The Ghost From Hovrino: Kirill Khrestinin’s Found-Footage Horror Film About a Russian Forest Legend Is on Prime Video This Halloween Season.
Shot in 2011 with one camera in a Russian winter forest, the 2012 film follows four friends, a cult of the number one and a grave that should have stayed closed.
Russian-American novelist and filmmaker Kirill Khrestinin is inviting horror fans into The Ghost From Hovrino, which he wrote, directed and produced. It is available to rent or buy on Prime Video.
The film presents itself as recovered footage. On-screen text says a camera was found in an abandoned SUV on the Ryazan highway, near Hovrino forest, where, according to a police report, 200 people have disappeared in the last ten years.
A young filmmaker sets out to document the forest’s legend. Passersby answer with a nursery rhyme about people who never came back. Professor Sergey Romanov, an expert in ancient Russian culture, describes pagan sorcerers who sacrificed people to the Ghost and wore the number one around their necks. His girlfriend begs him not to go. He goes anyway, on November 11, 2011: six ones.
With three friends, Roman, Anton and Artem, he walks into the frozen woods. Then they find a small grave with an old cross, and he insists on digging it up. Inside is a straw doll. By nightfall they are lost, and something in the trees is screaming.
In his new essay, “One Camera, One Light, One Winter Forest,” Khrestinin recalls starting with no money: “I had a camera. I had several people who’d work for sandwiches and coffee.” Inspired by The Blair Witch Project, he improvised the forest scenes day after day, “thinking of old Russian sorcerers, improvising their graves, their rituals.” One night a fire for a ritual scene got out of control until the snow put it out, and the crew hid under the trees while a police helicopter circled overhead.
“I dressed it with Russian sorcerers, rituals, graves,” he writes. “To be fair, a winter forest is pretty scary on its own already.”
Rent or buy on Prime Video.
