Horror, Anxiety, and the Videos We Shouldn’t Have Watched

What happens when the internet stops feeling like entertainment and starts feeling like a nightmare?

On this episode of Horror Heals, Corey and Kendall talk with filmmaker Zack Ogle about his unsettling indie horror film It Needs Eyes, a story about isolation, disturbing online imagery, unreliable reality, and the strange emotional pull of internet rabbit holes.

Zack discusses how growing up online shaped the film, from creepy internet lore and disturbing viral videos to the way social media and AI are changing how we process fear, truth, and human connection. The conversation also explores horror as emotional release, the psychology of ambiguous endings, found footage influences, and why horror audiences often seek out stories that make them deeply uncomfortable.

Corey and Kendall also talk with Zack about taking the film on a grassroots national theater tour instead of relying on the traditional festival-to-streaming path, creating a more personal connection between filmmakers and horror fans across the country.

If you’ve ever gone down a late-night internet rabbit hole, watched something you immediately regretted, or found comfort in horror’s ability to externalize anxiety, this episode will probably hit close to home.

It Needs Eyes is currently touring theaters nationwide.

Horror Heals asks: Is horror good for mental wellness? Of corpse it is. 

Zack Ogle Bio

Zack Ogle is an indie filmmaker, writer, and director whose work blends psychological horror, surreal imagery, and internet-age anxiety into deeply unsettling cinematic experiences. He is the co-creator and director of It Needs Eyes, an award-winning horror thriller that premiered on the festival circuit before launching a grassroots national theater tour.

Inspired by internet folklore, found footage horror, online subcultures, and the emotional realities of growing up chronically online, Zack’s filmmaking explores fear, identity, obsession, and the blurry line between reality and perception. His work often combines experimental visuals, dream logic, and emotionally grounded characters to create horror that feels both intimate and deeply unnerving.

In addition to directing, Zack is passionate about independent film distribution and building direct connections with horror audiences through live screenings, Q&As, and community-driven events. 

Thank you for listening to Horror Heals. 

Share the show with someone who loves horror and someone who needs a little healing.

If you want to support our guests, check the show notes for links to their work, conventions, and fundraising pages.

You can also listen to our sister podcast Family Twist, a show about DNA surprises, identity, and the families we find along the way.

Horror Heals is produced by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.

Is horror good for mental wellness? Of corpse it is.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:10

Hello, foils. It's your old pal, Janet Dear, the voice of the crookeeper. And I want to welcome my good friends of the Horror Heels podcast. Is horror good for mental wellness? But of course it is.

SPEAKER_02 0:30

Hi everybody, it's Kendall. On this episode of Horror Heels, Corey talks with filmmaker Zach Ogle about his really unsettling and strangely beautiful film, It Meets Eyes. This conversation handled something I think a lot of us horror fans understand but don't always know how to explain. That weird pull toward disturbing imagery, internet rabbit holes, and stories that scare us because they feel a little too close to real life. Zach talks about growing up online, the blurry line between curiosity and obsession, and how horror gives us a place to process anxiety that might otherwise just sit inside us. We also get into why horror audiences love ambiguity, how people project themselves into endings, and how being in a theater screaming together can feel weirdly healing. I really loved hearing him talk about taking this movie on the road instead of just waiting around for the traditional system to work. There's something very punk rock and very human about that approach. So if you've ever stayed up way too late watching something that absolutely wrecked your nervous system but somehow made you feel less alone at the same time, this episode is definitely for you. This is Horror Heels, where we ask, is horror good for mental wellness? Of course it is.

Corey 1:54

Zach, welcome to the Horror Heels Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:57

Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

Corey 2:00

Now, before we get into your film, and I think the way you're doing the tour is really cool, by the way. I'm just kind of curious how you feel about our theory that horror movies and horror culture is good for our mental wellness.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

I super subscribe to that. I think that whatever's popular in horror at the time always says a lot about our current fears, but I think it's a good way to get that stuff out. Also, it's just like a good way to get a jump scare is a way to get off pent-up somethings inside you, right? You can get out your own fears, aggressions, and otherwise anxieties in a quite a healthy outburst. It's just good to be in a theater with a bunch of people screaming. I think we need that on a deep level. Yeah.

