Horror film ‘Skagit,’ partially shot in Bellingham, now available on streaming services

Nick Thompson didn’t set out to write a film about the Skagit Valley when he started working on his first feature film, 2021’s “Skagit.”

“I’d originally had the idea when I was living in New York a couple years before that, just based on a weekend with some friends where we went up to a house in New England that one of my friends had,” Thompson said on a phone call with the Bellingham Herald. “It originally started as just me, kind of stoned, writing down stuff I thought was funny that happened that weekend.”

But the Seattle native remembered an area of his home state that he had driven through growing up, and thought it would be the perfect setting for a horror movie.

“I grew up in Seattle so I spent a lot of time traveling through the valley as a kid, so it always had this mystery to me and interest that I hadn’t really gotten to explore,” Thompson said. “I think it’s like a lot of western Washington in having this combination of being very gorgeous but also a little depressing and creepy, and maybe just even more so than some other regions.”

Thompson eventually found that the setting let the movie — which stars Taigé Lauren, Allen Miller III, Rheanna Atendido and Keenan Ward as a group of four Seattle friends on a weekend trip to Skagit County — have a new take on a traditional horror trope.

“I didn’t want the terror of the movie to come from the traditional sense of these characters are actually so physically isolated and far from home where they can’t call for help,” Thompson said. “But [I wanted] something more surreal where they’re not truly completely isolated, but rather they’re going into this other dimension where civilization and people are kind of always just on the periphery, in the background or just barely out of reach.”

“Skagit” was released in 2021 and hit streaming platforms the first week of June. It’s now available for rent or purchase on Amazon, Apple TV, Google Play and YouTube Movies.

“It was a very long process, even from when we finished the movie,” Thompson said.

Thompson brought the film to a handful of festivals, including Whatcom County’s own Bleedingham festival, where it won best feature film. But he had trouble finding a distribution company before he got in touch with the movie’s eventual distributor, MY Production.

“For the most part, distributors really only attend a handful of the largest festivals,” Thompson said. “Someone recommended a sales agent to me, and he essentially tried to shop the movie around and found this distributor, and they got it up on these platforms.”

Thompson is currently working on a follow-up based on the lives of his childhood friends in the years after high school. He said he wants audiences to know before starting the movie that they shouldn’t expect clear answers.

“I wanted to essentially make a movie where the form of the movie itself as a medium and as an art form could not be separated from the story. … It’s best experienced as a journey that you go through in the moment, and if you don’t expect it to make sense or have answers in the end, I think people will enjoy it more,” Thompson said.

The film isn’t just tied to Bellingham’s southern neighbor. Thompson said that a handful of scenes were shot in Whatcom County, and that members of the Bellingham film community worked on the movie.

“Particularly, there’s some key scenes that we shot at Lake Whatcom.”

Thompson understands that the film’s local nature gives it a narrow northwest Washington focus, but that’s part of its appeal.

“It’s really intended as this very local Northwest, and Skagit Valley specifically, experience,” Thompson said. “I wanted to get up there in an honest way that I felt like I hadn’t seen fully realized in a feature film.”

This story was originally published June 8, 2024 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Horror film ‘Skagit,’ partially shot in Bellingham, now available on streaming services."