If I ever needed more proof that Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was the place to be in October, my experience at this year’s live screening of Häxan with The Flushing Remonstrance was that.

The Nitehawk Cinema in Williamsburg is the primary home for the festival, and the host to what feels like a million different screenings. Each film feels like an outpouring of a director’s vision, of a cast and crew’s hard work over months, or even years. But one screening in particular among the repertory options on offer caught my eye, and that was Häxan. Part historical analysis, part horror, and part drama, there aren’t many films like this silent feature from Benjamin Christensen. And certainly, there are very few like it in terms of its age and impact: the movie is over a century old and still manages to grasp the intrigue, imagination, and emotion of audiences today.

But it was what was attached to the film that really intrigued me. Because this particular screening of Häxan was being played with a live accompaniment. I didn’t know what to expect from a group called The Flushing Remonstrance; frankly, I didn’t even know what to expect from a soundtrack accompanying a century old film as unique as Häxan. A set of percussion machines and a keyboard set were set up at the foot of the theatre screen, and soon two musicians approached them: Catherine Cramer and Robert Kennedy, the duo that makes up The Flushing Remonstrance.

The theatre dims, and the soft glow that comes off the lights illuminating their instruments becomes pronounced. The duo’s work blends into the film seamlessly. Their music is introspective, emotionally fine-tuned, and sonically bonded to what’s happening on screen with a level of smoothness I didn’t expect. There was a clear interplay at work between the film and the live score, and I knew then that I had to ask them how they did it. The Flushing Remonstrance was kind enough to entertain the question and spoke with us here at Horror Press about their process and history.

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity and conciseness.

An Interview With The Flushing Remonstrance on the Art of Live Scoring a 100+ Year Old Film

Luis Pomales-Diaz: So. Why exactly did you name yourselves The Flushing Remonstrance? I don’t want to assume you represent the Quakers, but… the name does raise questions.

Robert Kennedy: We were both working at a museum in Flushing, Queens, when we met. We got together for what we thought would be a one-off show. We would be live scoring vintage cartoons in a park. So, we needed a name, and after the usual process where we came up with a bunch of jokey names that would never fly, we landed on The Flushing Remonstrance.

Mainly because of geographical proximity, and it always sounded kind of ’60s like Jefferson Airplane. It wasn’t a particular political statement, although what the document represented and what they were doing, speaking truth to power, does resonate with us. We claim no representation of Quakers.

Tell us about your musical background. How does it factor into your live performances scoring films?

Catherine Cramer: We get asked a lot, almost every show, ‘how do you do this?’ and ‘is this a composed score or is this entirely improvised?’  And I find it interesting, because I spent the bulk of my musical career playing jazz, and I ask people if they know how that works first.

There’s the chart, a melody that can be written down, but then the bulk of what jazz musicians do varies from performance to performance. Who knows how many iterations of Autumn Leaves there have even been, but they all have their own measure of changes and improvisations.

Robert: We’ve been playing together for ten years, and we bring our improvisational ability and sensibility to [live scores] as our own thing. We’ve almost always played in the context of accompanying a film or a short film. If we hit something while we’re in rehearsal, we’ll run with it. But we don’t have written melodic content like a jazz quartet. Maybe like five percent of our material is identified pitches or chords, and those are primarily to ensure that Catherine’s percussion has a number of sounds that have tonal components, and that we produce either a consonant or dissonant effect.

The best way to describe it is: we are improvised, but we have defined the structure for a given film very precisely. As far as what sorts of sounds and feelings and what sorts of timing will accompany different sections and scenes of a film, it’s definite.

An excerpt from the Flushing Remonstrance live score for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

And when you’re determining those feelings, that framework, what’s the process you go through? How many times do you watch the film through?

Robert: It’s somewhat of an automatic process at this point. We identify a film we want to play, we watch it through (separately, usually), and sort of chart out the architecture of it, almost like a storyboard. Scene by scene, where the scene is taking place, and what’s happening.

We then run the film together, and let the film guide our decisions when we rehearse. And whatever the filmmaker is suggesting to us, that’s what we do. Some films we’ve had to slave over a little bit more, sometimes, we’re particularly satisfied with the first go through. We have a great deal of instrumental rapport that factors into it, and we do it in a way that feels natural to us. So sometimes it comes easily.

Catherine: When we first run through a new film, like with Häxan, there’s a lot of stopping and going back, trying variations of the same scene. Each time through, we change or add something new. And even with the film we’ve played the most, Nosferatu, it’s always different. People come up who have seen us before to tell us our performance had a completely different feeling. It keeps the performances very alive in a sense, even when the film is somewhere around 100 years old.

