Dear David Director Details Bringing the Viral Ghost Story to Life

Social media platforms see people going viral for a number of reasons, with the sheer volume of users resulting in a brief shelf life for anyone who becomes a trending topic in any medium. Back in 2017, however, one journalist’s chronicle of the bizarre occurrences he was experiencing in his apartment not only earned a short-term notoriety, but with the events unfolding over a number of months, this Twitter thread was a talking point for much longer than usual. The real-life events have been brought to life as the film Dear David by director John McPhail, which hits theaters, On Demand, and Digital HD on October 13th.

The film is described, “Shortly after comic artist Adam (Augustus Prew) responds to internet trolls, he begins experiencing sleep paralysis — while an empty rocking chair moves in the corner of his apartment. As he chronicles increasingly malevolent occurrences in a series of tweets, Adam begins to believe he is being haunted by the ghost of a dead child named David. Encouraged by his boss to continue the ‘Dear David’ thread, Adam starts to lose his grip on what is online…and what is real. Based on the viral Twitter thread by BuzzFeed comic artist Adam Ellis.”

ComicBook.com caught up with McPhail to talk adapting the story, ghost stories in the digital age, and more.

ComicBook.com: I know that this is a movie that’s been a long time coming. Ever since that Twitter thread went viral, people have been wanting to see it brought to life. When you look back, did you have any connection to that Twitter thread while it was happening or did the movie just come about much later and bring up your awareness of it?

John McPhail: No, no, no. I was following it in 2017. I didn’t find it on Twitter, I found it on one of those, “The scariest things on the Internet,” one of those things, and I was totally hooked. 

I suffer from sleep psychosis. It’s not like sleep paralysis where I see things at the end of my bed or anything like that, so I connected with him at that point, because from what I suffer from, I feel like I can’t breathe, I can’t talk, I can’t scream, and I’ve got this pressure pushing down on me, and my fiance’s waking me up, and I’m going, “Ach.”

When this script landed on my desk, I was like, “I know this. I know this.” And as I said, the first things I thought about was all that sleep paralysis stuff, and was like, “Oh, I’m looking forward to doing that.” 

Once you got involved with this project, did you reach out to Adam much? Did you consult with him much? And then, also related to that, do you believe him about what he went through? Does it even matter?

We did connect. BuzzFeed connected us as I was coming onto the project. We were coming into pre-production, because my designer Josh Tompkin and I, we wanted to, not recreate the flat or his apartments, we wanted to have a bit of license with it, but I wanted to put things in there for fans of the original thread. This film takes a bit of dramatic license and veers off, but I knew I was going to upset a couple of folks, but I wanted to give them some things.

I wanted to give them the two cats. I wanted to have furniture from the apartment and areas that they would recognize and get excited about. He shared his comic books with me. He shared his photographs. He’s in the film. He’s in the background in a scene. And he was on set for a couple of days, so it was really nice to meet him and hang out with him. And yeah, he was super helpful with stuff like that. 

Since this is a ghost story and you’re taking dramatic license, does the truth of it all really even matter to you as a filmmaker?

I think that we tried to play with a little bit of that in the film, in the sense of that … The question you’re always asking is, did this happen or does he make it all up? I wanted to have that feeling of, “Is this actually happening or is he losing his mind?” and play with it in that sense so that that question was still always hanging around there. 

Look, I believe. I’ve always felt like I’ve been guided along in life and guided down certain paths and things, so I believe. And so if he’s made it all up, that’s some commitment, real commitment, and you’ve got to applaud him for that. So I don’t know. I asked him. He said “It happened,” so I take the guy’s word for it. 

When it came to the visual design of David, when it came to translating that really rudimentary, two-dimensional image, that drawing in the real world into this film, what was that process like? Was it pretty straightforward or were there a lot of different variations on that visual look?

I’ve got a concept artist who, we just connected over Zoom. Obviously, this was during the COVID times and things, and he’d sketched out a whole bunch of stuff, and we went back and forth with the studio and stuff like that, what it was going to look like.

And then, when we got there, my prosthetics guy, two Daniels, literally my makeup and prosthetic designer came together, and we talked about what that wound would look like. I didn’t want to go quite medical with a lot of it. I just wanted it to look cool and creepy and scary, and yeah. So we’d taken a little bit of fun with it.

When the script came to you, was there a specific scene or sequence that when you came to it, you were like, “Okay, I’ve got to do this. I’m absolutely hooked,” or since you were a fan of the Twitter thread early on, was it just as soon as the script came across your desk, you were like, “Oh, whatever the script is, I’m on board,”?

It was Adam Ellis, the character, and the guy, because one of the things that … Back in 2017, I stalked him a wee bit, going, “Is this real? Is this actually happening? Am I going to find something?” And he’s a really funny, cynical, in-your-face kind of guy, and this story just didn’t feel like it would’ve come from him … And that in-your-face, cynical, laughing at trolls and stuff and pushing back, that kind of guy would be fun to see him go through this and have that journey with him. 

That’s what always draws me to a film, is always the character, that and the computer-game sequence. It was just this little bit in the script, but I was like, “Oh man, this could be so much fun and could be a total nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Freddy [Krueger], the puppet part where he is getting puppeted about.”

And when I was watching that, I was like, “Oh, the peril in that part of the sequence comes from his friends.” And so I brought in this cam where we’re getting to see him in his own head as he’s being puppeteered about and I got really excited about that. Augie, Augustus, who plays Adam, threw himself into that, so I loved shooting that, that whole sequence. So him pouring the booze over himself, crying and screaming, oh, it was so much fun, so, so much fun. 

Generally speaking, what is so fascinating about urban legends in the digital age, as opposed to the guy with hooks for hands scratching on the car? What makes digital, contemporary urban legends so appealing and so fascinating?

I think it is just because it’s new. It’s still new. And particularly for this, because there was such an online presence with it, it was like, that had to have some sort of impact to the story and playing with it in that way, and, as I say, trying to compare a haunting to trolling. I feel there’s this parallel where outside forces come into your safe space, and that was something that really appealed to us. 

Dear David hits theaters, On Demand, and Digital HD on October 13th.

Will you be checking out the movie? Let us know in the comments or contact Patrick Cavanaugh directly on Twitter to talk all things Star Wars and horror!