Horror is the one genre where a small budget can read as a choice rather than a compromise, and a Dubai filmmaker who spent years proving it in short form now wants to turn that discipline into a business. Faisal Hashmi, a writer-director known for contained, high-concept shorts with chilling twists, has launched Spine Drop Pictures, a genre-focused production company built on the premise that the UAE’s young independent sector needs films that can pay their own way.

As Deadline first reported, in a launch timed for Halloween, the company’s rule is blunt: commercially oriented, high-concept genre pictures, each made for less than a million dollars. Hashmi frames it as a storytelling problem rather than a cost-cutting one. “I’ve always looked at how can I tell an amazing story with less locations, fewer resources, but still make the concept so strong that it doesn’t feel like I’m trying to make an expensive movie for cheap,” he told the outlet.

The inaugural slate comprises three features, Off Plan, Cinder and Latching, all written by Hashmi, who will also direct them. Off Plan is an interconnected horror anthology of six stories unfolding across Dubai over a single night, designed so each segment can be shot as a separate short-form production, scheduled independently, with crew and resources shared between them.

Cinder, billed as a gritty supernatural thriller set in the remote mountain landscapes of the UAE, expands on Amber, Hashmi’s 2020 short about a barber in a remote UAE highway town who finds himself up against a vicious kidnapper who has abducted a young girl. That short won best film at the UAE’s Al Ain Film Festival. Latching, which Hashmi describes as a feminist possession-revenge horror film, unfolds over one harrowing night in Karachi, where it is being developed for production. Hashmi, a longtime UAE resident, is of Pakistani descent.

The company arrives after a 15-year career built on ten shorts, among them Amber, Wicken and Skipped, which together have generated more than three million views on YouTube. Hashmi recently took a co-writing credit on City of Life Continuum, Emirati director Ali F. Mostafa’s long-awaited sequel to City of Life, his breakout 2009 debut. He is also attached to write and direct Fractal, an English-language time-loop horror-thriller starring Jason Flemyng and Gabriela Vargas, produced by Vienna-based Pont Pictures and targeting a 2027 shoot in Serbia.

His reference points are recent low-budget hits. “We’ve seen what’s possible internationally with the success of low-budget, high-concept horror films like Obsession, Undertone and Good Boy. In an emerging independent film market like the UAE, I think that approach is especially important,” he said. Spine Drop is now exploring slate investment, international co-productions, strategic financing and distribution partnerships for the three features.

Hashmi’s pitch to those investors is short. “A sustainable film industry isn’t built on getting one expensive film financed,” he said. “It’s built on making films that can find audiences, recover their investments and help finance the next one.”

Cast

Gabriela Garcia Vargas as Emily — Gabriela Garcia Vargas — Emily

Jason Flemyng as Tom — Gabriela Garcia Vargas — Emily

Photos: The Movie Database (TMDB)

Tags: horror, Ali F. Mostafa, Faisal Hashmi, Jason Flemyng, production company, Spine Drop Pictures

Short-film horror director Faisal Hashmi bets Spine Drop Pictures on features under $1 million

Cast

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