Teen Actors Needed for Cosmic Horror Film

Casting youth actors for a Cosmic Horror Film. Please see the details below. ONLY LOCAL TALENT WILL BE ACCEPTED. About the project: Set against the bleak, lawless backdrop of the Civil War borderlands north of present-day Shirley, Arkansas, along the Middle Fork of the Little Red River, the story centers on Jim Berry, a quiet, 15-year-old boy fighting to keep his starving family alive. The fragile peace of their farm is shattered by the arrival of Bill Dark, a theatrical, fiercely vain Confederate bushwhacker whose handsome charm masks a terrifying, ancient cosmic rot. When this cosmic horror leaks through, Dark’s eyes transform into bottomless, light-devouring black voids. To save his father from being hanged, Jim is forced into a terrible bargain: he must leave his home and ride with Dark’s ruthless band of irregulars. As they pillage the freezing countryside, Jim witnesses Dark's monstrous cruelty firsthand, culminating in the visceral torture of a neighboring farmwoman, Mrs. Bloodworth. Horrified by a glimpse of the absolute void within Dark, Jim escapes the camp barefoot into a freezing, razor-sharp canebrake, choosing near-certain death over spiritual corruption. Jim is found half-dead and rescued by his formidable Aunt Sally and the surviving women of the Middle Fork valley. These women are the tactical spine of the community, surviving the war through cold practicality and unyielding defiance. When Dark’s humiliated vanity drives him to hunt Jim down and murder their neighbors, Aunt Sally convinces Jim that passive survival will only lead to their deaths; they must fight back. The community stops running and lays a desperate, proactive trap at a boggy bend known as Kinder Slough. They use the hot blood and woodsmoke of a massive winter hog slaughter to bait the supernatural predator. When Dark arrives, Jim shoots him squarely between the eyes. However, the pooling blood and the "bad earth" of the slough trigger a terrifying resurrection, reanimating Dark into a fully manifested cosmic entity. Rather than a mystical exorcism, the climax is fought with grounded, frontier grit. Aunt Sally defiantly chops off the thrashing entity's finger with a butcher knife to reclaim her stolen wedding ring, while Jim decapitates the monster with a grain scythe. Emerging from the brush as a synchronized unit, the hidden women of the valley use heavy ropes to wrestle the headless, writhing body into a grave dug beneath an ancient walnut tree. They bury the entity face-down, ensuring that any attempt to dig out will only drive it deeper into the earth, using the massive roots as a permanent, natural cage. Additional info: Genre: Southern Gothic / Cosmic Horror / Historical Realism Setting: Izard, Searcy, and Van Buren Counties, Arkansas (1862–1864) If interested, please apply.