Shadow Hours

Director: Isaac Eaton
Screenwriters: Isaac Eaton

Institute History

  • 2000 Sundance Film Festival

Description

Michael Halloway is a recovering addict. He has a real job as a night clerk in a gas station, and more importantly. he is married to the woman who has supported him through his trek to sobriety and is now about to give birth to their child. In short, he is on the road to the straight and narrow.

But at his post in the glass-enclosed booth in this netherworld of Los Angeles, he is surrounded by creatures of the night junkies, bums, prostitutes, drunks, and scavengers who regularly test his patience with the monotony of the long night's routine and annoyances. And then one evening, he meets the elegant and enigmatic Stuart Chappell. a writer doing research in the dens of iniquity of Los Angeles nightlife. He is quickly seduced into accompanying Chappell on his nocturnal forays, which opens up a universe of unmarked doors to a full spectrum of Dionysian pleasures and debauchery.

Writer/director Issac Eaton spins a masterful neo-Faustian tale of a young man caught up in a web of seductive evil. With evocative cinematography and splendidly tight editing, Shadow Hours offers a tour of a Los Angeles that you've never experienced. It's an image of the city you may feel is more like New York or Bangkok. Intriguingly written and artfully composed, Shadow Hours is a modern morality fable with an otherworldly time and quality, reminiscent of the work of David Lynch, Michael Mann, or Martin Scorsese, the kind of film that transforms genre into gems.


— Geoffrey Gilmore

Screening Details

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]