Corey 2:41

Yeah, for sure. So I gotta say, having just watched a movie, we'll probably watch something horror tonight, but I think I might need something a little lighter, like Killer Clowns from Auxpanks.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yeah, fair. Love Killer Clowns. Love Killer Clowns. What a what a double feature. This in Killer Clowns. Wait, that's huge.

Corey 2:58

Before we talk about the movie itself, talk about this unique idea you had rather than doing the film festival circuit, taking the movie on the road.

SPEAKER_01 3:05

We took the film It Needs Eyes to festivals last year. We had a really great run. We were premiering in Brazil and we got to be in London and Mexico and all over the states. And from there, we like, you know, we have just had so many people uh reach out and be like, how can I see this? And we were like, how can they see this? You know, it's hard as an indie film to get it out to people. So we are just taking on the road ourselves and going in person. We were very inspired by other indie films. Hunters of Beavers uh did it quite successfully, obviously, super different tone from ours. But uh yeah, so we're we're taking it to a lot of our favorite indie theaters around the country, and yeah, we're going in person, meeting the people who are coming out to see us, and yeah, just just making a whole event of it and leading up to a slightly larger theatrical release across more theaters in the summer, is the aim. But yeah, the idea. Very cool.

Corey 4:09

So can you sort of give your elevator pitch of the movie on what the movie's about?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

It needs eyes is a horror thriller about a teeny girl going through a very difficult period. She starts drowning out the noise with increasingly bizarre, violent internet imagery until she comes across a missing woman known only as this tooth that she believes is talking to her strain.

Corey 4:34

So you've done several of these screenings so far, and we're not going to give away the twists and turns and plot points and stuff too much, but has kind of a sort of a surreal, ambiguous ending. What has the reaction of the audience been like so far? Do you do not like the Q ⁇ A and stuff after?

SPEAKER_01 4:53

Honestly, the most fun part is when we get to chat with people after the film. It's great hearing the reactions, you know, during and the jumpsy surprises and all that throughout. But it's so, so, so fun having people come up and like they feel like they they need to tell you their their take on it, which is just so exciting. I mean, they just watch the thing and people come up and have these like fully fleshed out theories, and they'll give you the reasons why and and and that and the other. And we have our we have our sort of like our lore and and reasoning and everything. It's one thing to do ambiguous ending, but it's really unsatisfying. It you can tell when the filmmakers just don't know what it means or what it's about. So we have we have it all it's all mapped out. We have so many Google Docs. And we Aaron and I worked really hard on just making sure that it needs to follow at least its own dream logic or you know, metaphorical logic. So it it it all does that, it all tracks, but it's so cool to have people come up and sometimes people will say exactly what we are, you know, we have in our heads, or people some people come up and the really exciting thing is give us like a third secret, you know, uh bit of backstory that we had not considered, and then they'll like give you like, and here's why, and you're like, oh my god, do they know my movie better than I do? It's it's really rad.

Corey 6:18

It's it's very has anybody completely nailed it?

SPEAKER_01 6:22

I mean, honestly, it's like big people say we you know, I get it's an ambiguous ending, but I think it's like from like I would say a good majority of the people like even like half or so, they'll be like, is it this? and like yeah, yeah, yeah. You got it, you got it. But you know, it's it's really up to the audience to decide, I think, if how literal the events of uh the film are. That that's really what it comes down to. Yeah.

Corey 6:56

So I don't know if this was happening in the in a bigger conversation when you were writing the movie and making the movie, but there definitely has been a lot more dialogue and and lawsuits and things like that about young people and social media and stuff. And it definitely, you know, your your film does dig into that in a way. Was that purposeful?

