Debutant director duo Derek Lee and Cliff Prowse went to their friends and family to get funding for their found footage horror Afflicted having just shot some short films before this. Support from their family and a small grant gave them a reasonable budget for their endeavor and they went on to shoot in Paris, Italy, Vancouver. They both acted too in the film and played the role of the protagonists just to have the convenience to shoot in the Found Footage style. The product according to them was actually made for a web series on YouTube, but the output inspired them to pitch it as a full feature film.
The trailer of the film was so impressive that slashfilm.com wrote in its review that the trailer of Afflicted is one of the best on Hollywood in decades. While a normal trailer shows the story in a linear way, this trailer was made in the style of a travelogue mentioning entry number 206, entry number 190 and such. The trailer starts from the end and them jumps to the start and them shows up what two friends faced while travelling abroad.
The story is about childhood friends Derek and Cliff, who went off to travel the entire world for producing a web series End of the World. The reason behind this endeavor was the fact that Derek had AVM, which could cause him to die at any moment. As the trip begins Derek become more ill, which at first the friends thought is because of AVM but soon they realized that this is happening because of something more dangerous and evil. Now both the friends have to fight out of the situation, which gets worse as time passes by.
Successful feedback from the trailer inspired the filmmaker to show the film at Toronto International Film festival, where it got a special jury citation, subsequently getting some more awards in another festivals and a theatrical and VOD release in April.
