By George & Josh Bate
Making its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025, Theater is Dead fuses Glee and The Devil’s Advocate for a heightened, camp-soaked horror comedy that will leave you wondering just what Hollywood A-listers made deals with the Devil to get where they are.
From director and co-writer Katherine Dudas, Theater is Dead stars Decker Sadowski as Willow, an engineering student, who, after growing bored with her academics, pursues acting. Miraculously, Willow quickly secures a role in a play by big-shot theater director Matthew (Shane West). At first, Willow believes she’s finally found her passion in life, but, over time, she begins to realize she’s in the middle of a far darker situation.
The HoloFiles had the chance to exclusively interview director/co-writer Katherine Dudas, actor/co-writers Decker Sadowksi, Madison Lawlor, and Olivia Blue, and actor Jacob Nichols about their new movie, what it’s like to premiere at Fantastic Fest, being a love letter to theater kids, the lore surrounding the Devil in the movie, the different flavors of toxic masculinity represented in the film, the franchise potential of the film’s superb concept, and more.
Theater is Dead is the second feature film from Katherine Dudas and her collaborators, the first being 2022’s Juniper. In a number of ways, the new movie draws on the filmmaking team’s experience in the film and theater industries. “I wanted to be an actress and I think we came on this project because it related to all four of us a lot in the experiences we had in the industry,” star Decker Sadowski played. Paralleling her character Willow’s journey, Sadowski also actually began her career as an engineer, before transitioning to the world of acting.
The film’s story explores the manipulative side of male mentorship commonplace in a variety of industries. Dudas spoke about how an interest in telling this story naturally led to it being a horror comedy. “What’s the most entertaining way to tell this story?” Dudas said. “And, for us, it was comedy horror…We realized that we wanted to tell a story about male mentors who you feel manipulate by and make you feel stupid and it’s very disempowering. So, we’ve all had experiences like that and we realized it has to be a horror.”
Madison Lawlor, who co-wrote the film and who plays Taylor (the daughter of Shane West’s mysterious big-shot theater director), discussed how horror, unlike other genres, allowed the team to write their own rules for this story. “The really fun thing about horror right now in the landscape is you create your own rules and write your own rules,” Lawlor reflected. “So, you can really take it as extreme as it feels sometimes. These characters, they don’t have to be human if they feel inhuman.”
In being able to write their own rules, the team managed to delicately tow the line between a heightened tone and high stakes. A testament to the ensemble involved, every performer without exception remains tonally in sync with one another, ensuring that the film never becomes too over-the-top or burdened by characters acting like they’re in a different movie. According to Sadowski, the success of this tone came from effective communication between the filmmakers. “It felt like a lot of trust in the people on set that would tell me if I’m hitting the right tone,” Sadowski said. “I was like, ‘Okay, when am I really heightened or when am I really grounded and thinking everything is weird?’ And I just had to rely on [Dudas and company] to tell me if I was hitting it or not.”
The balance between a heightened and grounded tone was inspired by Jennifer’s Body, according to star and co-writer Olivia Blue. Like Jennifer’s Body, Theater is Dead takes a tried-and-tested horror movie concept (i.e., making a deal with the devil) and executes it with novelty and sophistication to deliver laughs and thrills in equal measure.
And, like Jennifer’s Body, although Theater is Dead is female-driven, a select few male actors play key roles in the film, namely Shane West and Jacob Nichols. West and Nichols’ characters represent two different types of toxic masculinity that Willow comes up against. Nichols’ character Ben is “a nice boy,” says Blue. “Ben’s thing is like an unawareness. Whereas Matthew [Shane West’s theater director character] is completely aware, completely manipulative. And Ben, like I think is ultimately a good guy with a good heart, but is fixated and focus on his survival….Toxic masculinity doesn’t mean that person is inherently bad, it just means they were socialized a certain way…He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”
That doesn’t mean that Ben doesn’t cross a line in the movie, says actor Jacob Nichols. “He crosses the line for having sensitivity and inclusivity to women’s issues to the point of being invasive and way too involved,” Nichols said of his character, who incessantly hounds Willow as she tries to pursue her dream of becoming an actress.