SPEAKER_01 7:16

Yeah, I mean, really what we wanted to do is write a movie about how the internet made us feel growing up as teenagers. But, you know, obviously things had changed. So we we sort of combined the internet we grew up with and the sort of scary, weird, uncanny videos that somebody would show you on a bus like on the way to school. They'd like shove a phone into your hands and say, like, oh, you gotta watch this. And it would be like something terrible, like you know, the Pan Olympics or Mr. Hands or so or some decapitation or something. But the internet has changed, right? So we we we try to combine that version of the internet with today's version of the internet and and talk about what kids are going through today beneath the language of what we know ourselves as like you know, we younger Mala people. And sort of combine material to create this sort of like uncanny, horrible data of being. Yeah, and it's it's interesting because we shot this like three years ago, and it just keeps feeling more and more relevant. Yeah, I mean, there's more and more horror being shot into our eyes every single day, and it's important to acknowledge it and it's important to be aware of it. But it is so easy to look down into it and you get lost and being able to keep yourself sane in the midst of it. I yeah, it's it's I don't know how people raise kids right now with right phones in their pockets all the time. And then on top of it, then you have the the ride, the AI, and having to explain to your children this is real, this is not real. For ourselves, for our grown selves, keep piecing your apart is getting harder.

Corey 9:04

Oh yeah, I can't even imagine trying to have a conversation about AI with my mom. But what kind of video rabbit holes did you go down yourself as a young person?

SPEAKER_01 9:14

As a young person, the year around the holes. I I mean I was really into more like the the creaky pasta. I don't know this is account seeking a video rabbit hole. It's more of a text space rabbit hole. I there is a series called Mother Horse Eyes that is completely written in the comment section of Reddit posts. Very strange. It's this like rowing sci-fi narrative involving west portals and other universes and people sacrificing other people's bodies essentially for the name of science. I'm really badly explaining it, but it's it feels like a dream. And it's all entirely written in the comment sections of other people's Reddit posts, and people have compiled them, right? But it's one of those crazy things where and I don't think to this day people anyone has confirmed who has written it. But one of those things like, how did you choose this medium? And how did somebody find it enough that I've it's just it's that one, and it's it's really more and interesting, and there's all this fan art based off of it. They really can't recommend it. I've also read way too many like Genji D2 manga way, way late at night, way past my bedtime, and just I'm just and then oh, because I just there's this, I love that. I don't know, we all have that like grim fascination where you just need to see that crazy bucket and panel, and then you you see one thing too many, and then now I can't believe enough. Do you know Jim G2? He's uh he's my favorite horror monk artist, he's amazing.

Corey 10:52

I don't, I don't. That's one of the paths that we don't haven't gone down too much, but yes.

SPEAKER_01 10:57

Just so good. He used to be a dentist and now Bates horror burly than maybe you've seen some of his images from like his most famous novel, Uzumaki. It is one where a girl's face is like basically all a spiral and brave get sucked into her head. I don't know.

Corey 11:15

That does sound familiar, yeah. Yeah. Uh it's so funny. Why do we do these things to ourselves? I remember I was literally at a horror convention by myself, back at the hotel room, and I watched the movie Found on YouTube. Oh, nice. And you know, that's gotta be one of the most disturbing final images movie effort of like, why did I do this to myself? And now it's two o'clock in the morning.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

There was a found footage for a movie that was what's it called, where I just knew about I I read something about the ending, and I was like, that seems crazy. I have to, I have to be it. And it it was as weird as I imagine it's two people investigating like a uh a haunting in a church, and then it ends with them flipping into the like the belly of some sort of beast underneath the ground, and they're just stuck in his stomach, and then they're screaming, and one of them's praying, and it cuts the black. Wow! It's just so crazy and out of left feel, and if yeah, yeah, really.

Corey 12:20

Well, this is meant as a compliment, but your flip kind of has a little bit of a found footage sort of vibe and feel to it.

