Tina Kakadelis
The True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick had its world premiere at the 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival. The film is a manifestation of millennial horror and the idea of leaving the city for a chance at a domestic life in the countryside. The film is a true collaboration between Pete Ohs, Zoë Chao, Callie Hernandez, Jeremy O. Harris, and James Cusati-Moyer, who all share writing credits on the film, while Ohs acts as director and editor. The whole cast sat down with Film Obsessive News Editor Tina Kakadelis to talk tick checks, what millennial horror really means, and if they’d rather be trapped forever in the city or the country. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Film Obsessive: I feel like I’m getting a glimpse of the collaboration just based on that little conversation before we started recording, but I want to start with the beginning of the idea. How did it start? When did it become a collaborative effort?
Pete Ohs: The idea very much started in May of 2023 when I went to visit Callie at this house she was renting. Callie and I had made a movie before called Jethica. We had a good time making that and I knew we would make another one again at some point. She had this really beautiful and inspiring idea to rent a house upstate and essentially turn it into a little movie studio for one year. In that year, she made two features and two shorts. This Tick movie is the first one.
It was on that visit that we went on a walk through a field and we had a really nice time on that walk. When we got back to the house, Callie said, ‘okay, now it’s time for a tick check’. And I said, ‘okay, what does that entail’? She’s like, ‘well, that means you take off all your clothes and you look everywhere’. We looked everywhere. We looked individually everywhere (laughs).
The next morning, I got up nice and early. I went downstairs and made a cup of coffee. I sat on the back porch and I was enjoying the crisp morning air. It was so peaceful. I looked out at the beautiful landscape in front of me and I felt compelled to go on a walk, to go on a stroll. But then I thought about the ticks and I didn’t go on that walk, even though I really, really actually wanted to.
The fear of what might happen kept me on the porch. It was that fear that became the seed of the movie.
Callie Hernandez: We were looking at this idyllic pastoral field and I said, ‘what do you see when you look out there’? Pete said, ‘billions of ticks’.
Pete: It was the fear that your entire life would be ruined with one bite. And we were like, ‘okay, I guess that’s what we’re gonna do’.
And then how did the other three get involved?
Pete: It’s very much me kind of looking around at who are the people in my life who I’m inspired by and who I would want to work with. Then, who are the people around them who they might want to work with. You just go through those conversations to find the group of people who are going to make this project. That will ultimately define what this movie is because these are the people who came together and made all the decisions to make the film. This is the beautiful group that came together.
Callie, I collaborated with before. Jeremy, I had also collaborated with before in a film. James had collaborated with Jeremy on a play. Zoë, I had been a featured extra in a web series for Facebook Watch in 2006. We go way back (laughs).
I’m curious, how much of the film came out of improv, or was it all scripted?
James Cusati-Moyer: It was all scripted. We would sit down with an idea in a note on our phones. A collaborative one. We would meet in the kitchen or living room and have an idea. Pete would make edits and then we’d have dinner and say, ‘okay, these are the three scenes we’re shooting the next day’.
Jeremy even made a storyboard to see where is this going. Everyone wrote as we went along. It was an opportunity to add different parts of our own personality, or things we wanted our individual characters to do or what we wanted to say. That collaborative process within that Notes app let us make edits as we went along.
Is that stressful? You’re shooting in the house you’re living in and don’t know where this project is going? I imagine the claustrophobia could get to you.
Zoë Chao: Totally, but in a weird way it felt like the release of pressure. That’s what drew me to this project. Pete pitched it as an experiment. Let’s see if we can make a movie in two weeks, but that’s not really the aim. The aim is to come together, spend time, enjoy each other, and make something.
To take the pressure off of ‘we must have a movie by the end of this’ was so freeing. It really checked the perfectionist in me, who always wants to do the right thing, make the right choice, be prepped, and be ready. It actually made me much more present. It was just a joy every day to come together, learn from the day before, and plan the next moves. When things did click into place, it was thrilling. Watching the ending every time is so deeply satisfying.
