Viral YouTube Horror Short IGNORE IT Is Becoming a Feature Film From SMILE Producers

After the success of Backrooms and Obsession, Hollywood continues to look to YouTube to find its next generation of filmmakers, and another content creator is getting his shot at the big screen.

Sam Evenson, the filmmaker behind the popular Grimoire Horror channel, is making his feature directorial debut with Ignore It, an adaptation of his viral horror short that has racked up more than 12 million views on YouTube.

Evenson has teamed with Smile producers Temple Hill Entertainment and Anton on the project, with Lily Collias (Good One, Roofman) set to lead the film as Becca. Evenson will write and direct, while Anton is fully financing the movie and handling worldwide sales.

The film follows a family trying to survive an entity known only as "The Woman." She can appear in their home, but acknowledging her comes with a deadly consequence. The official logline boils their predicament down to one instruction: “Their one rule for survival: ignore it.”

Anyone who has spent enough time reading horror stories online may already know where this nightmare came from.

Ignore It started as a seven-minute short released by Evenson on YouTube in 2021. The film was based on Jeff Speziale's viral r/NoSleep Reddit story, “You're Going to Notice a Woman in Your Home, You Must Ignore Her.”

Speziale's story developed a strong online following, while Evenson's adaptation took the premise to an even larger audience. Along with its 12 million-plus YouTube views, Ignore It has found an active fan community through TikTok's HorrorTok crowd.

Evenson and Speziale are now working together to take that wonderfully creepy idea and build it into a feature-length story.

As for Collias, she recently appeared in Roofman and earned attention for her performance in India Donaldson's acclaimed Good One, which premiered at Sundance in 2024 before screening at Cannes.

Evenson is also coming into his first feature with considerably more filmmaking experience than his YouTube résumé might suggest. In addition to growing Grimoire Horror past 199,000 subscribers and pulling tens of millions of views across his shorts, he's worked professionally as a VFX artist.

His credits include Dune: Part Two, HBO's The Last of Us, and Taika Waititi's Thor: Love and Thunder. He's also developing another of his viral shorts, Mora, as a feature with Neon, although Ignore It is expected to go into production first.

His move from YouTube horror shorts to feature filmmaking puts him alongside creators such as Curry Barker and Kane Parsons, filmmakers who built audiences online before Hollywood came calling.

Temple Hill Entertainment clearly sees Evenson as more than a filmmaker with a popular YouTube video: “Sam is a generational talent whose viral horror shorts have delighted and terrified millions.

“We couldn’t be more thrilled to help bring his first feature to life, which will push the envelope on how cinematic language can be used to create an immersive horror experience. With Sam at the helm and Lily Collias as Becca, we can’t wait to bring this spine-chilling, emotional thrill ride of a movie to audiences around the world.”

Ignore It will be produced by Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, John Fischer, Hal Sadoff, and Ben Levine for Temple Hill Entertainment. Anton's Sébastien Raybaud (Victorian Psycho, Fuze, Greenland) and Kathy Stocker will executive produce.

There's a big challenge baked into expanding Ignore It. The short works because its central rule is so immediate and unnerving. Turning seven minutes into a feature means finding ways to keep "The Woman" frightening without exhausting the idea too early.