By Michael Werth
For queer Latino filmmaker Joseph Herrera, horror has always been more than jump scares and masked killers—it’s a mirror. Making his feature directorial debut with Dark Distortion, arriving this month from Breaking Glass Pictures, Herrera delivers a provocative, micro-budget thriller that fuses supernatural terror with a sharp critique of social media obsession, adult content culture, and the perilous cost of visibility in the digital age. The film follows a clique of adult models and influencers whose carefully curated lives unravel after they steal a camcorder haunted by the spirit of a murdered child—an act that plunges their glossy crime scheme into something far more sinister. A lifelong genre devotee who first fell in love with horror watching Scream on VHS, Herrera channels the legacy of Halloween, Candyman, and The Changeling into a story that feels both nostalgically eerie and urgently contemporary. Yet beneath its seductive, voyeuristic aesthetic lies an emotional core: a mother willing to do anything to protect her son. With Dark Distortion, Herrera confronts a culture addicted to being seen and asks a chilling question: when everything is captured on camera forever, is fame ever worth the price?
Your film skewers social media obsession and adult content culture with a supernatural twist. As a gay filmmaker in an era of hyper-visibility, how personal was this story for you?
Joseph Herrera: I think any filmmaker pulls from their lived experience. As a gay man, I’ve seen how visibility can be empowering, but also performative. There’s pressure to curate yourself. The film explores what happens when that performance starts consuming you.
The idea of a camcorder containing the spirit of a murdered child is chilling. In a world where “content is forever,” were you intentionally turning the concept of digital legacy into a literal ghost story?
I think horror works best when it operates on multiple levels. On the surface, it’s a terrifying concept. But underneath that, yes, there’s an exploration of how media preserves things that maybe shouldn’t be preserved. Sometimes we archive trauma without meaning to.
Horror has always had a strong queer subtext. Did you consciously weave queer sensibilities—camp, spectacle, outsider energy—into the DNA of Dark Distortion?
I think horror naturally attracts people who feel outside the norm. As a filmmaker, I’m drawn to heightened emotion, tension, and psychological intensity. If there’s queer energy in the DNA of the film, it’s probably because I’m part of that lineage, but it’s not something I consciously engineered. It’s just part of who I am.
The cast is irresistibly attractive. Horror and beauty have always had a complicated relationship. Were you intentionally weaponizing beauty to lure the audience into something far more disturbing?
There’s something unsettling about how easily we consume beautiful people on screen. We scroll, we watch, we project. I liked the idea that the audience’s attraction becomes part of the horror — that the act of looking isn’t innocent.
The film critiques people who “become” their online personas. As someone who’s worked closely with social media models, what was the most surprising or unsettling thing you witnessed that made its way into the script?
I noticed how exhausting it can be to live in constant visibility. There’s a pressure to escalate, to be more provocative, more vulnerable, more extreme. That escalation dynamic made its way into the script. It’s not about judging anyone. It’s about how platforms reward distortion.
Visually, you drew inspiration from Spring Breakers with bold colors and voyeuristic framing. How did you use that hyper-saturated aesthetic to comment on queer nightlife, adult culture, and the performance of desire?
Queer nightlife has always embraced spectacle — color, excess, theatricality. There’s power in that performance. But there’s also vulnerability. I wanted the visuals to celebrate that intensity while also exposing how fragile it can be when you live inside performance too long.
At its core, you’ve said this isn’t really about vapid influencers; it’s about a mother protecting her son. Why was it important for you, as a gay director, to center maternal ferocity rather than glamorize the chaos?
Chaos is easy to glamorize. But protection, especially maternal protection, is terrifying in a different way. It’s unconditional. It’s irrational. It’s unstoppable. Centering that energy allowed the film to have heart instead of just edge.
You’re already moving into your next project, Don’t F** With Mary Jane. After confronting the cost of being seen in Dark Distortion, are you planning to keep dragging modern culture into the horror genre or do you have an entirely new nightmare in mind?
I don’t think I’ll ever stop examining modern culture; it’s too strange and volatile not to. But Mary Jane approaches it differently. It’s sharper, more satirical. Instead of asking, “What happens when you’re watched?” it asks, “What happens when someone finally watches back?”
Dark Distortion is available now on all major streaming platforms.