What causes the variation between screenings of a film like Nosferatu that makes it so different each time, even after a decade of playing the film? What keeps changing, and why?

Catherine: No matter how many times we’ve played Nosferatu, there’s been a continual change. Sometimes it’s an instrumental change. On the Roland Octapad, the instrument that I play, there are a hundred different patches, and in each patch there are eight pads, and in each pad there’s up to as many as four sounds depending on where you hit it. Not including the volume and how you balance the sounds. And that causes radical changes in itself.

How we react to the film emotionally has changed a lot since the very beginning. We watch these films intently, and they guide us not just when we’re coming up with the framework. It guides us when we’re playing. We’re not just playing along but really bonding the music to the film. The last time we played it, it felt more sparse, more haunting.

And playing Nosferatu now, what emotions do you play to the most? What stands out to you more now than when you first started?

Catherine: With Nosferatu…it’s so sad. Nosferatu is a film I see as pathetic, in the truest sense of the word pathos. Orlok is such a tragic figure, and that sense has only grown each time we play it. In certain moments, when the man is walking down the middle of the street reading off the names of the dead during the plague, and every moment when Ellen is sitting by the ocean waiting for her husband to come home, all of the imagery strikes me so much more deeply. It’s those feelings that I’ve tried to accentuate.

Does the audience’s feelings factor into the performance to an extent?

Robert:The feel of the space, the sound of the room, but especially the feel of the crowd, are vital to how these performances keep changing. When we played Todd Browning’s The Unknown and Dali’s Un Chien Andalou in early November of last year, obviously, the presidential election had happened. Any audience we were playing for had that circulating in their head.

There were high emotions and clouded minds, and it was palpable. We brought into it an anger and intensity to a certain extent, because we were putting our own state of mind and our audience’s state of mind into it. Disorientation, paranoia, gloom, it made its way into the music. That’s how it is with improvised music often, you hear more traditional jazz, and you can tell when someone is having a bad night or if they’re sick. You’re not immune to being influenced by outside forces, and in our case, we lean into those outside forces.

A segment of the Flushing Remonstrance’s Nosferatu live score.

As musicians, you have about as many tools as filmmakers when it comes to communicating emotions through your music. Sometimes you even have more, depending on your instruments. Which emotions on film are the most challenging to communicate through your music?

Robert: I think a particular challenge is if there is a sustained scene of intensity. Sustained scenes of violence, a riot, a mob fleeing like in Metropolis. The end of The Phantom of the Opera is another great example, when they’re chasing him through the streets of Paris. The obvious approach is to pile it on, get really loud and clangorous. But after a while, it gets tiring for us and for the audience. You can’t put more water in a full glass. Those are the most challenging, assuring there’s a sense of dynamism while retaining that kinetic feeling. The goal is to maintain the integrity of the film we’re working with.

Catherine: The hardest for me are the spots where there is no emotion. In Nosferatu, we have this scene where the longshoremen are preparing the ship, we have a man reading off a list, men moving boxes, but really not much is happening. You can’t just have it be silent! It’s not until they dump out the dirt and the rats come out that you have something to do. But you can’t leave that dead air, which is hard to fill out. Playing to emotion isn’t necessarily easy because you want to do it well, but it’s the in between parts that get me. And silent films need to have in between parts because you can’t just have constant exposition.

Robert: I immediately thought of the Spanish language version of Dracula we did last year at Brooklyn Horror. There are these long drawing room scenes where they’re sort of just…talking. And like…well, there’s only so much we can do. And that film has a lot of it! (laughs) But then you also have very active characters like that version’s Renfield, who is really just chewing the scenery.

Oh, I truly love Pablo Alvarez Rubio as Renfield. He’s my favorite Renfield. The definitive one for me, I’d love to see what you play for him.

Robert: You know, I have to put in a vote for Tom Waits in Francis Ford Coppola’s version. Beyond the freakishness, he plays so well, there’s this sadness and desperation, being aware he’s a prisoner to Dracula, that’s great. On that note though, there is one thing we do the same every single time when we play Nosferatu.

After Orlok dies in the sunlight, it cuts to Knock in his cell looking out the bars, and he says, ‘The master is dead!’ And we always go to silence, every time. Because the death isn’t the climax, the climax is the aftermath. The spell has been broken, and the sacrifice Lucy has made for this guy…who in like, none of the films, really deserves it! And the silence punctuates that.

