Otter Tail County town becomes zombie backdrop for indie thriller

A zombie crew turned parts of Otter Tail County into a movie set, giving Perham and New York Mills a brief place in Joel Trujillo’s latest survival thriller. The production brought undead makeup, background roles and a dose of surprise to west-central Minnesota, where familiar streets and rural scenery stood in for a post-apocalyptic backdrop.

The project started with an open casting call in New York Mills on April 9 for extras in a film then called Darkness. Trujillo’s team said production was expected to begin in late May or early June, and another local call asked for volunteers to play zombie extras from June 1 to 5. JFT Film Productions later said Darkness of the Dead was in pre-production and that all casting had been finalized.

Trujillo described the film as his 12th survival thriller, a sign that he has built a steady independent-film formula around genre stories made in recognizable Minnesota places. JFT also identifies him as head of video production for a telecommunications company in Central Minnesota, underscoring that the film work is part of a broader career rather than a full-time studio operation.

For Otter Tail County, the appeal goes beyond novelty. A short indie shoot can put local residents in front of the camera, give volunteers a chance to join the cast of the undead and turn a familiar town into something that feels far from ordinary. Even without a large studio footprint, a production like this can make local streets, storefronts and open land part of a story that travels well outside the county line.

Minnesota’s film-production tax credit adds another layer to that picture. Explore Minnesota Film administers the credit and promotes the state as a filming location, and the incentive is an assignable 25% income tax credit for eligible productions that spend at least $1 million in Minnesota over 12 consecutive months. That policy helps explain why filmmakers keep returning to the state for projects that need rural landscapes and a lower-key production environment.

Otter Tail County offers plenty of both. County tourism materials say it is home to 1,048 lakes, more than any other county in the United States, and the county’s history page says Native Americans used the area for hunting and fishing and had permanent dwelling sites there. That mix of scenery and history has made the county a recognizable part of Minnesota’s identity, and now it has also become a backdrop for a homegrown zombie thriller.