Actor Chris Young, center, and crew prepare to roll camera for a scene in the horror-comedy short film “...And Then She Laughed.” The film, written and directed by Amy Taylor and produced by local resident Ben Guenther, was shot at a village home on Orton Road. (Photo by Lauren "Chuck" Shows)
Filmmaker Amy Taylor to screen a short and series, talk ‘zom-rom-com’
- Published: August 12, 2026
Virginia-based filmmaker Amy Taylor is coming back to Yellow Springs this month with a short film made right here in the village — and, she hopes, the beginnings of another local production.
Taylor will present “…And Then She Laughed,” a horror-comedy short filmed in the village two years ago, and a newly recut version of her former web series, “Jess Archer Versus,” at Little Art Theatre on Wednesday, Aug. 12.
The 7 p.m. screening, billed by the Little Art as featuring two films with “very different vibes,” will be followed by a question-and-answer session, during which Taylor will also discuss “Everything’s Fine!,” a feature-length “zom-rom-com” she hopes to shoot in and around Yellow Springs, and for which she’s currently raising money.
“We’re looking for donations to support the project,” she said. “I’ve been pounding the pavement, but we thought an event like this could help.”
The evening gives local audiences their first chance to see “…And Then She Laughed” on the big screen. The film was shot over five days in May 2024, primarily at a home on Orton Road whose modern architecture and hard angles closely matched the house Taylor had pictured while writing the script.
The film was produced by local man-of-stage-and-screen Ben Guenther, who suggested the local home as a possible location. It stars Emily Williams Young and Chris Young as spouses whose strained relationship takes a dark turn, particularly as the wife repeatedly shows up in unexpected places. As it did in 2024, the News will continue to leave the film’s central premise unspoiled, though Williams Young previously described its vibe as “mystical, magical spookiness.”
Filmmaker Amy Taylor returns to Yellow Springs with two of her works — the 2024 horror-comedy “…And Then She Laughed” and the recut 2013 web series “Jess Archer Versus” — on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at Little Art Theatre. (Submitted photo)
The finished short is currently making its way through the film festival submission process, which Taylor said she expects to continue through next spring. The Little Art screening will serve as the film’s Yellow Springs debut.
Taylor will also screen “Jess Archer Versus,” a mystery-comedy web series she created with several of the same collaborators who later worked on “…And Then She Laughed.” Though the original series was released in episodes, Taylor has recut it into one continuous presentation for the upcoming village screening.
Many of the actors and crew members involved in both projects to be screened have known one another since their time at Ohio University, where they studied film or performing arts. In past News reporting, Guenther described the 2024 shoot as “getting the band back together.” To that end, Taylor said she hopes some version of “the band” will reconvene for “Everything’s Fine!,” which she described as a “post-apocalyptic romantic comedy.”
The screenplay follows a young woman traveling through a collapsed landscape to scatter her best friend’s ashes in the ocean. Along the way, she meets a man who spent the catastrophe alone in a bunker and has only recently emerged.
“He’s just seen sort of these zombie-like creatures, and he’s like, ‘Well, I guess I’m the last man alive,’ and he’s about ready to pack it in,” Taylor said, adding with a laugh: “I know that sounds very grim, but it’s much more fun than it sounds.”
“…And Then She Laughed” was filmed in the village and “Jess Archer Versus” features local resident Ben Guenther. (Film still)
The man offers the woman help to navigate the mountain roads with which he’s familiar, and though she’s not exactly eager to accept, the pair end up traveling together. As they move along, occasionally encountering other survivors, their wary partnership develops into what Taylor called “a screwball romance.”
Taylor initially began writing “Everything’s Fine!” before the COVID-19 pandemic, but set it aside when its fictional catastrophe started to feel reminiscent of reality.
“When the pandemic hit, I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t know how I feel about writing about a zombie infection that took out a lot of the population,’” she said. When she returned to the screenplay, she approached it with a new question: “What happens after you have a huge, world-altering trauma?”
Taylor said she viewed the film’s two leads as representing “two opposite ends of the spectrum” of pandemic experience. The male lead has spent the catastrophe alone in a bunker, carrying “the accompanying … mental health issues that we all sort of underwent” in isolation. The female lead has survived amid constant crisis, “running on 110% adrenaline” — an experience Taylor compared to that of health care workers and other frontline workers during the worst periods of the pandemic — until she’s burned out.
“They both have this very different experience of this event, but sort of equally traumatic in their own ways,” Taylor said.
Taylor said “…And Then She Laughed” ponders questions of resentment, insecurity and toxic masculinity — themes that also ran through her 2018 feature, “Hunter’s Weekend.” By contrast, she said the script for “Everything’s Fine!” revisits some of her familiar concerns, but shifts their center of gravity. In her past works, she said, none of the male characters is “someone you would like to meet.” “Everything’s Fine!” still places its leads among survivors who have embraced a “might makes right ethos,” but its central romance gives Taylor room to imagine “positive masculinity” as well.
“I would say the feature is a little bit more optimistic about people,” she said.
Taylor aims to shoot the feature in fall 2027, when the local landscape’s changing leaves would suit what she called the story’s “bittersweet sort of melancholy.” Hitting that target a year and change from now will require raising money, locking down locations and, she hopes, building support from folks in and around Yellow Springs.
The project is fiscally sponsored by the Film Collaborative, a nonprofit organization that supports independent film projects; contributions made to the project through Film Collaborative are tax-deductible. Taylor said the organization’s fiscal sponsorship gives her a path forward for “Everything’s Fine!” outside of a more traditional film-financing model dependent on investors and recognizable actors.
“Film Collaborative is a really great organization; they have a lot of films that they fiscally sponsor, but they also provide educational resources and distribution support to independent films,” Taylor said. “So I always say, if you support our project, you’ll be supporting indie film, because as fiscal sponsors, they get a percentage to keep supporting other projects.”
Taylor added that money raised for “Everything’s Fine!” would ideally circulate back through Yellow Springs, as she aims to use area businesses as much as possible for supplies and to feed and house cast and crew members. She said she and Guenther are already considering possible filming locations, and she wants to make space for locals to appear on-screen as extras or actors in minor roles.
“Hopefully, we would be additive to the community and not like locusts swooping in, taking everything and leaving,” Taylor said.
Having produced one project in Yellow Springs, Taylor said the village feels familiar to her; she grew up in a small town in Virginia that, like the village, fostered the arts and upheld an environmental awareness. Those values, she said, make the village well-suited to independent filmmaking.
“I’m excited to come back to Yellow Springs and try and shoot this feature, because we had such a great experience with the short,” she said.
“An Evening with Amy Taylor” begins at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12, at Little Art Theatre. Admission is free, and free tickets can be reserved in advance online at http://www.littleart.org.
For more information about “Everything’s Fine!” supported by the Film Collaborative, go to http://www.bit.ly/FilmCollabEverythingsFine
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