Above: Remnants director, actor and co-writer Jack Settipane. 

The film follows 3 post-apocalypse survivors looking to start over 

What is it about horror movies and EG movie producers? Verdi Production – with credits including The Irishman and Bleed for This – started with horror. Now, Jack Settipane has come out with Remnants – streaming on Apple – the story of three young people facing life after the  apocalypse. Settipane co-wrote, directed, and stars in the movie. 

It turns out the horror genre is eminently saleable. Everyone all around the world loves horror. And shooting a horror movie can be done on the cheap. So, it can be a smart way to get into the business. And that was Settipane’s goal since before he graduated EGHS in 2009. 

“The thing with horror is you can sell it … that’s not true of any other genre,” he said in a recent interview.

Movies have been a fixation for Settipane since he was around 11 years old, playing around with a camcorder in the backyard of his parents’ Carrs Pond Road house. He got his siblings to serve as actors or camera people. After high school, Settipane studied at the Los Angeles campus of the New York Film Academy, where students got to work on the backlot of Universal. “It was a really cool experience,” he said.

He wrote Remnants with his cousin Dakota Sawyer several years ago and shot the movie before the pandemic. Settipane couldn’t afford the post-production costs, but then the pandemic hit and suddenly he was able to find someone to edit the film on contingency. 

“It helped to take time,” Settipane said. “It was beneficial that I finished it out at a later date.” And he stayed busy, producing films for other people and making some important contacts. 

“My bread and butter is producing movies,” he said. He’s been living in Los Angeles for the past five years, but he’s in touch with Chad Verdi Jr. on a couple of projects and one of those might come to Rhode Island. 

In the meantime, after the trick-or-treaters tomorrow night, you can cuddle up with a bowl of popcorn and watch Remnants. You can stream it HERE.