SPEAKER_01 12:27

Thank you. We wanted to make the film feel a bit larger with the use of the internet videos, because really it's a movie about like three people, right? But with the, you know, we have TikTokers, we have the violent videos, we have fish, we have an animation in it that was made by our big friend Ari Grab for this film. And and hopefully, you know, it spans the world and as did of that bump boot. But but this the difference is we get to watch the person who's finding the footage. And I think sometimes in bump, you're like, who's editing this? What did you know what's the purpose of putting this together?

Corey 13:01

But we get to actually see, you know, her the animation that was really cool, had like a retro kind of feel to it. I really dug that scene.

SPEAKER_01 13:08

Yeah, thank you. Ari was amazing. Yeah, Aaron and I talked about that for a long time. It just had a weird pitch because it was like it just thought like the kind of thing that it would it being in the film, I think hopefully it makes it feel like how are the other videos real? Because it feels like this film is, you know, it's an indie film. They probably don't have the budget to make an animation just for this. You must have found it somewhere, right? So that must be real. So how mu how real are the other things? Like, we want to give people this sort of uncanny vibe of like, did I just see what I thought I thought whack being violent? Of course, all the stuff is made by art or ourselves and are very felony filmmaker friends. I think there's maybe like two or three clips that were sourced, but that's about it. But nothing, nothing that you know, none of the violent videos are real. Yes, we we're not gonna show somebody something they shouldn't have seen.

Corey 14:05

No real snuff films in there.

SPEAKER_01 14:06

Yeah, we want people to have that healed uh-oh, you know, did I see something? You know, this is something that shouldn't.

Corey 14:14

I did really like the uh the way you used the fireworks sequence. Did you have to actually wait for star to be fireworks or was that?

SPEAKER_01 14:23

So we shot this film up in Connecticut and around time we were filming, I knew that there's they have this big fireworks shed that stopped birding in it. And you know, I was like, I told Aaron, I was like, either we have half a day that we basically or a certain amount of time that we just cannot film because people start showing up at the beach midday to get in its spot, and then Bundley sounds not here. Or we talked about a long time and we love the idea of it being our finance, and it means like her synapses going off at the same time and at these two worlds flighting, stuff coming in out of the dark, a really great way to light that last scene, so it's a real fireworks show. We rehearsed that one walk-up sequence over and over, got all the shots. We really just had the 20 to 30 minutes that the firewoods were going off to get it done. We get everything we needed for that one scene. And yeah, we rehearse, reverse, reverse for half a day, and then we just sort of just went. Uh I was in can't wall sound for that, so I am just like live calling actions to the cells. Aaron, my co-director, shot Moody E with camera. We had a uh EA rep behind him to make sure that he didn't have trip, but I can also hold in a light. And and so just the four of us on that beach, just all sort of like body. I'm watching the boat that's maybe two football fields away, and I'm trying to like see where the guy's like, because you can it's close enough that you can see him like light uh the fireworks. So I'm trying to like be up the lit it and then and then turn your head now, and like, you know, and you know, trying to get that like hope for bam moment, which you know, if they battle worked out, okay, I'll put they like that. But it was so fun, it was so electric, it was the most like uh, you know, uh we're all just vibing off of each other and going with it, and and we know that if we we don't get it, we don't have that the and it's the end of our movie. But it just it all worked out and was so fun. And then and then just for the last I think 10 minutes the show just got footage of just straight up the firework, which we're able to f aim as a B-roll, and then move the final C past the sort of getting rock to the beach was shot on a different day, but we shot that with a big skylight that's on a fireworks and that's sort of just going, going, going and forward because we've already seen her with the fireworks, and that's real. I think we're able to sort of trick feels like a neat dirty word, trick the audience for thinking that it's all you want. And uh yeah, hopefully it works for video.

Corey 16:59

So I think it takes a delicate balance to have an unreliable protagonist. And so was that a discussion early on, like how much do we want to make her seem like she's living in reality, and how much of this is like hallucination, etc.

