Connecticut Blood
Carson Bloomquist ’18 slashes his way into theaters
A small town finds its already contentious mayoral election turned up to 11 when a masked killer begins taking down targets on both sides of the political divide in Founders Day, a satirical political slasher by filmmaker Carson Bloomquist ’18 and his brother, Erik Bloomquist. The film opened in more than 750 theaters in January.
Recently, Bloomquist sat down with CC Magazine’s Tim Stevens ’03 to talk about his biggest project to date.
Tim Stevens: How would you describe the film?
Carson Bloomquist: I’d say it’s a political satire/murder mystery with both classic and modern influences. There’s a tragedy and then people start pointing fingers. Chaos ensues.
TS: Could you speak to some of those influences?
CB: Oh, for sure. A lot of modern-day slashers—Scream was a big film for my brother and me. It introduced us to a wealth of horror films that we then saw for the first time. Founders Day, in many ways, is a love letter to those formative slasher films of our youth.
TS: You and your brother co-write, co-produce and co-edit all of your films together. What’s it like to work so closely with him?
CB: Erik and I have been doing this for years. We were those prototypical little kids with camcorders making home movies. Then it developed into more professional shorts and other projects. We’re fortunate that we have somewhat of a hive mind with these kinds of things. We complement each other well and trust each other. In pre-production, production, post-production—we’re consistently cultivating this vision we had in different ways.
TS: That said, you did attend rival NESCAC schools. Do you ever have to remind him “Camels rule”?
CB [laughs]: Whenever we are on either campus or around fellow Camels or Bantams, we will kind of put on a show of duking it out, but it is all just playful.
TS: OK, so here’s where things get weird. Not only did you and I go to the same college, but we also grew up in the same small Connecticut town and both went to Newington High School.
CB: Oh wow, funny. Newington was a great place to grow up and we had a strong connection to a lot of our teachers. Founders Day was shot in New Milford and the surrounding areas. I like Founders Day because I think it’s a very current small-town story. It’s like both a love letter to and satire of small-town politics.
TS: By most metrics, Founders Day is your biggest movie to date. How was it to ramp up and take on that challenge?
CB: What’s interesting is it started as a concept trailer, basically the very first thing we made in a more professional sense. We had this idea for a small-town murder mystery set amid a town festival. We thought, in our naivety, that as soon as we did that someone would come knocking and we’d be able to make it immediately. Then, reality hit.
But we found ourselves using the momentum we had behind the trailer to move into some other projects. Each film grew in scope while we tried to build toward getting to do Founders Day. Right after our last film, She Came From the Woods, we realized we felt equipped, finally. When we shot in November of 2022, it had been like a 10-year span since the trailer.
TS: With Founders Day finally put to proverbial rest, do you have ideas on where you’re going next?
CB: We have a number of ideas, seeds of ideas, potential steps we want to take. Things we want to do in the horror thriller genre and beyond. We have one other non-horror release we produced that will be coming out shortly. It’s a musical comedy ghost story with a very earnest kind of golden age feeling, but it is still set in the present day. I think it shows another side of what we can do.
We’ll see where it all takes us, but we’re excited and optimistic.