If you’ve spent any time in the algorithmic swamp of YouTube horror, you’ve met The Woman. She stands in the corner. She waits at the foot of the bed. And the only way to survive her is to pretend she isn’t there.
Now the rule is going wide. Sam Evenson, the filmmaker behind the Grimoire Horror channel, is expanding his viral 2021 short “Ignore It” — 12 million views and counting — into a feature film, marking his directorial debut, with Lily Collias attached to lead.
Temple Hill Entertainment and Anton are producing. If those names sound familiar, they should: the pair previously teamed on Smile, one of the most profitable original horror titles of the last decade. Anton is fully financing the film and handling worldwide sales, with the project launching to buyers in Toronto.
What is ‘Ignore It’?
The short began as a piece of internet folklore. Writer Jeff Speziale posted the story to Reddit’s r/NoSleep under the deliciously blunt title “You’re Going to Notice a Woman in Your Home, You Must Ignore Her.” Evenson adapted it into a seven-minute short in 2021 — a stripped-down domestic nightmare about a family living alongside a presence they are forbidden to acknowledge.
It worked. The short has racked up more than 12 million views on YouTube and took home Best Supernatural Short at the 2021 Atlanta Horror Film Festival. The original cast included Madison Rojas, Madison Leyson, Michael Perl, Aina Dumlao, and Crystal Hughes.
The feature keeps the premise’s beautiful cruelty intact. Per the official logline, it follows a family “who fights to survive living with a terrifying entity known only as ‘The Woman,’ who will kill you if you acknowledge her.” Their one rule for survival: ignore it.
Evenson is writing and directing, and is developing the expanded story alongside Speziale — a nice bit of credit where it’s due, given how many NoSleep adaptations leave their original authors in the rearview mirror.
The cast and the crew
Lily Collias stars as Becca. Collias broke out in India Donaldson’s 2024 indie Good One, a performance that landed her on just about every “watch this person” list of that year, and more recently appeared in Apple TV’s Cape Fear series opposite Amy Adams. This marks her first lead in a studio-backed horror feature.
Producing for Temple Hill are Marty Bowen, Wyck Godfrey, Isaac Klausner, John Fischer, Hal Sadoff, and Ben Levine. Anton’s Sébastien Raybaud and Kathy Stocker executive produce.
“Sam is a generational talent whose viral horror shorts have delighted and terrified millions,” Temple Hill said in announcing the project, adding that the team “couldn’t be more thrilled to help bring his first feature to life.”
Watch the short film
No release date has been announced for the feature yet. In the meantime, the original short is still sitting right there, free, waiting for you to look at it — or not:
Why Evenson is worth paying attention to
Evenson isn’t a YouTuber who wandered into filmmaking. He’s a working visual effects artist whose credits include Dune: Part Two, HBO’s The Last of Us, and Thor: Love and Thunder — which goes a long way toward explaining why his shorts look like they cost twenty times what they did.
He’s also suddenly one of the most in-demand names in horror. Earlier this year, NEON — the studio behind Longlegs — picked up his other viral short, “Mora,” for a feature expansion, with Spooky Pictures’ Steven Schneider and Roy Lee, Waypoint Entertainment’s Ken Kao and Josh Rosenbaum, and Jessica Biel and Michelle Purple’s Iron Ocean producing. That 12-minute short, about an artist haunted after using an AI model corrupted by dark web images, has pulled north of 4 million views.
Between the two, Ignore It is expected to shoot first.