SPEAKER_01 17:15

I love a film where the main character is unreliable. I love when I can't trust their point of view, the the person I'm watching. And it's about somebody slipping reality, whether it's her whole life or on the screen, or so that that was very important. And we're so much into her world, but so much of we do like projections on the wall for her, we do like some kind of gondo stuff with lighting, specifically the lights like from the across the street, neighbor girl, Alex. A lot of those things are not so much how it actually is, but how it feels to the character. Sounds big especially. We want it to all be about more about what the character feels like, reality like than what it actually is.

Corey 17:59

So I know you guys are gonna be busy, you know, this year with taking the flick around the country, but have you started working on your next project?

SPEAKER_01 18:08

Yes. So I mean we're always, you know, working on the next thing. I feel like every project is just the you know, it'd like the business card for your next project. You're working at it for so long that of course he is talking. We Harv talked a lot about he had sort of started out like the oh wouldn't it be funny it, and then we got really into it. But we talked a lot about full like the fish shoe movie. We love a lot of the questions we get to like, yeah. At least Fish Sheeth real what happened, it's fish what happened to fish sheet is that and a lot of that is due to Wola Blanc by his fish sheep being just so fantastic. Love Wola. I wanna work Actually all these actors obviously as Mercedes. And so we love the idea of hearing her vo in the 80s. How did she get here slipping into this sort of world? Kind of you know, if this was X, then that would be our girl, I guess. Yeah, and then otherwise, you know, I then I just always write, and then sending out steps.

Corey 19:12

Possible. So the last question that we always ask guests on the show is who is your favorite final person in a horror movie?

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Ooh. Well, who's my favorite final word? Or if that's really I am going to say right now, off the top of my head, I'm gonna say Christie from Hellraiser. I really, really like those films a lot, especially the original too. And I think she's got like a sort of, I don't know, a fun edge to her, especially as the phone is on. Yeah, I just I yeah, and and obviously Pinhead feels the same because he just he he doesn't want to let her go.

Corey 19:56

Well, you're actually to the second one, second guess to to say Christy. Just off just curious, who do you think is like the top that people have named so far?

SPEAKER_01 20:05

The what?

Corey 20:06

Who do you think is like the number one that people have named so far that people have named over and over?

SPEAKER_01 20:10

Oh, probably Nev Campbell from Scream, right?

Corey 20:13

Actually, Lori Strode.

SPEAKER_01 20:15

No, not Lori Strode. Okay, Lori Strode, yeah, that makes sense. Lori Strode pronouncing in a second.

Corey 20:19

Ripley from Alien is like is number two. Ripley lover. It's just that it's cool just to hear people's answers. We've had a couple. Ash, you know, has been in there multiple times.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

So good choice. Yeah.

Corey 20:34

I think the Sydney scream thing might be maybe slightly more generational because I think our guests have tended to be probably you know more like in their forties and fifties. So like I'm sure if I were to ask my uh 18-year-old niece, she would probably say Sydney because she's you know obsessed with the screen movies, but it's that, you know. So she's Gen Z, so that's that's kind of like their their, you know, series.

SPEAKER_01 21:02

It's awesome.

Corey 21:03

I appreciate you taking some time to speak with me. I will definitely let you know when the episode is going to go live, and good luck with the tour.

SPEAKER_01 21:11

Amazing. Thanks so much, so we really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 21:16

I think that what stayed with me most after this conversation was the fact that Zach talked about how horror lets us confront the things we're already carrying around inside us instead of pretending they're not there. This film really taps into that feeling of just being overwhelmed by the noise of the internet, the world, your own thoughts, all of it, and trying to make sense of what's real and what isn't. I also loved hearing how audiences have responded to the movie differently at every screening. That's one of my favorite things about horror. Two people can watch the same exact film and walk away with completely different emotional experiences, but both of them are valid. Huge thanks to Zach Ogle for hanging out, and definitely keep an eye out for It Needs Eyes. As they continue taking the film across the country. And as always, if horror has ever helped you feel seen, helped you survive something, helped you process grief, anxiety, trauma, or just made you feel a little less like an outsider, or just made you feel a little less like an outsider, you're among friends here. And remember, is horror good for mental wellness? Of course it is.