What I would argue is even more satisfying was the process of making this movie. It truly was process over product, which is the first time I can say I’ve ever engaged in a project that really championed that. The thing about not knowing what the ending is going to be is not stressful, it’s thrilling.
Pete: It’s exciting because this way of making something somehow feels very, well, it feels very alive. We don’t know what tomorrow’s going to bring in our regular lives. If you write a script, you get to make a thing in a way that’s not alive. It’s actually dead immediately because you know what the ending is. You know when death is coming.
To be making something in this very live state, where you don’t know, you have to be very present and ready for each day. Each new discovery is a really beautiful way to be for those two weeks.
I want to talk a little bit about the horror, fear, and anxiety of it all, because that does feel very millennial-specific. What about coming of age post-9/11 and the 2020s felt like it was building to this moment of all of you collectively sharing this fear?
Jeremy O. Harris: I do think that we all had a lot to bring to the story, given the fact that we had all either absconded to some far-reaching rural place during 2020 or had aspired to. Whatever made us go or not go there after aspiring to ended up in the script.
We live in deeply frightening times, and this film is about this anxiety, about feeling like there’s no real path to salvation, no matter what you do. You could say no to living in the city and being cloistered, so you go upstate, but you might end up in some weird cult.
I think Austin is kind of a cult now, right? You look at Austin, and now that Joe Rogan’s here and all these tech people are here, it’s such a different Austin than it was a couple of years ago. I’m like, wow, people really moved here and created a whole new cult. They kept it weird for sure, but it’s different, you know?
I’m a New Yorker, that is a part of my identity, but I’m also in a cult to my mom in Virginia. Going upstate is also some weird cult to us.
I think locations are cults.
Jeremy: Yes, locations are cults!
The house plays such a fascinating part in the whole movie. Can you talk about some of the architectural quirks of it that worked their way into the film?
Callie: Okay, so I rented this house for a year and it had these holes in the floors. It really was built in 1890 and it really is just a hole in the floor as a heating system. They just cut holes in the floor and put a lid on it.
Pete: We arrive, we see this, we think that’s weird, that’s interesting. We have to use it. How are we not gonna use it? The same with this strange window, which is called a witch window or something. You see it, it’s interesting, and it’s like the universe has given this to us. We must say yes to it.
Zoë: Also, Callie has a majestic dog named Jerry, another actor with us. Jerry became Cherry.
Jeremy: We just saw the Good Boy dog just now, and I was like, ‘wow, we really missed out on some cuteness by not bringing Jerry’.
If you had to live in the city or live in the countryside for the rest of your life, where would you live?
Jeremy: The city. I like seeing plays and people and going to dinner.
James: And you were stuck there?
Like, you cannot leave. Whatever you need to survive, your work, everything exists within a hypothetical barrier.
James: I guess, yeah, because of theater, I’d probably say city, because the city has parks. You’re not leaving the city, you’re going to Prospect Park. You can tap in. Tap out.
Pete: So in my little country community, on the last Saturday of each month, if you go down to the barn, we put on a play. We have theater in the country, which is where I will be living for the rest of my life.
Callie: Yeah, and my grandpa is actually a production designer for his retirement community home. They put on plays and I go see them. They’re interesting and fascinating. These little playwrights. It’s really cool. He built an elevator last week.
You know, if you would’ve asked me this a few years ago, I would have hands down said country because I’m a big garden girl and I like to be outside. I’m from Texas. Now, I just don’t know.
James: I’m changing my answer. I think it rests in that line of the movie that AJ says of going back to source. I’m serious! Everyone is moving to the country, getting out. A lot of people are really getting into a different level of health and wellness in the past two years. I need nature. I would go insane if I was trapped in metal and steel and concrete.
Callie: I’m really tempted to say city because after living upstate, you know, those winters, those winters, oh, a bunch of house rooms, but also just the winter in general, you’re like, am I gonna go Jack Nicholson?
I think, okay, I pick the country.
Zoë: I mean, the reality is you always want what you can’t have, so whenever I’m in the city, I can’t wait to be in the country and vice versa. I guess I would say city because of community.
Thank you very much and congratulations on the world premiere!
