Jackrabbit Studios begins production on BLOOM, a daytime horror thriller filming in Buckeye, AZ. First footage heads to the Cannes Market.
BLOOM begins production in Buckeye as Jackrabbit Studios targets the Cannes Market with a psychological horror built around real locations and a deceptively quiet premise.
There is something quietly wrong about a garden that grows too well.
That unease is the engine of BLOOM, the new psychological horror thriller from writer-director Stefan Colson, now in production in Buckeye, Arizona.
The film stars Meghan Carrasquillo as Lily, a young woman who inherits her great aunt’s failing desert nursery and dedicates herself to reviving it. The garden responds. So does something else.
Colson, whose previous credits include Lookout and Ghosts of Red Ridge, is working from a script he developed with producer Jack Campbell, whose earlier producing work includes Influencer. The concept originated when Campbell and his wife discovered Jackrabbit Nursery — an actual working nursery in Buckeye — and recognized its potential as a horror setting before they had a story to put inside it.
“When my wife and I came across Jackrabbit Nursery, I immediately saw the potential to build an eerie, atmospheric horror film around a real working desert nursery,”
jack Campbell
“We approached the owners, Dave, Mike, and Patrick, and they were excited about the idea, so after about eight months of developing the story, I brought in Stefan Colson and we locked in the concept together. He then took on the screenwriting duties, and from there things began to take shape very quickly.”
Daylight as the Horror
What makes BLOOM worth watching closely is its refusal of the genre’s most reliable tool: darkness.
Most horror films use night the way a bad magician uses a curtain — to hide the mechanics. BLOOM shoots in harsh Arizona sunlight, stripping that cover away entirely. The tension has nowhere to hide, which means it has to live in performance, in landscape, and in the specific psychological pressure Colson is applying to his premise.
Colson describes the film’s thematic core in terms that go well beyond its logline. “At its heart, Bloom is a visually rich story about the irresistible pull and unseen cost of power and control, forces outside of us that can awaken hidden demons within, and the defining choices we make that are possessed by the inescapable specter of our past.”
That’s a heavier thematic lift than the premise suggests, which is either a sign of genuine ambition or a gap the finished film will need to close. Either way, it’s a more interesting set of ideas than most horror productions announce at the start of a shoot.
Practical Locations, Community Production
Production is filming across Buckeye and surrounding areas, using the nursery itself alongside live public environments including the Verrado Farmers Market. The decision to shoot in real, functioning spaces rather than controlled sets is a meaningful one — it introduces an authenticity that staged locations rarely replicate, and it raises the production’s visual stakes considerably.
This is Jackrabbit’s third Arizona production and their first shot in their home city of Buckeye, a detail that shaped the production’s texture on and off camera.
“Shooting in our own community, with people who were genuinely excited to be part of it, made a huge difference for this film,”
producer Rebecca Campbell
“It’s been incredibly rewarding to see it all come together.”
The cast includes Robert Craighead (Future Man, Ruthless), Jadon Cal Fitzpatrick, and Cara Leoni, who previously worked with Colson on Lookout. Craighead also serves as a co-producer, alongside Jon Bangle and Mark Padilla.
Sam Wilkerson, who co-produces, also serves as cinematographer — a dual role that tends to either tighten a production’s visual coherence or fracture its attention. With a director as deliberate as Colson appears to be, it’s more likely the former.
Cannes and What Comes Next
Jackrabbit Media is handling worldwide sales, with first footage scheduled for presentation at the Cannes Market. For an independent horror film with practical locations, a festival market debut is the right move — buyers there understand genre, and BLOOM‘s daytime-horror hook is distinctive enough to stand out in a crowded slate.
The Arizona indie scene has been building momentum quietly for several years, and a Cannes Market title shot entirely in Buckeye is a meaningful marker of how far that infrastructure has come. This is not a film that needed to go to Los Angeles to get made. That matters.
BLOOM is produced by Jack Campbell, Rebecca Campbell, Corey Brown, Sam Wilkerson, and Stefan Colson. Sydney Edwards serves as associate producer.
Daily Ovation will follow BLOOM through its Cannes Market debut and festival run.
