History of DEAD ARE WE
Dead Are We was born out of the horror-obsessed imagination of Khafre Liggens. What started as an eight-page, badly drawn comic (riddled with typos and charm) quickly spiraled into something bigger, a short film project for his older brother's film class. That small experiment grew into a 45-page pilot script they even tried to film. The project would eventually collapse, victim to corrupted files, no time, and even less experience. But it was a crash course, and more importantly, the spark that lit the fire.
Five years later, Khafre returned to the idea with fresh energy. He wrote and shot four short stories set in the Dead Are We universe, two of which were a Chicago Horror Film Festival Selection in 2015. Were they good? Not really. In fact, the team lovingly calls them “our shitty horror shorts.” But the stories were strong, the attempts were genuine, and making them was a blast.
Those early failures and festival screenings laid the foundation for what Dead Are We is today: a creative house that thrives on curiosity, persistence, and a deep love for horror storytelling. Every misstep became a stepping stone, shaping the stories, the world, and the passion that’s driving everything still to come.
The Series
Overview
In the forgotten town of Mandino IL, shadows linger longer than they should, and the ground doesn’t stay still for long. When corpses claw their way out of the earth, an unlikely alliance forms between a defiant orphan teen, her band of misfit friends, and a washed-up stranger who’d rather drink with destiny than face it. Together, they stumble into the town’s buried secrets, where every answer only raises the dead, and more questions.
Premise
When classmates begin vanishing and her favorite teacher turns up dead, Becca Granger refuses to sit quietly under Mandino’s new curfew. Sharp, stubborn, and carrying a grief she won’t admit, Becca launches her own investigation, dragging along her gang of fellow outcasts.
Their search points to Bruce Caldwell, a mysterious drifter who arrived in town the same week the killings began. Becca is convinced he’s behind it, until the night the dead rise. When Bruce reveals himself as a reluctant monster-hunter with hidden roots in Mandino, Becca sees him less as a suspect and more as a weapon.
But Bruce isn’t exactly reliable: he’s cynical, barely sober, and living with narcolepsy. When he collapses mid-battle, it’s Becca who takes up his weapons and saves her friends. From that night forward, she and her crew strong-arm Bruce into becoming their unwilling mentor. Together, they face wave after wave of supernatural horrors bound to Mandino’s cursed history.