It started as something of a joke.
While cutting a trailer for their co-directorial effort “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This,” Nick Toti and Rachel Kempf had a little fun at the end of the clip.
“We were like, ‘Oh, it kind of needs something,’” he says. “So we put the scroll at the end. It just says, ‘The producers of this film regret to inform you that it will not be released online. See it in theaters.’”
In fact, the three-person creative team behind the found footage horror movie “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This” made an unusual pact before they even shot a frame: They would never make the work available for streaming, digital or physical purchase, only allowing it to play theatrically. Yet what might have seemed like a limitation ended up creating word-of-mouth interest in the microbudget production, which led to sold-out shows across the country without any promotional dollars.
The unusual origins of “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This” began in the small town of Kirksville, Mo., where husband and wife creative team Kempf and Toti run a small publishing house for nonfiction about horror movies, DieDieBooks, and a production company for their creative work, DieDieVideo. While scouting locations for an upcoming indie they were hoping to shoot, they bought a dilapidated duplex in 2021 and determined it was the perfect locale to quickly shoot a long-gestating passion project.
Toti had always been fascinated by Kempf’s séances she would frequently have with her best friend, Christian, so the three developed a semi-improvised film around the concept. In the film, a couple named Nick and Rachel buy a rundown house in Kirksville, Mo., and things get weird, which only escalates once Rachel and her friend Christian have a séance in the house.
The blurring of the lines of fiction and reality reminded the trio of another found footage horror film where the central characters used their real names: “The Blair Witch Project.” Given that the cast had a complex relationship with fame due to their actual names and faces in the film, Toti, Kempf and Christian decided to never release the project to streaming, digital or an easily pirateable physical release. Toti also says that this method was a way to shake things up from his previous independent releases.
“I’ve been making movies for 15 years now, and almost every single movie I’ve made has been released for free on the Internet, and nobody has paid any attention to any of them,” he says. “Nobody’s cared about any of them. So I was like, ‘Oh, well, this is something new.’ It’s not like I haven’t tried to get people interested in the movies. I just don’t really have a very commercial sensibility and I don’t go about things in a very commercial way most of the time. With this one, it was like, ‘Well, this is horror, so already there’s like more of a built-in audience for it,’ which is a problem that pretty much every movie I’ve ever made has had. We know there’s found footage fans especially, so we know we can connect with those people. But we realized that there’s also a gimmick there, and it’s a gimmick that can be exploited. The movie getting really big was never the goal, but when the movie started getting more attention, there were certain sea change moments for us.”
Rachel Kempf behind the scenes of “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.”
Courtesy DieDieVideo
Given their indie works in the past, the plan seemed totally reasonable, and they took their film on the road around the Midwest in the summer of 2023. They screened the film to small groups in indie art spaces, offsetting travel fees with donations and bringing some of DieDieBooks titles along to sell to curious horror fans. But then “This” started to take off, winning the Audience Award at North Carolina’s Queer Fear Film Festival. By spring 2024, the film received additional accolades from screenings at the Unnamed Footage Festival and Salem Horror Fest. “This” was then invited to play as part of Toronto International Film Festival’s Midnight Madness slate, and while it meant Kempf and Toti had to pause their DIY screenings, it gave the film an even bigger spotlight.
Yet the TIFF slot was a mixed blessing, as the roadshow had largely played as Kempf and Toti had hoped. Yet these festival screenings were met with mixed emotions, which spilled over to some Letterboxd reviews, marked by particular criticism of Kempf’s performance. (A sample: “I found the filmmakers annoying, especially his wife’s loud voice,” “That doesn’t ruin the film as much as the banshee scream-laughter of the wife” and “Rachel’s incessant, piercing cackle is the most terrifying entity captured on camera.”)
“I knew we were gonna be divisive characters, and I was going be a divisive character in particular,” Kempf says. “We all have various reasons for not wanting to release it online. But the fact that we were all playing ourselves and had actual footage of ourselves, the line was really blurry. That was definitely a big component. I know how the Internet is to women who do not present themselves in horror movies as sexual objects. If you’ve read some of the Letterboxd reviews online, I am the lightning rod for their hatred, as predicted.”
Beyond criticism of her performance, Toti was also frustrated that, although the couple is listed as co-directors in the credits, some of the angriest reviews refer to Kempf as “the director’s wife.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to unearth the the sexism that’s at at play in those responses,” he says. “Frankly, I’m very annoying in the movie, too.”
Nick Toti behind the scenes of “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This.”
Courtesy of DieDieVideo
Despite the frustration, the film’s profile grew after the screenings, leading to more screening requests — an impressive feat for a film with no marketing budget, social media presence or distributor. Cut to this Friday, and “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This” is set for a 10-city screening at Alamo Drafthouses nationwide. Several showtimes, including those at theaters in San Antonio, Denver and San Francisco, are sold out, while other markets, like L.A. and Austin, are adding more showtimes.
Meanwhile, Kempf and Toti keep making new films, with the dark love story “Homebody,” the feature that started this journey, in post-production with an anticipated 2025 release. Meanwhile, the duo are in pre-production on another project, a slasher called “Scary New Year.”
As for “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This”? Although their screening plan has been met with some criticism online that it doesn’t work for people in small towns, the pair say they will screen it for as long as there is interest, traveling via a screening request sheet on their site. They hope fans consider the project to be akin to an indie touring band, hoping to grow a community that loves discovering outside art.
“We’ll try our best to get there,” Kempf says. “As far as the, ‘We live in a rural area, not a lot of movies come here. There’s some that we don’t get to see until they come on streaming…’ I’m sympathetic to that. I live in a rural area.”
“It’s disappointing for me to see that because we are from a small town and we screen in small towns,” Toti adds. “They’re coming at from such a defeatist attitude of, ‘Oh, screw you guys because this isn’t fair to people like me.’ But we are people like you. If you had a different attitude about it instead of complaining… They’re either completely defeatist, pessimistic attitudes or they’re bad faith arguments.”
Toti believes that ultimately the trio’s decision to keep the film a theatrical-only experience allows a unique platform for a film that takes risks and rewards those willing to watch closely.
“I don’t know if our brains would have been willing to explore having long durational moments that really challenge the viewer,” he says. “But if somebody’s locked into a movie theater experience and get absorbed into it … it’s not impossible for that experience to translate to a home viewing experience. But I don’t know that we would have had the idea had we not decided this was exclusively the way we were going to show it.”
Watch the trailer and see the poster for “It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This” below.
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