In 1987 the son of a notorious gangster spirals home to
"Crime Town, USA" to face his homicidal half-brother, a dark inheritance and his own even darker deeds.
Simultaneously in 2016, broken and haunted by grief, he descends into madness when a violent young woman arrives seeking retributiuon.
WHAT
DID
YOU
DO?
Almost 40 years in the making, DAMNATION (89min)
is a psychological thriller with crime and horror elements.
Pivoting between interwoven timelines, one shot on 16mm film
in 1988 and the other in 8K decades later, unified by Scot Colford's
riveting lead performance, both as a teenager and in his mid-50s
supported by actor/musician Eric Purtle in both eras.
Nina Pilar portrays Valerie Donahue, an enraged young woman on a mission of vengeance - mirrored in the past by Gyn Cameron,
founder of the pioneering industrial band Dementia Precox,
as stylish psychopath Stephen Stengler.
Writer/Director Michael Capone's feature debut excavates his past
to resurrect this disturbing, genre-bending, decidedly analog saga
of fate, family and fault which demands to know: What did you do?
CAST
retro Gallery
Teaser Trailer
Crafting DAMNATION
Writer/Director Michael Capone is an editor, producer and occasional actor.
DAMNATION is his feature debut.
"I grew up in Youngstown, Ohio - christened “Crime Town, USA” after a period of
mob warfare resulted in 11 deaths and 75 car bombings. Once, after serving Mass as an altar boy, I met a friend and we played in a derelict building. On the way home, a stretch Cadillac pulled to the curb and a man got out of the passenger side. As we passed, he walked around and shot the driver in the face. I was seven years old."
A graduate of Wright State's Motion Pictures Production program, Capone studied under Academy Award-winning filmmaker Julia Reichert, who instilled the philosophy movies must always be deeply personal, whatever form they take. He has a lifelong association with genre films and extensive experience in both documentary
and narrative storytelling. His work has appeared in many film festivals, including Cannes, Sitges, MOTELX, Fantasia and Brooklyn Horror.
"My alcoholic father was abusive, violent - terrifying. When he abandoned our family,
all he left behind was his name: Capone - just like the famous gangster.
I worried obsessively I'd grow up to be like him, that my bloodline was tainted."
The protagonist of DAMNATION confronts those same fears while caught in a wildly heightened world of nightmare noir, conjured through an actual window into the past.
"In 1988 I made an ambitious crime drama called REDEMPTION. Finishing a nearly hour-long movie was extremely costly and I could never scrape together enough to finish it. The raw elements sat in storage for years. During the pandemic I became fixated on preserving those elements and convinced Severin Films to do the work as payment for co-producing & editing TALES OF THE UNCANNY (2020)
In the edit room, I worked in uncomfortable collaboration with my
19-year-old self for months to resurrect his original vision.
As an official guest of the 2024 Sitges Film Festival, I met filmmaker Jake West and shared the cut with him. His reaction convinced me it could be more. I wrote a new screenplay, folding REDEMPTION into a doom-laden story set in 2016 and reached out to Scot Colford and Eric Purtle, who agreed to reprise their roles. In June of 2024, the new scenes were shot. Two years of post production followed."
DAMNATION interrogates the present while excavating the past by contrasting midlife regret and adolescent searching, but transmuted into nightmare noir designed to thrill an audience. DAMNATION waits for you.
Behind the Scenes
waits for you.