Even though the film begins with Nichols’ character as the male antagonist (of sorts) to Willow, this role is soon occupied by a far more insidious figure in Shane West’s Matthew. West, who is known for his roles in Nikita and ER, plays a theater director whose recruitment of Willow masks his darker motives. Without delving into spoilers, Theater is Dead dabbles in all sorts of interesting lore surrounding the devil and demons, something that was extensively thought about the team, even if all the details didn’t make it into the final film. “The lore killed us,” Blue joked.
Lawlor continued, “There was a lot of lore that we came up with and draft-after-draft changed. Whatever served the story the best….[We tried] to strike the balance between, you know, our audience is smart and not explaining too much, but also we need to explain this world. It was a really difficult balance.”
To iron out the lore, the writers revealed they went on “frustration walks” as they contemplate all the elements of the story’s supernatural underpinnings. Clearly, these walks paid off as, unlike many other horror films that get bogged down in either being overexplained or underexplained, Theater is Dead features succinctly and coherently told lore. “I feel like it’s the challenging part of genre films in general,” said Dudas. “It’s not based in reality. The world that we are working with is something that we’re making up. The rules don’t exist yet. We have to figure them out. It was a unique challenge to be like, ‘Okay, so how do devils works in reality?’…I would say that the most challenging part was figuring out the lore.”
The film’s concept of prominent people in the theater scene coming into their positions of power by making deals with the devil opens up the door to all kinds of spin-offs, sequels, and prequels, things the filmmaking team have already thought about. “We have talked about a lot of different directions we have,” Dudas said. Some of the ideas considered were a prequel about how West’s Matthew struck a deal with the Devil in the first place, a queer love story between characters Taylor and Paula, and even an expansion of the concept to other industries. “We’ve talked about there being demons that run every single industry,” the team commented. “Tech is dead. Government is dead. Sports are dead.”
If Theater is Dead generates the attention we think it deserves, hopefully some of these ideas come to fruition (the idea of Tech is Dead or Government is Dead sounds particularly interesting).
As unique as Theater is Dead is on-screen, its behind the scenes mechanics are also distinct. Unlike many indie horror flicks, which often are the brainchild of a sole (typically male) filmmaker, Theater is Dead is written by four writers – Dudas, Blue, Sadowski, and Lawlor. “We kind of worked like a writer’s room” Dudas said.
“We have so much fun brainstorming together,” Lawlor continued. “We’ll just shoot ideas and sometimes they suck and sometimes they’re crazy and I feel like collectively best idea wins whenever whatever. But that can also change and shift…It’s really put to our brains together and see where it takes us.”
Audiences watching Theater is Dead will notice how organic the dialogue feels, so much so that it had us questioning whether chunks were improvised. Surprisingly, Dudas revealed that “90-91%” of the film was scripted, although there were various moments of improv that we included in the final film.
On a final note, the Theater is Dead pondered, if they were able to make a deal with the Devil just like Willow to be in a certain film or television production, what would it be. The answers to this question speak to the variety of interests and talents of the cast. Nichols stated he’d love to step into the shoes of Tom Holland as Spider-Man. “Cheeky and swinging from buildings and stuff. I want to do somethng really athletic and fun and cool.” Blue, meanwhile, said, “I would want to do seven years with Gilmore Girls.” She joked, “I would probaly be fired for crying.” Lawlor remarked that she would want to play Elle Woods in Legally Blonde or Meg Ryan’s character in When Harry Met Sally, while Sadowski said she want to be Angelina Jolie in Girl Interrupted. Finally, Dudas said she’d love to step behind the scenes of Quentin Tarantino movie. Although, she also stated “she’s confused” as she both wants to be in a Tarantino movie and make a Tarantino movie of her own. With two films under her belt, we hope Dudas and company have the longevity of Tarantino in continuing to produce exciting, subversive stories like this.
