By Nancy Edwards
The thrill from watching a horror movie is the character that viewers love to hate: The evil guy who preys on innocent victims.
But what if the killer was actually not so different from us?
An upcoming thriller features the perspective of a killer in “Made Me Do It,” written and directed by Benjamin Koppin, a former Fishers resident.
In the movie, a masked killer attacks college student Ali Hooper and her little brother; the siblings must uncover the attacker’s painful past if they hope to survive the night.
Koppin, 25, runs a film company, Ironside Productions LLC, with his wife, Kristin, and older brother, Matthew. The trio graduated from Hamilton Southeastern High School. Benjamin and Matthew also attended the J. Everett Light Career Center radio/TV program. Benjamin attended Biola University in southern California and was a cinema and media arts major. The Koppins have lived in Los Angeles for eight years.
Koppin’s parents have supported his film aspirations since he was a child, loaning him their camcorder so Koppin could create short films.
“They created (Ironside Productions LLC) in Indiana for us when we were in college,” Koppin said. “Once we graduated, we moved it out to California and have been running it ever since.”
Koppin was inspired by the idea of creating a character flawed and misunderstood as opposed to evil or bad from helping his mother with a school club that she ran.
“You would get all kinds of at-risk teens showing up to this club, some of whom would be dealing drugs in school, suicidal or were violent against their families and themselves,” he said. “I remember my mother telling me that there’s always a reason for why people are the way they are and what you would almost always find is that something had happened to these teens to cause them to act out in this way. Whether it was neglect, an abusive parent, mean peers, etc., there was always a reason why these ‘bad teens’ acted badly.
“So I wanted to take that idea and put it within a more entertaining context. In our culture, we are so quick to point out someone/something as ‘evil’ and get an ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ mentality. I just think that if we took more time to understand why people are the way they are, we would have more grace and love for each other. This does not justify negative actions, but it gives us a more thoughtful lens to look at the people around us.”
Koppin said he hopes the film will be completed before December so that audiences in Indiana can enjoy it by the holidays.
For updates and information regarding showings, go to the film’s website, http://mademedoitthemovie.com, or Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/mademedoitmovie.
