Five friends are consumed by madness and greed after they discover an abandoned goldmine.

Inspired by true events

Writer/Director/Producer Dean Yurke has 20 years in the visual effects industry under his belt. Stay Out Stay Alive is his feature film debut.

“It took me four separate attempts to watch Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic The Shining.  I was so terrified, I couldn’t get through it. Finally I had to watch it with all the lights turned on as I hid behind a large cushion…I was 28.

Since then I’ve wanted to create a film that would sit well with fans of The Shining, The Thing, The Others and The Ring. But I also wanted to combine those forces with a moral dilemma like in, A Simple Plan or Shallow Grave.

The result is STAY OUT STAY ALIVE, inspired by California, its stunning redwood forests, its neolithic history and its brutal past. A story of beauty and innocence destroyed by greed.

To complement the story of STAY OUT STAY ALIVE  I brought in over 20 years of visual effects experience working on films such as Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: Episodes 1, 2 & 3, Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, Ironman and Avatar. Working in VFX I realize that the most powerful effects are the ones on the mind, not the eye. It’s what you think you see that’s always the most scary. The effects in STAY OUT STAY ALIVE  are there to blur the world between natural and the supernatural, the real and the imagined. I never want the audience to feel safe – that way we’ll all be on the edge of our seat!”

More about the history, inspiration, and production of the film on the official website.