Director Biography - Nathan Crooker

NATHAN CROOKER is an accomplished filmmaker who helms from Leominster, Massachusetts, a small working-class town in the shadows of Boston. There he developed an interest in narrative
and visual storytelling with an authentic and raw cinematic style.

Crooker found his voice in narrative filmmaking through horror with his first short, "Playback" that went viral in just one day. Both "Playback" and “Midnight Delivery” have had wild success at many of the top film festivals around the world. “Playback” has struck a chord with many others in the horror world including, Blumhouse’s producer, Couper Samuelson, saying “What a lovely twisted little movie. Lucky Mckee, the horror director of such hits as “May”
and “The Woman,” said, “Nathan Crooker has devised a wicked, atmospheric nightmare.”

Crooker is also an accomplished producer having recently created and produced the horror anthology “Isolation,” helming some of the genre’s most innovative directors such as Larry Fessenden, Dennie Gordon, and Bobby Roe. He also produced the horror feature “Until Someone Gets Hurt,” starring Michael Welch from “Twilight.”

Last year Crooker founded his production company Ghost Gang. Speaking to contemporary social issues in the genre world, Ghost Gang champions artistic collaborations with prolific and original
voices and strives to push the boundaries of horror, science fiction and dark drama, while creating a unique visual language.

Director Statement

Identity is a theme I explore in almost all my films, so it was natural for me to gravitate toward the overwhelming amount of stories from around the world that deal with BDD: Body Dysmorphic Disorder. As of 2019, BDD was at an all-time high, and right now, social media is just throwing gas on an already raging fire.

It really hit home for me when I found out many of my close friends were suffering from BDD, and one was even hospitalized for it. Body Dysmorphic Disorder affects 1.7% to 2.9% of the general population, about 1 in 50 people. This means that more than 5 million people to nearly 10 million people in the United States alone have BDD. But what shocked me, even more, was the extreme measures some people are willing to go through to appear flawless and or relieve their crippling anxiety.

Around the world, there is a growing phenomenon of people requesting procedures to resemble their digital image has been referred to – sometimes flippantly, sometimes as a harbinger of end times – as "Snapchat Dysmorphia."

Doctors had said when once their patients brought in pictures of celebrities with their ideal nose or jaw, they were now pointing to photos of their own filtered selves. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery surveyed its members in 2017. They reported that 55% of surgeons said patients' motivation was to look better in selfies, up from just 13% in 2016. This number has gone up exponentially due to filters in recent years. Sadly, a handful of these patients end up committing suicide because the results don't bring them the happiness they are so desperately seeking. Then there are those for whom surgery isn't a factor, and they live their lives with severe depression and anxiety, which can lead to suicide.

For all these reasons, I felt compelled to tell this story. If nothing more than to put a cautionary tale into the universe, not only for today's youth, but to all those obsessed by "likes," being flawless, and thinking that somehow social media is the magical cure-all for happiness.

These filters blur the line between reality and fantasy, just like movies do, which is why this story perfect for the horror genre. My hope is that this film makes viewers pause to think about what is truly important in life. That we don't need to cover up who we are, but instead, embrace it and realize that because we can love ourselves, others will love us back unconditionally. This is the magic in life, not the 0-1's buzzing around in an app. Movies allow us to reach millions of people and, if we are lucky, we can affect society as a whole.