Deep & Passionate Interview: "Come the Nightfall".

By Richard Caeiro

Tom Michaels is an award-winning filmmaker, actor, screenwriter, and creative auteur whose distinctive voice and retro-modern aesthetic have made him one of the most compelling talents in contemporary independent cinema.

From a young age, he was captivated by the power of film and vowed to one day pursue a life in the arts. After briefly studying Business Management at Union County College, Michaels redirected his path, immersing himself in the world of acting through local repertory theatre and further studies at the prestigious HB Studio in New York City. Driven by a relentless desire to evolve creatively, he later moved to Los Angeles, where he was accepted into both the Antaeus Theatre Academy and the William Alderson Studio, where he mastered the Meisner Technique. It was during this period of intensive performance training that Michaels discovered directing and screenwriting.

Determined to elevate his craft further, he was accepted into the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, one of the most renowned film programs in the world. There, he developed his unique visual language - a fusion of psychological tension, retro stylization, and emotionally charged minimalism inspired by auteurs like Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, and John Carpenter.

Michaels broke out on the international scene with his 2024 short film Older Self, which won Best Sci-Fi Film and received widespread acclaim for its originality, emotional depth, and haunting tone. His most recent 16mm horror film, Come the Nightfall, is a love letter to vintage slasher cinema and psychological thrillers, and has quickly become a festival favorite for its bold narrative choices, stylistic precision, and unrelenting atmosphere.

As the founder of Orzel Films, Michaels is committed to producing handcrafted, boundary-pushing cinema that merges old-school techniques with modern storytelling. His work has been celebrated by top film institutions such as Rome Prisma Film Awards, Red Movie Awards, London Director Awards, and Influx Magazine, where he's been profiled as a fearless filmmaker who champions authenticity, boldness, and independent voices.

Often described as a "cinematic time traveler," Tom Michaels isn't just creating films - he's curating emotional and atmospheric experiences that resonate globally. With an uncompromising artistic vision and a body of work that continues to evolve, Michaels is fast becoming a defining voice in the new era of auteur-driven Hollywood.

“Come the Nightfall” feels less like a contemporary digital film and more like something discovered in an archive. What drew you to shoot on 16mm, and how does the organic "grittiness" of the film grain help tell the story of Bill’s inner instability? Ironic you mention the word archive. The whole intent of this film, I wanted a feeling like the audience was watching a lost archive from the 90's. That would only work if the story was told through the grittiness of film. I always say "Film has a lifeforce and or soul whereby digital feels and looks sterile. By telling the story of Bill's inner stability through film, the audience would feel and have a sense of realism within themselves. 

The house in the film is a character of its own, carrying a strange emotional residue, especially through the presence of women’s clothing and subtle details in the frame, very Hitchcockian. How did you approach the production design so that the space itself begins to feel haunted before anything explicitly violent happens? After my production designer Chris Kooreman read the script and got on the phone with me, he immediately knew what I was aiming for. I explained to him the split persona of Bill and his dark haunting desires that he carries through life. The presence of women's clothing depicts his private double life and not only that but Chris had a brilliant idea of adding certain disturbing and yet mysterious portraits within the home that gives the audience a look into Bill's psyche as well. When Joanna enters Bill's home, you sense an underneath layer of danger in the air.

When Bill invokes a maternal voice toward the climax, it leads to a breakdown of his own identity. From a psychological standpoint, do you see his transformation as a manifestation of repression, guilt, or something even deeper within him that he can no longer suppress? It's just a breakdown of a prelude before the ultimate violence that awaits, in this situation, the demise of Joanna.

Your film evokes a deep nostalgia for the way we used to watch horror and psychological thrillers in the 80s and 90s, more specifically in the way the film builds tension. Were you consciously dialoguing with filmmakers like De Palma or Carpenter, or did those "shadowy mystery" influences emerge more instinctively? My favorite filmmakers growing up were Hitchcock, Kubrick and Carpenter. Probably more so than ever Carpenter.  The way John Carpenter tells a story has always fascinated me. He creates this visual environment with heightened tension, unique story lines with iconic characters and tops it off with the use of synthesizer music. To me it's such a nostalgic look and feel  that I was completely magnetized to. I learned a lot by studying his films. He is one of the best!

As both director and lead actor, you are literally putting your own body into this dark narrative, placing you directly inside this unsettling psychological space. Did embodying him change your relationship to the material in ways you didn’t anticipate during writing? As a trained method actor, one can get seriously lost in particularly dark ones such as this. Your job is to be immersed in the character and be believable. I knew when I wrote this story, what I was getting myself into, especially with the character of Bill. I wanted a psychological challenge and it was interesting delving into the psyche of this character.