The Flushing Remonstrance original score for the Guy Maddin short Blue Mountains Mystery Séance.

For Häxan in particular, you do have quite a few scenes that are high intensity, and high emotion. The film is effectively a witchhunter’s manual, with all the historical cruelty that implies towards the women who are accused witches.

Robert: Absolutely! It’s based at least in part on the Malleus Maleficarum, an actual witchhunter’s manual.

It also has some generally raucous scenes of the witches. The black sabbath in the woods for instance. It’s an easy out to compose something quick and aggressive for that sequence. How did you determine what you wanted to do for that?

Catherine: It’s not an easy film to accompany. There are protracted scenes of torture, scenes of the accused women being interrogated and psychologically beaten down. One of the hardest there is the scene of the priest trying to force the young woman to use magic, to agree to show him so she can see her child again. It’s intense, but there’s subtlety you have to play for.

Robert: You know when that particular scene comes along, you’d think because of the nature of it you’d expect it to call for a big Rite of Spring, grand guignol, kind of raucous sound. But you have to break down where a scene starts and what it is. When it begins, we start with people sitting on a hilltop, and they see the witches flying off to the woods, and then you get the scene of the witches flying over the town. There’s not really fear or aggression in that, but rather mystery and a bit of wonder. So, we play towards that.

Then they get to the woods, and it begins, and that mass the witches start up is at its core a ritual. The question at the heart of it is ‘what sounds like ritual music?’, so we aim for something ritualistic. Someone’s instinct might be to play something like Carmina Burana, but it’s just not interesting. It’s obvious. It isn’t in the interest of the film or our interest to make it noisy or heavy or Stravinsky-esque, because that’s just not what the film is going for.

Häxan is over 100 years old. Though it has the indelible place in horror history, the story it tells and its cinematography, do feel very divorced from modern filmmaking. Is there an emotional disconnect from the way it’s presented that makes putting together the framework you work off of difficult?

Catherine: It’s a fun challenge, and a very different kind of challenge. It’s like a PhD dissertation turned into a film, which is not even factoring in the temporal quality that makes it so different on its own. It’s a shocking film, beyond the content but also shocking in the historicity of it and the sheer number of people killed and tortured in the name of stopping witches. Between 35 and 60 thousand dead. Like really? How many people died for this?

Then there’s also the fact that he brings in contemporary feminism into the film is fascinating, and tragic. Things are somewhat different a century later, but we’ve not completely moved past which is sad.

The film in its last quarter is agonizing. The dialogue it has on the concept of hysteria, and modern psychological medicine as opposed to contemporary notions of psychology…

Robert: I mean the fact that they call it hysteria tells you quite a bit…

Yeah, It’s not great. Interesting, compelling, but flawed in some ways.

Robert: In terms of trying to score a film that’s that old…we try our hardest not to let it change what we do. We take each film on its own level and try to be inspired by it. But we deliberately try not to make any attempt to emulate the music of the period. We avoid idioms, we try to avoid period music because it would be silly just trying because we are primarily using electronic instruments. Whenever it’s possible, it’s just us and the film.

The Flushing Remonstrance plays a live score for the Guy Maddin short “Saint, Devil, Woman”, part of his installation art piece Seances.

How has your approach to live scoring films affected your experience while watching film?

Catherine: I think my history with film itself influences it. I did film studies at NYU, then I worked for Millennium Film Archive for a while, which was a really fabulous place on East 4th Street that preserved avant-garde films. Then I was a film editor for about six years. All that to say, I’ve always been very conscious of the sound in films. I orient more to listening for that. Starting with the sound more than I’m seeing picture wise.

Robert: I come to it from a similar place. My background is a lot of audio production for records. Mix and loudness are key factors, and I can’t turn it off. If a score is too busy or feels cliché or gets in the way of the film, I just can’t ignore it.

Are there any films in particular that you would specifically like to live score in the future?

Robert: Absolutely. We luckily have a good long running relationship with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, and the yearly festival theme guides us on what we’re doing next year. There’s been a lot of enthusiasm in us reviving our accompaniment to F.W. Murnau’s Faust, but this time with a completely different sound. We won’t retain anything from before, we haven’t played it since 2018, so this will be entirely new. It will have a bit of resonance with Häxan we suspect. There’s a Scandinavian film called The Phantom Carriage that has been on my short list as a film I’ve wanted to play for a long, long time.

