Effortlessly connecting with, and financially providing for, their children after their birth is a seemingly idyllic dream for many Americans. However, the new psychological horror movie, ‘Listen Carefully,’ showcases how that tranquil aspiration can quickly become a terrifying nightmare.

Genre veteran Ryan Barton-Grimley wrote and directed the drama. He also produced the film with his wife, Simone Schneider-Barton-Grimley, and frequent collaborator and brother-in-law, Ari Schneider.

Barton-Grimley was inspired to pen ‘Listen Carefully’ after his relatives critiqued his parenting skills, including how he was deathly afraid to hold his oldest daughter after she was born, during a family dinner. Following the meal, he had a nightmare that was driven by his anxiety about not being able to bond with, or financially support his first daughter.

In ‘Listen Carefully,’ troubled assistant bank manager Andy McNeary’s (Barton-Grimley) life is changed forever when his baby daughter goes missing. He must follow the instructions of a mysterious voice (Schneider) on the other end of a baby monitor in order to ensure her safe return and prevent his life from being ruined forever,

‘Listen Carefully’ had its world premiere at Fantaspoa, the International Fantastic Film Festival of Porto Alegre, and its North American premiere at Dances With Films: LA. The thriller went on to screen at Macabro Mexico City, Fangofest Amposta and Scarefest Weekend, where Barton-Grimley was nominated for Best Actor.

After is film festival run, the project then went on to debut worldwide last month on Digital VOD platforms, including Apple TV, Tubi and Prime Video. In honor of the drama’s official release, Barton-Grimley generously took the time to talk about scribing, helming, producing and starring in the project during an exclusive interview over Zoom.

Fim Factual (FF): You wrote the script for the new psychological horror movie, ‘Listen Carefully.’ What was the inspiration in penning the screenplay for the drama?

Ryan Barton-Grimley (RBG): The whole thing started with an anxiety nightmare I had in 2018. I was at a Mexican restaurant with my family and we were eating spicy food and drinking tequila. We were all congratulating my younger brother about what a great hands-on parent he was.

Then the conversation quickly turned to what a terrible job I had done when I had my first daughter. (Barton-Grimley laughs.) We were discussing how anxious and afraid I was to hold her and deal with her.

That was true; I have suffered from anxiety my whole life. I was born in Zimbabwe, and the first 10 years I lived there were pretty wild. As a kid, it was pretty scary.

So later that night after the dinner, I went to sleep thinking, was I really that bad? What was I really going through? All that stuff was in this mental soup.

Then I went to sleep and had this awful nightmare about my baby getting stolen over and over again out of her room. There were also giant babies chasing me and people trying to extort money from me. There were all these kinds of weird patriarchal fears I had.

So I woke up all sweaty and my heart was racing. Then I was like, oh, this is terrible, and I tried to go back to sleep. But it felt like it would keep going.

So I finally just woke up and was like, I’m just going to write this down. So I started writing down a lot of the images.

Then about a week later, I tried to write a draft of it. That initial draft was about 75 or 80 percent true to what the movie ended up becoming.

Of course, it was shaped to feel like a thriller and have some structure. But it really became about trying to portray the repetitive feeling of having a panic attack and intrusive thoughts.

It was very different than a lot of the other things that I’ve directed and been in. They’ve all been more comedic horror or straight comedy, so this this movie was definitely a departure.

FF: In addition to scribing the script, you also directed the film. How did writing the screenplay influence the way you approached helming the thriller? What was your overall approach to directing the movie?

RBG: Well, it sounds weird, but I tend to try to act in my own projects. It’s the easiest choice for me because I kind of already know what I’m going to do as a director. The projects are usually low budget, so we don’t really have the time for playback and that kind of stuff.

So I get a vibe of what the film’s really going to feel like so I can hand it over to my DP (Director of Photography). Then I can be free to just mess around with the performance and try to make it feel real and true to the character.

In this case, I was trying to go with a slightly stylized kind of ’80s and ’90s thriller vibe so it feels slightly cheesy. I also want some of the acting to feel slightly stylized in that vein. So we went for that weird deadpan and creepier vibe, and I think serves the story.

So I was sort of directing myself and the other actors to kind of get that feel. I knew it would really work with the script and the edit.

FF: Like you mentioned, you also star in ‘Listen Carefully,‘ alongside your brother-in-law, Ari Schneider, your wife, Simone Schneider -Barton-Grimley, and Richard Gayler and Patrick Pankhurst. What was the casting process like for the drama?

RBG: So I’ve worked with all these actors before. The actor who plays the voice and the police officer is my brother-in-law, Ari Schneider. He’ s a very talented guy, and he also helped me produce the movie.

Ari was the first choice for the voice. I wanted that voice to feel like a Twitch streamer who is sort of distracted. The voice is always playing video games and streaming on Twitch, but can also run a kidnapping scheme through his computer at the same time. He can also have this weird thrown away vibe. He’s really good at that kind of stuff.

My wife in the movie is my wife in real life, Simone Schneider- Barton-Grimley. She’s a great actress. I’ve never been able to get her to act in one of my films before. She had done a lot of stuff before, but this was the first time we worked together. But she really liked the tone of this one because it wasn’t comedic.

