What Happened to Doris Director on Crafting a Grounded Horror Story

Posted in: Film Festival, Horror, Interview, Movies | Tagged: fantastic fest, What Happened to Doris?

What Happened to Doris Director on Crafting a Grounded Horror Story

Director Nick Simon (Untitled Horror Movie) spoke to us about his latest horror film for Fantastic Fest, 'What Happened to Doris?'

Published Sun, 27 Sep 2026 16:46:09 -0500
by Tom Chang
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Article Summary

• What Happened to Doris director Nick Simon explains why the true story demanded a grounded, non-exploitative horror approach.
• Simon reveals how research with Doris Bither’s son shaped the film’s ending and kept the family’s real experience central.
• What Happened to Doris castings, led by Heather Graham, helped anchor the 1970s period horror within a tight indie schedule.
• Simon breaks down practical effects, creature work, and the séance scene that proved the toughest shoot on What Happened to Doris.

When director Nick Simon (Untitled Horror Movie, The Girl in the Photographs) was approached to tell a harrowing true story about a single mother who's been haunted by a presence known as The Entity at her Los Angeles home in 1974 that garnered the attention of a paranormal research team from UCLA, it was an opportunity too good to pass up. While many would take opportunities and embellish however they can, Simon wanted to take a more grounded approach to allow the characters, from the family to the investigators, to tell the story rather than just relying on the horror in the supernatural thriller What Happened to Doris? The film stars Heather Graham (Carrie) as Doris Bither, a struggling single mother raising multiple kids, trying to make sense of all the random phenomena at her home, and facing the uphill battle of getting taken seriously until the activity becomes too big to ignore. While promoting the film for Alamo Drafthouse's Fantastic Fest, Simon spoke to Bleeding Cool about the research screenwriter Tom Fenton did, talking with the subject's son, telling an authentic story, casting, and more.

What Happened to Doris Director Nick Simon on Formulating a Grounded 1970s Horror Film Based on a True Story

Bleeding Cool: What intrigued you about 'What Happened to Doris?'

Simon: The true-story angle was always the most important. I thought this was a fascinating story once you start going into digging into the history of what really happened. I know the writer, Tom Fenton, built a relationship with Brian Harris, the real son, and he worked on the script for about four years before it got to me. Once I started talking to Brian, you have all these questions, and it's such a fascinating story. It was really important to Brian to have his mom's story be told in a sense where the most important thing to her was that we keep the family together and that she didn't lose the kids, and that was something that I don't think a lot of people have known about or talked about.

What did you like about Tom's script, adapting it for the screen, and bringing that story to life?

I was attached to the project about three years ago, so Tom had been with it for four years at that time. When the producer I've worked with before brought this story to me about the mom, I read the script and really liked it. I was like, "This is interesting and scary. How do we tell this story today? How do we make it without being exploitative? How do we tell the story in a very sensitive manner?" The script is great, and once we started working on how we tell the different stories, or how we tell this story specifically, especially when, at one point, one of the original script endings- he had a movie ending for it. That's not where it really ended, and then after talking to Brian again, we figured out how we should tell the real story, where [the monster] ended up following her everywhere she went the rest of her life.

Was Heather penciled in from the get-go, and how did you approach complementing her with the cast?

Heather was incredible; very rarely do you get to put down the list of people you think would be good in the movie, and then they say, "Yes," so that's exciting. Heather has always been on the list; love her. She makes an amazing amount of backstory about how much she talked to Brian and found out about his mom, and she was always on the list from the get-go, so it was great to have her. The same with Mimi [Rogers]. I'm a huge 'Ginger Snaps' (2000) and 'The X-Files' nerd, so being able to talk to Mimi and have her play that role was fantastic, and then, honestly, we had a lot of auditions. We auditioned all those kids and found the best actress for the role, and it's an indie film that we didn't have a ton of money for, and we shot it in 16 days. We needed that cast because everybody fires on all cylinders, and having that cast be able to be as great as they are is the only way we could make the movie in the time that we had.

Was there any part of the story that you reluctantly had to cut, as far as pacing goes, or was everything that you wanted intended originally from the get-go included?

Some scenes felt for me as a director: you watch it, and you're like, "Oh God! Why did I do it like that?! I wish we had more time for this." There are always good things you would wish you had that you could do a little differently, but I'm very proud of the amount of work that we achieved, especially trying to pull off a period piece with a limited budget and a limited amount of time. I feel like it does feel like a real-life world with costumes in our department, and I think everybody was on the same page, which is nice.

How did you work with Kevin [Keppy] on his performance as the incubus? How much did you want to balance the practical effects versus the CG?
Kevin is terrific, so I met him through a makeup effects sculptor friend of mine named Mario Torres, and he had known…we were talking, and once we decided to put in a physical presence for The Entity, and knowing that the incubus, Mr. Whosit, was going to be an actual person, we started sculpting like we wanted to do things as he had as a human with baby teeth. Once Mario came on and started doing this. He's like, "If you haven't cast that yet, I know someone who's such a good creature actor. He's in all these movies. You should meet him," and then I met with [Kevin], and I'm like, "He's so great!" He's a legend in that world, not to mention, he's also the sweetest, nicest guy in the world. Having Kevin on there and having him play the part to have that physical being there was terrific.

The practical effects versus the digital visual effects, I feel the best versions are when you combine them. We did a lot of traditional fishing wire gags and things like that. There's a frying pan scene where it goes flying across the kitchen and hits a cabinet. We did that very practically, but it's a fishing wire that flings the door open, and we whip the pan into a frying pan that's in the cabinet, and then we added a digital element that traces along with it, so it feels authentic. We ended up making a fire gag at the end where the spirit of the entity is on fire, which we had to do all digital, because that's again one of the things where you had to make the best of your limited time and resources. We tried to do as many practical effects as possible, and we didn't want to overdo it in sound design, and we did a lot with it too. I think seeing it in a theater, if you're able to listen to it with headphones, I feel like it adds another layer to it.

What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

The most difficult scene to shoot was probably the scene towards the end when they did the séance, only because it's one of those things where that same day we had the séance, we had three other huge scenes, and that was at the end of the day. Again, when you're on an indie film, and you have very little time to do something, there's no other option as opposed to making your days, because we're not going to have reshoots or pick-up days. Being able to shoot that, I feel like that's the moment you could answer your earlier question again: that I would love to have another day to reshoot that scene, because going in, not from the séance point, but when it goes from afterward, and the investigators break into the bedroom, and all the things that happen with the sheet being pulled over their heads. That was all the third huge scene we shot that day, and that was the hardest part of the entire shoot.

What Happened to Doris? also stars Marcus Coloma, Daniel Reed Ferrell, and Margo Parker, and for more information on tickets, you can check it out here.

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