Huntsville native Allison Moy Hayhurst film hits Amazon Prime Video

Huntsville native Allison Moy Hayhurst has put an award-winning debut feature in front of a much larger audience, and that jump from a hometown festival screen to Amazon Prime Video matters for Alabama’s film profile. And Through The Portal We Go is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and Relay, giving a locally rooted project a national arrival point after building momentum in festival rooms from Huntsville to San Francisco.

The film, produced by Evening Squire Productions, follows three remaining members of a cult who try to reach transcendence through a glowing portal in the woods, only to get trapped reliving the same day over and over again. That Groundhog Day-style setup helped the movie stand out early, and it has continued to collect attention for its mix of comedy, cult dynamics, and emotional depth.

Hayhurst’s path gives the release extra weight for Alabama filmmakers watching the festival-to-streaming pipeline. She received her BA from the University of Alabama, trained in the Actors Theatre of Louisville apprentice program under Jon Jory, and later moved to New York City. Evening Squire says she has helped guide short films into more than 100 film festivals internationally, and this feature shows that her own work has now crossed into the same broader circulation.

The awards trail is part of the story. Evening Squire says the film won Best Fantasy Feature and Best Acting Ensemble, while other festival honors included Best Actor for Tuscaloosa native and University of Alabama alumnus Taylor Dalton Curtis at the Gig Harbor Film Festival, Best Narrative Feature at both Fisheye Film Festival and Broad Street Film Festival, and Best Fantasy Feature at Another Hole in the Head Film Festival in San Francisco. That kind of run usually buys credibility long before a streaming release ever appears.

Huntsville audiences had an early look at the film during the 2025 Southern Fried Film Festival, when And Through The Portal We Go was listed for Friday, June 6, 2025, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at Theater at Lowe Mill. Southern Fried describes itself as a four-day Huntsville event with more than 20 films, panels, and musical acts, and the local screening reportedly played to an almost sold-out crowd, a strong sign that the movie connected at home before it reached a national platform.

For Alabama’s indie film community, that sequence is the real news: a Huntsville-native creator, a film that resonated with local viewers, festival honors that kept stacking up, and a streaming release that now puts the project in front of far more people. Hayhurst’s debut did not just leave Alabama, it carried Alabama with it.