Then the other actors are all people who have been in my previous films. So it was very easy to just call them up and be like, “Hey, I’m going to try to make this thing at some point; will you come to a read through?”

We did do a read-through of the initial script, which was really fun. That just confirmed they were perfect for it.

FF: Also speaking about producing the film, like you also mentioned earlier, how did you balance your producing duties with your directing and acting duties during the production?

RBG: Well, in my opinion, the only way to make a film is to work with what you really have available in the moment you want to make the movie.

So I just finished making another film called ‘Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers’ that got distributed all over the place and had a great festival run. I got some initial money from that, but it was not enough to even make a short film. (Barton-Grimley laughs.)

So I still felt like, why not try to just go for it and work with a documentary-sized crew? We used our own house as the main location. We also figured if we had a really small footprint, we could quote unquote steal quite a lot of the other locations around Los Angeles where we shot.

So we decided to try to do that, and it worked out. We did just a two-week shoot doing that initially. Then I spent some time editing with my friend Matt Latham, who has edited some bigger films, like ‘Victor Crowley.’

One of the things I like to do with only having a crew of three to five people and a limited cast is you know as a producer that the challenge is trying to make the film feel bigger. Since you have such a small footprint, one of the ways that you can do that is to go into all these locations you would never think you could get into. A bigger crew would have to get whole streets shut down and get permits to shoot in front of banks and all these things. (Barton-Grimley laughs.) We didn’t have to do any of that as the producers.

So a lot of times it was me acting and Ari doing the voice behind the monitor. There were only three or four other people there, and that was it.

It was really so laid back and really fun. It actually was not as stressful as you would think, although catering was always an issue. (Barton-Grimley laughs.) But there were so few of us, we kind of were like, “Well, we’ll just get takeout.”

We never really shot over eight hours, as we were keeping it short. We all live within 10 miles of each other in L.A., so we weren’t stuck on this very specific schedule. Once we got through the first initial two-week shoot, for any kind of pickups we needed, we just did them a little bit here and there. That really made it easy as a producer.

Looking back now, I think the key, and I wish I’d done more of it on earlier projects, is you really just have to lean into what you have. You just really make that the thing as the producer, instead of trying to stretch too much. That‘s much easier than people make it out.

FF: Earlier, you mentioned attending film festivals for your previous feature, ‘Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers.’ Then ‘Listen Carefully’ went on to screen at several different festivals, as well. What was the experience like of sharing the movies at the festivals?

RBG: Well, I made ‘Hawk and Rev: Vampire Slayers’ right before COVID. We were then trying to release it during COVID, which was such a mess. We also played at a lot of digital festivals, which was challenging but awesome.

But the film festival experience with ‘Listen Carefully’ was the best. This was the first time I got to go to the international horror film festival circuit in person, and it was incredible.

This little movie that we basically made around our neighborhood on a shoestring budget went to Fantaspoa, the International Fantastic Film Festival of Porto Alegre in Brazil. It played on a Friday night to a packed house. We had Q&A that lasted about 45 minutes, and it was really incredible.

I also met filmmakers from all over the world who had both similar size and much bigger movies. That was also an incredible experience.

Our movie also played at Macabro in Mexico City. It actually played at the National theater on a Friday night, which was incredible. There were about 1,000 people there. It was the biggest screening I‘ve ever had of any of my movies. It totally opened my eyes to how international horror is, and how the different audiences really perceive it.

Then getting to do the North American Premiere at our hometown festival, Dances With Films: L.A., was also amazing. I love the festival and the people who started it – they’re so nice. We got an amazing slot, and it was a great screening; we had a great reception and a lot of awesome reviews.

Then we just wrapped up (the festival run the night before the interview). We had our last festival showing at the Sherman Oaks Film Festival.

It was the best festival run. We didn’t play 100 festivals; we only played 10, but they were all great. It was a gift, I have to say.

FF: ‘Listen Carefully’ (is now) playing on Digital VOD platforms, including Apple TV, Tubi and Prime Video. What does it mean to you that the thriller received the Digital release?

RBG: I feel like it’s a really weird time for movies. Almost all of the films that were out there at all of the festivals that we played at didn’t have a distributor already, which I hadn’t experienced before. So I was pretty worried.

But (now the movie’s available) on all of the platforms worldwide, and not just transactional ones like Apple and Amazon; it’s also playing on the advertising VOD. That’s really cool because a lot of people are really watching stuff on Tubi and some of these AVOD channels all over the world.

I think that’s the future of streaming. I’m really happy that we’re doing that upfront from the get-go. So regardless of what your

legacy media channel is, you can still see the movie, whether you can pay for it or not, right away.

That was my goal because I became so tired of these tiered releases, where you would have to wait to see movies on the AVOD channels. I would always get these messages through social media and our websites for all my previous movies from people asking, “Hey, when is this going to be on Tubi in the UK?” It was really frustrating because I just wanted everybody to be able to see it all at the same time. So I think this release strategy is really a win.