting day would go to waste. Luckily one of our featured extras was an RN and was able to get it under control (and then deliver a great performance). Thanks Coraly!

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

The night before day 1, I came down with a nasty head cold and only got 4 hours of sleep, so that whole first day was a hazy slog. If we didn't have my Blender previz of the day to use, it would've really been FUBAR. For one reason or another I always seem prone to physical peril on my shoots. On "Hidden Lakes" I very nearly lost my eye and had to direct a chunk of the shoot wearing an eyepatch.

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?

It actually changed almost nothing from first draft of the script to final print. The impetus of what the adaptation should be revealed itself very quickly, so it was a matter of trying to serve that vision and serve the SCP Foundation IP.

I did initially plan the "welcome to Site-19" VHS sequence to include more live-action, but we didn't have the budget. So it relies more on picture-in-picture Blender CGI than I would like. I hope we can shoot more footage for this sequence in the feature-length version.

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

Our Producer August Gibson is an absolute mastermind and my closest collaborator - we conceived of this project together and I'm always in awe of his creativity, dedication, and positive attitude. This truly could not have happened without him.

Our Cinematographer Dom Udell is one of those rare talents who's both highly technical and highly aesthetically inclined while also being just a pleasant breeze to work with, even under pressure. I also love working with Charlie Bain, our silent protagonist. A brilliant actor with incredible range, always gracefully nailing the fine line between comedy and drama that I aim to strike as a director.

Composer Zack Lewand is a music & audio genius who I've been friends and artistic partners with since we were children (we're in a post-punk/industrial duo together called SOLLEK). All of these guys contributed a huge amount to "Hidden Lakes" (when we all started working together) so it was awesome to "get the band back together" alongside all of the amazingly talented people who worked on this.

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

In college I studied under the modernist painter McArthur Binion and his quintessential teaching was a single phrase: "NO BAD" - which has many useful reads for an artist that I've employed into my process. For new filmmakers, get deep into Marshall McLuhan and the Muybridge footage.

Study of the craft is important, of course, but serious study of the atomic elements of the motion picture medium and its effects on the world I feel are almost nonexistent. This would yield a greater amount of interesting work and a much richer cinema culture.

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?

I think I wouldn't mind being a "hired gun" director on studio films or series for a time. I think SCP: CB demonstrates a knack for efficiently adapting IP on a "big" scale and a deep, hands-on understanding of many technical areas that a lot of other directors don't often concern themselves with.

Then hopefully I can start a "one for them, one for me" trajectory. But really I just want to be able to support my family working on things I find interesting, inspiring, and meaningful.

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

We're going to finance the rest of the movie! We're launching a Kickstarter slated for early 2026. Hopefully that's successful and maybe even leads to other financing avenues.

We're in talks with some incredible people for partnerships, so combined with this proof-of-concept, I think it's going to be a really exciting campaign. If we get to produce it, we'll probably be looking at a 2028 release. If it's not successful, I'm going to give up my material possessions and live in the wild.

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

Definitely follow us as we gear up for this historic quest to produce the first full-length SCP movie! Subscribe to us on YouTube at @KeterLabs, where we'll post the full proof-of-concept short in the coming weeks. We're on Tiktok, IG, and Twitter/X at the same handle too. Email us directly at keterlabs@gmail.com. And you can watch our previous feature "He Who Lives In Hidden Lakes" on Prime Video!

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

It's really a toss-up between 2001 and Napoleon Dynamite.

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

In 7th grade my art teacher did a unit on surrealism and screened Un Chien Andalou for us. It was a censored, school-appropriate version but still included the iconic shot of the eye being cut with a razor. I didn't find filmmaking until after college but I think seeing those kinds of cinematic images for the first time—in a public middle school no less—awakened something that helped lead me unconsciously to film as a medium.