Casting Call
Posted on Apr 15, 2026
Stay on the Sunny Side
- SAG-AFTRA Ultra low Budget feature film
- shooting in June 2026
- Location: Shelbyville Kentucky
A brilliant but haunted funeral director’s daughter returns to her Midwest hometown for her estranged mother’s funeral and uses an experimental holographic grief‑tech device to reconstruct the dead woman—only to unleash a collective ritual of self‑harm and denial that forces her to choose between exposing the town’s buried truths and accepting a comforting lie.
This is a grief story where the characters don’t break down; they decide what reality is and live inside it.
A contained psychological thriller set over a single day inside a funeral home, where grief, memory, and reality merge under the influence of a device that reconstructs the dead.
The Shining meets Her, with a touch of Phantasm.
Principal Characters
MARISSA
Lead Role
Female, early 30s
Type: Raw, intelligent, obsessive, emotionally volatile
Comp: The Shining meets Her.
Marissa is a woman who refuses to accept reality as it’s given to her. She returns to her hometown carrying a piece of technology designed to reconstruct the dead, not out of curiosity, but out of need. She is trying to prove her mother didn’t just die… she was killed and this town is covering it up.
She is brilliant but emotionally cornered. The kind of person who can outthink everyone in the room but cannot outmaneuver her own grief.
SEAN
Supporting Role
Male, early 30s
Type: Grounded, conflicted, emotionally repressed but deeply feeling
Comp: Joe Kerry type
Sean stayed. That’s his defining trait.
He represents the life Marissa could have had. The version that chose stability over truth. He’s built a life in the town, but underneath it is unresolved guilt tied to his sister’s death.
He wants peace, but knows something beneath the surface may not be right. He’s not weak, he’s chosen survival over searching.
HARLAN
Supporting Role
Male, 60s
Type: Still, warm, unsettling, quietly authoritative
Comp: John Hawks with a J.K. Simmons energy
A funeral director who has spent his life guiding others through grief with a philosophy: grief must move, or it rots. Calm, steady, and deeply rooted in the town, he becomes the quiet counterforce to Marissa.
He is warm, patient, and deeply unsettling in his certainty. Never raises his voice. Never loses control. He is gentle, patient and completely unshakable.
JUNE
Supporting Role
Female, 30s
Type: Controlled, sharp, pragmatic, ethically grounded
Comp: Stephanie Hsu kind of vibe
Marissa’s partner and the only person who fully understands the technology.
She is the voice of reason, but not in a boring way. She’s the only one who sees the danger clearly, and she’s racing against Marissa’s emotional momentum.
She actively fights to stop what’s happening.
CATHERINE
Supporting Role
Female, 50s
Type: Warm, fragmented, unknowable
Comp: Laura Linney / Michelle Pfeiffer energy
Marissa’s mother seen both as a dead body and as a reconstructed projected presence. Warm, familiar, but subtly incomplete.
She is both comforting and incomplete. The more she appears, the more unsettling she becomes, not because she’s wrong, but because she’s almost right.
She becomes a mirror of what Marissa needs, rather than a fixed truth.
FERN
Supporting Role
Female, 16
Type: Warm, perceptive, intimate
Comp: Haley Lu Richardson (White Lotus, S2) meets Zendaya’s Rue from Euphoria
Sean’s younger sister. Marissa’s best friend. Frozen in time at the moment everything broke.
Fern exists in two forms: the girl they remember and the version reconstructed from memory. The difference between those two is where the role lives.
She is warm, funny, and disarmingly direct. The kind of person who makes you feel seen immediately. But there’s also something else underneath: a quiet awareness, as if she understands more than she’d ever say out loud.
MAGGIE
Supporting Role
Female, 50s
Type: Practical, emotionally contained, quietly intense
Comp: Margo Martindale
A local florist. Practical, no-nonsense core member of the community who becomes the emotional ignition point of the group.
Her shift from controlled grief to physical release changes the entire room.
ELDERLY MOURNER
Supporting Role
Female, 70s+
Type: Gentle, eerie, almost mythic
Comp: June Squibb type
She represents the town’s deeper belief system, the acceptance Marissa resists.
She’s kind, warm… and completely aligned with something unsettling.
MARY
Supporting Role
Female, late 20s
Type: Polished, composed
Comp: Rosamund Pike, specifically Amy Dunne from Gone Girl
Mary is Sean’s partner and everything Marissa is not. Where Marissa disrupts, Mary stabilizes. Where Marissa questions, Mary accepts.
She is effortlessly put-together, but that control isn’t superficial, it’s survival. Mary understands, on some level, how this town works. And she has chosen to align with it. She never raises her voice. Never loses composure. She doesn’t need to.
ERICA
Day Player
Female, 40s-50s
She is polite, guarded, and immediately assessing. There’s no hostility at first, just distance. But the second Marissa pushes toward her daughter, the door slams shut.
NOSEY NEIGHBOR
Day Player
Female, 40s-60s
A local tourist with a sweet smile and sharp ears, always leaning in, never invited.
CUT-MAN
Day Player
Male, 40s-60s
A man who’s figured out pain can be controlled. Measured, intentional, almost calming.
CRYING WOMAN
Day Player
Female, 40s
Overwhelmed and leaking emotion, until the room teaches her how to contain it.
YOUNGER SEAN (16)
Day Player
Earnest, impulsive, and trying to be brave without understanding what anything costs yet.
YOUNGER MARISSA (16)
Day Player
Sharp, restless, already halfway out the door, hungry for a life bigger than this town.
8-YEAR-OLD MARISSA
Day Player
Open, curious, and completely trusting. The version of her that still believes everything makes sense.
How to Submit
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