We also love working directly with directors. We’ve been very fortunate to work with the filmmaker Guy Maddin, who makes contemporary films that are like silent films. Given our repertoire, we go together very well, and we’re very fortunate to have linked with a living filmmaker. We recently scored two very early Clive Barker films this past summer, one of which has never had a score. We contacted him, and he gave us his blessing. All that said, there’s not a formal list, but we know which films work with how our process and our style work, and we are excited to play them.

Catherine: I always look forward to working with contemporary working filmmakers.  And because of our background in avant-garde film, we’ve also been approached to score contemporary short films, and that’s been fun. There are so many different opportunities we’d like to score for. It’s New York, there’s always stuff happening.

Robert: And if you are a contemporary filmmaker who thinks your film would benefit from the sonic ministrations of a group like ours, get in touch with us!

A big thanks once more to The Flushing Remonstrance, who took the time to talk with us. You can follow their ongoings and adventures in live scoring on Instagram. A special thanks also to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival for connecting us.

And finally, thank you for taking the time to read this. Remember to stay tuned to Horror Press (@horrorpressllc on Twitter and Instagram, @horrorpress.com on Bluesky) for more interviews with creatives in the horror space, and for all news horrors!

I was one of the few people lucky enough to catch the East Coast premiere of Abigail Before Beatrice at Brooklyn Horror Film Fest. This southern cult horror moment gives us a lot to talk about, and I decided to go right to the cool filmmaker herself. I caught up with Cassie Keet to talk about her new film, cults, and getting the perfect take even when the bowling alley has been overrun by small children. Read on for our spoiler-free discussion to help you prepare for this devastatingly sad film.

An Interview with Filmmaker Cassie Keet on Her Movie Abigail Before Beatrice

Horror Press: So, this is your second feature with cults being part of the problem. While Abigail Before Beatrice has a much different vibe than Scream Therapy, it’s safe to say you have thoughts about cults and cult mentality. What is it about the world of cults that draws you in as a filmmaker?

Cassie Keet: I’ve always been curious and sympathetic to people who are drawn into cults. They’re looking for something that’s missing in their life (Abigail Before Beatrice), or they’re born into a system that’s already been put into place for them (Scream Therapy). I’ve always found the members of the cult more interesting than the cult itself or even the leader. Who are these people? Who did they used to be? I know how easy it is to wake up one day and realize, “Oh shit, is this relationship toxic?” The catch is, sometimes that wakeup call doesn’t happen until years later. I think part of my sympathy for people in cults is a way of giving myself and the past relationships I participated in a little bit of grace.

HP: I think people are not as aware of how easily they can exhibit cult-like behavior. Trying to fit in is a slippery slope to becoming part of a pack and not thinking for yourself. However, people tend to look down on people in cults without looking at their own actions and realizing they are not so different. Why do you think there is this reflex to judge people who join cults instead of empathizing with whatever reasons made them feel like a cult was the only place they could find community? 

CK: I think people want to believe that they’re different and would never “fall for” something like that. But there are cults everywhere. Cults of personality (looking at you, shitty YouTube manosphere dudes), MLMs (looking at you, girls I went to middle school with), cults of religion (looking at you, every religion). These are ways of thinking that are being weaponized against people by people acting in bad faith, who are the ones who are benefiting the most from your participation. I don’t want to sound callous – I love myself a fun YouTube or TikTok series. I tried to sell makeup in my early 20s, and I’m still a practicing reformed Methodist. It’s about how these things are used.

It’s easy to look at someone who has slipped down a slope and want to congratulate yourself for wearing the right shoes. But no one is “too smart” to be influenced by something that speaks directly to them on a deep, personal level. We’re all looking for something. Sometimes we find it in the wrong place.

HP: It’s hard to not love Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) in the first act. Then we get to start to get a fuller picture and discover she’s not quite who we thought she was. In your Q&A, you mentioned that you wanted to highlight that even logical people can find themselves in a cult. Can you discuss what went into crafting this character, whom we empathize with even when we are not on board with her thought process?

CK: I wrote Beatrice with the intention of challenging myself as a writer while also exploring some of my own past experiences. I wanted to approach some painful topics that were close to me from a compassionate, if somewhat ambivalent, lens. Beatrice is who she is. I recognize myself in her, and I recognize so many others who have experienced toxic or traumatic relationships. She’s a deeply flawed human because humans are deeply flawed. There’s the joke “I support women’s rights, and women’s wrongs,” and honestly, that applies to Beatrice. Well, maybe not all of her wrongs.

