A Beaver County filmmaker will premiere his first feature horror film in Sewickley

By Samuel Long / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Since childhood, storytelling has been an “itch” in Joshua D. Maley’s brain. 

“It's something I've struggled with, really, because you're supposed to be sitting in class, and I'm sitting there making notes and doodles about stories and things that I want to be working on,” he said. “It's just always been there.”

As Maley grew too old to keep “banging toys together in the basement,” the Beaver County native started writing those stories. They eventually turned into stage plays, which culminated in his first role as a director for a high school play at Beaver Valley Christian Academy in 1998.  

But it’s hard to put on a play without a stage, Maley said, so he began “paying attention” to movies and coming up with ideas for a film he might write in the future. 

After two semesters as a Point Park University film student in 2008, where he made four student films and wrote screenplays, Maley founded his company, Grimm Sleeper Productions, in 2015. 

This Thursday, his efforts will come to fruition with the premiere of his first feature film, “Waltz,” on Oct. 17 at the Lindsay Theater in Sewickley. 

The movie, which was shot mostly in Beaver County in 2021, follows main character Alice, desperate for extra cash after she loses her job. Alice, played by Hannah Keeley, earns money by selling photos through an erotically charged social media site and, after an avid fan takes things too far, she finds herself in a fight for her life. 

David Dietz, an actor from Moon who plays Calvin in the film, said the premise of the movie is an interesting concept because the fan isn’t a mutant or a cryptid; they’re human. 

“We kind of blur the lines a little bit between what’s horror and what’s a psychological thriller in this one,” Dietz said. “You don’t want to say that there's a ‘monster’ in it, but there is a monster.” 

“Waltz” was originally conceived as a short film that never made it to theaters due to logistical issues, Maley said. It had a similar setup, following an abducted girl being tormented, but different motivations. 

“We weren’t able to finish it, but my wife, Kimberly, she always loved that idea,” he said. “So when I decided that we were going to do a feature, she said, ‘You should bring ‘Waltz’ back’ and update it for the times.” 

While brainstorming for the film, Maley said he was inspired by the overwhelming rise of social media in mainstream culture during the past decade. He said there was “bound to be” a lesson to explore inside the internet. 

“An actress friend of mine had recently shared that she was starting a page of her own on OnlyFans,” Maley said. 

“I had no idea what that was at first, so I went over there to support her and I was like ‘Oh, that’s not what I thought it was.’ And some of the comments she got over there, I was like ‘Man, that’s kind of creepy.’

“So I thought: ‘There we go. That’s what our Alice is going to do this time around.’” 

Before “Waltz,” Maley worked on a variety of movies with Grimm Sleeper Productions, including a film called “415,” which released in 2018. The short follows a woman named Darby as she is plagued with a series of recurring numbers, which her psychiatrist believes is confirmation bias exaggerated by her severe anxiety. 

The short film won several awards at 2018 festivals, and two more at the 2023 Pittsburgh Moving Picture Festival’s Thriller Picture Show for best drive-in horror and best performance in a drive-in short. This success has driven Maley to continue making more local films. 

“That was really the thing that hooked me,” he said. “Seeing a film through to completion, having it out there, have it screen, having it get some recognition of a certain quality, that was pretty amazing.” 

He explained that much of the story in “415” comes from his own battles with anxiety and depression. Having moments with an audience with whom his writing resonates is “wonderful.” 

“Everything that I write, there's a huge part of myself in it somewhere,” he said. “So when somebody feels connected to that, it's like you're making a personal connection with them.” 

The film screening is free as part of the Lindsay Theater’s Emerging Filmmakers Showcase, which helps local filmmakers put their work on the big screen and grow their audiences.

Dietz said it’s important for Pittsburghers to recognize that filmmakers are creating locally. 

“This stuff is going on in your backyard, it doesn’t have to be Hollywood that does something cool like this,” he said.