Every week a new TikTok trend. In recent days, it’s a feature film called Zepotha which shook the social network popular with the youngest. It would be a horror film made in 1987 that would fall into the category of “indie horror”, that is to say outside the nails of the Hollywood industry.
However, this film is totally unknown to fans of genre cinema (it takes some). For good reason: according to TikTokeurs, it would have been ignored by critics at the time. And festivals and cinemas would also have shunned it. “Only 3,500 VHS tapes would have been produced”, justifies MondayHatesyout00 account. A work impossible to find… until its arrival on streaming platforms in 2019.
The pitch? In a small American village named Zepotha, Illinois, several characters – mostly teenagers – live a not-so-quiet little life. Among them, Alaine, 18, who would have premonitory dreams and would be at the origin of a murder involving her mother. His path crosses that of other protagonists: Cole, Dannie or even Maxine. Descriptions of each character are even provided. Maxine, for example, would be a tall popular girl with red hair and brown eyes. The first notes of the film’s soundtrack are easily recognizable on TikTok, where the film universe attracts many new aficionados through multiple formats: cosplays, character designs or even looks inspired by the film.
“My mother’s favorite film of the 1980s”
But the most mysterious thing about this whole scenario is that Zepotha never existed. This “film” comes straight out of the imagination of one and even TikTokeuse, Emily Jeffri aka “jeffri”, an independent artist, according to her biography. On August 10, the latter published a first video with, in the background, one of its new productions, Do you remember me. “As soon as I listen to it, I feel like a mysterious anti-heroine in a dark fantasy film from the 1980s,” she wrote.
Two days later, the idea emerges and the video – seen 6 million times since – proposes a collective project: “If we created a fake horror film, named Zepotha, which we started to comment like: “Oh my God you look exactly like the girl in the movie!” ? “. The goal ? Imagine characters with solid outlines and convince as many people as possible that the feature film really exists.
Neither one nor two, the magic works on TikTok. “The forest scene still haunts me”, says a user. “It was my mother’s favorite film in the 1980s,” comments another myth. Some even say that the film would be taken from a book. “They left out a lot of details in the train scene,” regret a facetious.
A future achievement?
To make the deception as believable as possible, a trailer for the film was released on the social network, again using the original soundtrack created by Emily Jeffri. But if you look closely, the images repeat those of another horror film released in 2014, It follows, by director David Robert Mitchell. The extracts used to represent the heroine Alaine, are in fact appearances of the character of Dawn Summers (played by Michelle Trachtenberg) in the famous series of the 1990s, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Apart from the customization of the actors, it seems above all that Zepotha either a stroke of marketing genius by Emily Jeffri to promote her music – and in particular her new album, in which the famous title appears Do you remember me. On streaming platforms, the album “Soundtrack For an 80’s Horror Movie” is currently only available in presale and is scheduled for release on August 25th.
But who knows… the film could probably see the light of day soon. Faced with the enthusiasm, Emily Jeffri announced the organization of a short film competition to materialize Zepotha. “All participants are responsible for creating their adaptation of the 1987 film », ask for the rules of the contest. In addition to becoming the director of an already famous film, the winner will be rewarded with a nice sum of 500 pounds sterling (about 584 euros).