The violence in the final act with the axe is stark and almost stripped of stylization. There is nothing glossy about it; it's dry and brutal. Were you intentionally avoiding modern horror’s aestheticized brutality to make the moment feel more disturbing, visceral, and real? I was simply depicting realism in everyday violence. Emotional charged violence is straightforward without any hesitations. There is no time to think when this type of brutality happens. It's quick and brutal.  

The dinner scene is filled with a profound tension in the silence and the exchanged glances. How do you direct a scene where the danger lies in what isn’t being said?  The way the scene is written gives the characters the opportunity to take the subtle moments in and in an organic way it creates the tension filled environment within the dinner scene. The actors have to understand this type of scenario when analyzing the script. 

Looking at your earlier films, there seems to be an ongoing fascination with fractured identity. Where does “Come the Nightfall” sit within your broader artistic trajectory? Does it feel like a continuation or a turning point? When creating characters within a script, there needs to be some inner turmoil within them. A backstory of sorts. This is very crucial to one of the main aspects to the success of one's film. With Come the Nightfall we have the store owner Henry who harbors certain frustration with the killings, Joanna who harbors a certain secret within herself and Bill who lives with a fractured identity persona of Linda.

The film has a physical, almost imperfect quality that feels increasingly rare today. "Come The Night Falls" feels alive and almost "dirty," possessing a soul that digital often lacks. Do you believe that the future of horror lies in returning to these tactile, imperfect textures to make the fear feel real again? I, as a filmmaker, look at the world from a skewed point of view. When I shoot on film, particularly horror, I am looking to depict a sense of everyday realism, which in turn is always alive and dirty. It's NOT neat. When one watches a 16 or 35mm film, it has a life force/soul attached to it. It looks very real with the saturation of the colors and the film damage as well. What you get is a movie that depicts everyday life. If I shot Come the Nightfall on digital, it would look and feel like a typical sterile, contemporary cookie cutter movie that we see a lot of in today's modern cinema. Movies were always meant to shoot on film. 

At times, the camera feels intrusive, almost complicit. For you and director of photography Ben Steeper, how was the process to elaborate the decoupage positioning the audience as witnesses who cannot look away? It's all about the story and how you present it to the audience. I approached from a skewed everyday realism point of view. I want to show that this story can happen in the everyday world that we live in. 

Bill is a very complex and multi-layered character. How important is ambiguity to your storytelling? Do you believe that cinema experience also lies in trusting the audience to sit with uncertainty rather than resolving it? I think ambiguity in cinema storytelling is important because it keeps the audience wondering and guessing.  Audiences do not want a dead giveaway. They want to feel surprised whether it's a sense of fear or excitement. It's a natural adrenaline rush. This is why people go to a movie theatre.

You’ve stated that cinema is a "doorway within a filmmaker’s psyche." When you finished editing "Come the Nightfall," what did you discover about your own fears or obsessions that you hadn't realized before? The only type of discovery within myself would be how amazing a person's imagination can be. I find it simply astonishing that I came up with a simple idea in my head and put pen to paper and here we are with a finished product titled Come the Nightfall. This is the doorway that I speak of within a filmmaker's psyche. You as a filmmaker have the amazing power to discover, for example, something frightening within you and mold it into a story that transcends into a finished product(film). 

Independent filmmaking is a tough journey with many obstacles and hardships. What were your biggest challenges in the making of "Come The Nightfall"? And what did you learn from your past movies that you could apply in the making of your most recent film? Probably the biggest challenge in making Come the Nightfall was TIME. We were shooting all night into the morning, so time was in essence. Also when you are shooting on the film, lighting the scene presents certain challenges and most important is you want to make sure you have enough film for your movie, because as we know you can't reuse film once it's used.

"Come the Nightfall" smells like old days cinema—it’s a tribute to the ritual of falling in love with fear. After the success of your previous films, what does this specific project represent in your evolution as an artist who isn't afraid to dive into the abyss? Come the Nightfall is my graduation to the next level of filmmaking which now consists of 35mm Independent Feature Films from this moment going forward.

Finally, can you talk more about your upcoming projects? My production company Orzel Films has a multitude of projects in the pre production phase such as Focus-In, Strange Neighbor, The Gorgeous Pill and since Come the Nightfall has been such a hit on the film festival circuit, we have added it in pre production as a Independent Feature Film as well. Come the Nightfall will be a three film horror franchise when it's all said and done.