OMINOUS THRILL

OMINOUS THRILL
Director's Statement
Jeff Schmidt

I've spent most of my career inside other people's stories. As a sound designer my job was to take what a writer imagined and make the listener feel like they're there. I've worked on stories about doctors who killed, families torn apart and crimes that destroyed communities. I know how to make darkness land.

With Ominous Thrill, I wanted to take that darkness and create a fiction audio drama anthology that centers women protagonists as the fully realized and complex people they actually are.

The stories our culture tells about women's ambition and rage tend to have a familiar shape: the woman wants too much, she reaches too far, she IS too much, and the story must return her to the "correct" place.

The women driving the stories of Ominous Thrill refuse to be returned to their correct place.  Some call that "good for her"… I call it "right for me."

Every story in Ominous Thrill runs on that engine. The genre changes: folk horror, erotic horror, supernatural, dark comedy, body horror, psychological thriller, sometimes within the same story. What doesn't change is the commitment to follow exactly where her character takes us, and refusing to judge her for it.

It took me a while to notice I was creating a distinct world inside Ominous Thrill where the horror arrives through ordinary channels. Maybe because that is how I think most harm actually works. Where the systems that are supposed to protect people have failed before the story begins. Where what you've been suppressing accumulates, and eventually has to go somewhere. Where the thing you set in motion tends to come back through the channel you used to send it.

Audio is my medium of choice for these stories.  It is not a lesser or a gateway medium to me, it is the most intimate one. Each Ominous Thrill story is conceived from the very first word to be told in audio.  Audio is a single sense medium that places the listener inside the story in a unique way. Everything is happening inside your head, alone, in the dark.

I want every writing and production decision I make to honor that intimacy, and exploit it fully.

Hopefully, when you listen alone, in the dark, you will feel that, too.

--Jeff Schmidt


Jeff Schmidt is the creator of Ominous Thrill and an award winning sound designer whose work includes Dr. Death, Blood Ties, and Aftershock. Ominous Thrill is a multi-award-winning, twice Ambie-nominated dark fiction audio drama anthology.