Jennifer Zhang’s passion drives the making of horror thriller “˜Dead Inside’

For Jennifer Zhang, it wasn’t a matter of if her screenplay would be made into a film, it was a matter of when.

The UCLA alumna was so determined to get her stories projected on the screen that she sought out every connection to get her horror thriller, “Dead Inside,” made ““ including impressing several film-loving Google engineers to financially back her film.

“They were friends of my sister who were working at Google at the time, and they had this weekly tradition called “˜Drunk Movie Night’ where they (watched) movies and steadily (got) drunker,” Zhang said. “I met with them because of their love of movies, and they liked the script, and then after I presented them with the whole package, that was when they decided to invest in it.”

And so began the production company, DMN Films, which alludes to “Drunk Movie Night,” the executive producer of Zhang’s film. The company consists of past and present Google engineers Paul Cychosz, Debby Chang, Derek Parham, Haruyoshi Sakai, George Huang, Tom Wilson, Rex Chien and UCLA alumnus Adam Zika. According to Zika, the group was impressed by Zhang’s determination and the idea behind the film.

“She has so much passion for this project, and I think it’s (the) first of many films that she’s going to be involved in,” Zika said. “We just really wanted to be involved in something we loved, which is movies, and this was a great way to see it through the entire process in a very intimate way.”

Zhang said she didn’t always want to be a producer but rather a writer. Zhang, who graduated from UCLA in 2005 with degrees in communications studies and East Asian studies, said she knew from the age of 6 that she wanted to write stories for the big screen.

Zhang also said she realized that the fast track to attaining that dream was to write and produce the film of her own volition. By reaching out to contacts and friends and attaching horror director Pearry Teo to the script, Zhang was able to turn it into a physical production and ultimately a film.

“I came to the epiphany that really what I should do is write the stories I wanted to tell as a screenplay and produce the screenplays. I don’t know why it took two decades to make that connection,” Zhang said.

“Dead Inside” will be showing at the Los Angeles United Film Festival on Sunday. The film tells the story of a mentally disturbed teenager who begins to have premonitions of the deaths of a group of teenagers who descend on her house to throw a party. As the death count rises, the teenager wonders if she has the power to stop these deaths from occurring.

The film’s composer, Glenn Suravech, was a friend of Zhang’s who said that he saw her development in storytelling grow while working with her on the score and composition for the film.

“For a young person, she has an incredible amount of maturity and vision. Not that young people are not focused, but she seems to have focus (in) figuring out ways … to get there,” Suravech said.

Zhang knew what she wanted in a horror film and sought to maintain the film’s tension through all of the elements of filmmaking, especially during the editing process. The film’s editor, Danny Daneau, worked with Zhang and said he was impressed by her many roles in the film, including playing a supporting role as an airheaded teenage girl.

“She’s not only the writer and producer of the project, she also acts in it. She’s like this triple threat,” Daneau said.

Zhang said she wants to continue producing and writing her own material, and she doesn’t mind making entertainment purely for people’s enjoyment.

“I really just want to tell awesome stories. I don’t have an attitude about it that it has to make people reexamine their lives and choices,” Zhang said. “I just want people to leave from the stories I’m telling on-screen (thinking) that they saw something highly entertaining and that their day is better for it.”