Indie thriller shot in Tri-Cities screens at Seattle International Film Festival

The indie thriller focuses on Abe, a journalist, and Debra, a whistleblower.

And If There’s a Hell Below also features another main character: the landscape.

“A particularly desolate stretch of rural Washington provides the atmospheric backdrop for (the film),” with “a creeping threat lurking in those sun-drenched, isolated environs,” wrote Michael Rechtshaffen in The Hollywood Reporter after its January debut.

That “desolate stretch” with its “sun-drenched, isolated” ambiance actually is the open, rolling hill country south of Kennewick.

Nathan Williams co-wrote and directed the film. He lives in Portland and has driven through the Tri-Cities plenty.

“It’s very beautiful and very striking. Being a filmmaker, you’re always kind of location scouting. Thinking, ‘What could I do that would be set here?’ I sort of chambered (the area) away,” he told the Herald.

If There’s a Hell Below premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in Utah, and it was shown this week at the Seattle International Film Festival.

It’s earned strong reviews, with The Hollywood Reporter calling it “a spare, subdued thriller” and Twitch Film calling it “a meticulously crafted tale of government secrets and whistle blowers in a post Edward Snowden world” and a “DIY gem.”

Running about 1  1/2 hours, If There’s a Hell Below stars Conner Marx and Carol Roscoe.

Most of the cast and crew came from the Seattle area, although location manager Alissa Desler was local, Williams said.

Williams wrote the film with his brother, Matthew.

The cast and crew spent about two weeks shooting the film in the summer of 2014, and came back for a few days of additional shooting about a month later.

When the Williams brothers were developing the story, “we really wanted a landscape that was not completely flat — we wanted some definition. But we also wanted to be able to see for miles,” Nathan Williams said. “The film alternates between claustrophobia in the car and the feeling that you can be seen for miles and miles.”

If There’s a Hell Below isn’t the only film shot in recent years in the Tri-Cities.

Hello, My Name is Frank, a road trip comedy, filmed for five weeks in the Tri-Cities in the summer of 2013.

It had its theatrical debut May 20 at Fairchild Cinemas in Pasco.

Like Hello, My Name is Frank, Williams hopes to be able to screen his film locally.

He couldn’t yet give specifics, but said there’s a good chance it will be available to a wider audience later this year.

He’s proud of the work. “It’s the film we wanted to make,” he said.

And its been fun to introduce Eastern Washington to a wider audience.

“We’re really proud we shot 100 percent of the film in the area. We had a great time. I have filmmakers who love the look of the film so much they say they want to shoot out there,” he said, adding he also hopes to be back for a future project.

For more on If There’s a Hell Below, go to www.hell-below.com

This story was originally published May 27, 2016 at 1:49 PM with the headline "Indie thriller shot in Tri-Cities screens at Seattle International Film Festival."