HP: One of the things I like about Abigail Before Beatrice is that it specifically explores how gender plays into cults. Grayson (Shayn Herndon) is clearly a predator, and these women put up with these abuses and his lies, in some small part, because society conditions women to put up with toxic male behaviors. Because there are so many cults getting documentaries or living in our collective consciousness, is Grayson based on someone(s) specifically?

CK: Grayson is a mixture of some cult leaders (Manson, Koresh, Jones), but mostly he was a personal creation. VERY personal. I asked myself, “Who is the type of guy that you would leave your life behind for?” Grayson was my answer. He approaches with a soft hand and a charming smile, tells you you’re special and that you belong somewhere special, and then whisks you away with a romantic kiss. After watching the scene where Grayson meets and seduces Beatrice, several people have said that they would have been tempted to go to the farm with him if he’d done the same. I know I would have. 

HP: I think one of the saddest things about Beatrice is that she is clearly capable of living a full life outside of this cult. Yet, she can’t see that, so she mourns the sisterhood, abuse, and routine. As someone who went to grad school for theatre, I find that depressingly relatable and sad. However, many people have a hard time seeing themselves as competent individuals who deserve more. How many of our friends continue to settle in their relationships, jobs, etc.? Why do you think so many of us prefer the devil we know rather than seeing what else is out there?

CK: There’s a term called ‘familiar suffering.’ We choose the pain we’ve experienced in the past or are currently experiencing, because it’s a known quantity. We fear the unknown and the possibility that it contains worse suffering, so we stay where we are. It’s a coping mechanism. It’s built into our brains as a survival technique, even though it lessens our quality of life and leads to self-sabotage. You have to willingly break yourself out of it, but damn it’s hard. Combine that with an abusive environment or relationship that tells you what you have is the best you’ll ever get and that you’ll fail within a world that’s different, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

HP: Because everyone handles trauma differently, I love that Abigail (Riley Dandy) and Beatrice have two completely different journeys with the aftermath of their stint in a cult. Was there a draft where we got more time with the two of them? Or was the vision always to focus on Beatrice?

CK: When I was first conceptualizing the story, I originally wanted to split the narrative between the two of them to show them both in the present. The scene where they reunited at the coffee shop was the first scene I wrote. However, the more I wrote about Beatrice, the more I wanted to explore the specific story of someone who can’t move on because they can’t let go. If I had a million dollars, I would make mini-movies about all of the cult girls and their lives before and after. I just find it so fascinating.

HP: You have so many stories from filming this movie in intense heat and battling wildlife in Arkansas. I have been lucky to hear a few stories, but what is the one you find the funniest and can share with our readers at Horror Press?

CK: Oh god, there are so many. Every day was a hot, sweaty adventure. I will say that the day we filmed at the bowling alley was insane. They let us rent three lanes for free a month before shooting, mentioning off-handedly that they had rented out a few other lanes. When we started setting up our lights and gear, SEVERAL BUSSES OF CHILDREN arrived. Apparently, every other lane had been rented out to day camps. It was the loudest day of my life. Hundreds of screaming children ages 6-11 are sprinting around like maniacs.

Our amazing grip team built a privacy wall for the actors (and for sound, god bless), but at one point, some kid did the inchworm past it. The entire cast and crew stared at him. It felt like a mass hallucination. But, fun fact: we were able to get the shot of Will (Jordan Lane Shappell) bowling a strike and Beatrice (Olivia Taylor Dudley) hitting one pin in just one perfect take. When I called cut, we screamed louder than all of the kids!

HP: What is one thing you have been dying to talk about regarding this movie (non-spoilers obviously) and haven’t been able to?

CK: Olivia’s performance. Every single performance is incredible, but oh holy shit, Olivia just knocks it out of the park. I spent half of filming either staring in shock at the monitor or openly weeping between takes. She’s just beyond amazing. I am so in love with our cast – especially my supporting leads Riley Dandy, Shayn Herndon, Jordan Lane Shappell, and Molly Jackson. I couldn’t have made this movie without this cast. 

HP: What are you working on next after you finish your festival run with Abigail Before Beatrice?

CK: I’ve got a couple of things in development right now, which is super exciting! A script I wrote in 2024, right before we went into production for ABB, made the Black List, so that’s with two production companies right now. Fingers crossed!

HP: What social media apps can people find you on, if you want your fans to find you?

CK: Find me on Insta! @kissmycassiek

Abigail Before Beatrice, is still touring festivals. Keep your eyes out for more updates and make sure you follow Cassie Keet to stay in the loop.