Olivia Barone
Editor in Chief
Dracula and his second-in-command Regina Renfield return in the anticipated sequel to Jonathan Pineda’s “He Only Comes at Night.” Preying on unsuspecting sisters Lucy, Mina and their friends one Christmas is but a game to these cold-blooded killers as they wreak havoc in “They Only Come at Night,” Pineda’s newest short film.
Rhode Island College student and filmmaker, Pineda filmed “He Only Comes at Night” last year and has since been determined to make each project he releases better than the last. Working alongside RIC’s dedicated film department has aided Pineda in building his filmography as a budding director and making a name for himself in Rhode Island’s film scene.
Pineda and I sat down yet again to discuss the evolution of his career since the release of “He Only Comes at Night,” finding ourselves nostalgic as we returned to our seats in The Anchor’s newsroom one year later.
“I’m graduating this semester,” Pineda thought fondly of his peers in RIC’s film department, “It’s really bittersweet. I love everyone in the community, I love the school, I love making things with all these people.”
I asked Pineda what it has been like to work so closely with the same impassioned group of students. “I don’t go a day in my life being ungrateful. I can never express how thankful I am to these guys. The more times you work with people, the more they know you and how they should perform on set… To work with the same people makes everything easy. Because they all know what to expect out of you and I know what to expect out of them.”
Being on set of another Pineda short-film, “The Castles” this past summer allowed me to witness RIC’s film-family first hand. Talk about teamwork; these students have learned to work seamlessly together to bring their vision to life.
This time the team revisited a world they already knew, creating Pineda’s first sequel to his most popular film. In “They Only Come at Night,” Ben Cash reprises his role as Dracula alongside Dylana Deignan who returns as his chilling henchman Regina Renfield. Pineda shared with me how proud he was to see the pair revive their roles alongside a new cast: “to see Dylana in the dress again as Renfield, to see Ben Cash as Dracula again was surreal to me. That was really cool.”
Those who have seen “He Only Comes at Night,” are familiar with Cash’s haunting rendition of the Kubrick stare: wide-eyed, menacing and accompanied by a hollow grin. His co-star, Deignan, continues to haunt viewers in the sequel, adorning her familiar red dress and dagger.
Like the original horror short-film, they now return to prey on a new group of innocents. “The overarching theme of that is that bad things happen to good people. That’s how life is, unfortunately…” Pineda told me, “That’s what I really wanted to tell with that story.”
“The whole premise of the second film is that these two girls are celebrating Christmas and they open the door to Regina Renfield. That’s it. There’s nothing they can do about it. They were doing nothing wrong and it just happened.”
“They Only Come at Night” being Pineda’s first sequel, I was curious to know what it was like to return to an already familiar world and the challenges that came with revisiting it. “You don’t want to make a sequel just to make it. There has to be artistic value. That’s when art becomes dead, when you make something solely for relevance… Even though I made that world, it’s been a year since I revisited it. The point was to make [this film] better than the last one,” Pineda explained and expressed to me the growth he has seen in himself and in his team during the past year, encouraging interested viewers to give his newest short film a chance if only to witness this growth for themselves.
Be on the lookout for more projects from Pineda and RIC’s film department to support local talent. Visit Pineda’s website to stay updated on projects to come and watch “They Only Come at Night” on Youtube now.