Sleepless Unrest coming to the Wildey – The Edwardsville Intelligencer

EDWARDSVILLE It remains to be seen whether the Wildey Theatre has any ghosts of its own, but there be plenty of paranormal activity on the movie screen Friday night.

The Wildey will host the premiere of The Sleepless Unrest, a documentary about the house in Harrisville, Rhode Island, that inspired the 2013 supernatural horror film, The Conjuring and a series of sequels.

The premiere is open to the public and is free. The red carpet starts at 7 p.m. and the film starts at 7:30 p.m.

The event is sold out, but people can arrive 15 minutes before the movie to see if there are any no-shows.

The Sleepless Unrest will open in theaters and on-demand on July 16 from Gravitas Ventures. Cast members Brian Murray and Richel Stratton from Edwardsville, who are from Ghost Hunters on A & E, will attend the premiere as will directors/subjects Kendall and Vera Whelpton.

Kendall Whelpton called me out of the blue to ask if he would be able to rent out the theatre to premiere his documentary and I get calls all the time from people who say they made a movie on their cell phone, Wildey manager Al Canal said, laughing. But the more I talked to him and found out about him and this project, I realized this was a big deal.

He has some impressive credits and its great that he chose the Wildey Theatre for an event like this. With some of the cast members from the documentary here plus a couple of cast members from Ghost Hunters and the new owners of the house (paranormal investigators Cory and Jennifer Heinzen), it sounds very cool. Theyre going to have some equipment here to see if there is any paranormal activity at the Wildey.

The house that inspired The Conjuring has recently been sold and is now open to paranormal investigations. With special access, a small group of filmmakers and paranormal investigators was allowed to move into the famously haunted home for two weeks in hopes of capturing evidence.

Kendall Whelpton is known for his work on The House in Between, Ghost Hunters, Wicked Tuna and Battlefish.

As a filmmaker, director, director of photography, photographer, and business owner, Whelpton has his signature work on a vast range of networks including Netflix, Nat Geo, SYFY, Lifetime, A&E, Discovery, Travel, Destination America, CMT, and Animal Planet.

We are on our second documentary film. The first one was called The House in Between, which was released last year and quickly became No. 1 on iTunes and was the top documentary across multiple platforms, Whelpton said.

Through COVID, we were looking for our next documentary and we got a call to go to the real-life Conjuring home by our friends (paranormal investigators) Brian Murray and Richel Stratton and a documentary was born.

The documentary is inspired by the real-life house that inspired The Conjuring films. It gave paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren their start in the paranormal field.

Its the house that started it all, Whelpton said. Brian, Richel, Vera and I spent two weeks there and documented everything and had cameras on us 24 hours a day. We lived with the homeowners, Jen and Cory Heinzen and the caretaker, John Huntington, and lived as they do in the most haunted house in the world.

For Whelpton, the Wildey Theatre was a natural location for the premiere.

Brian Murray and Richel Stratton are from the Edwardsville area and we were looking for a very historic theater to launch the film, Whelpton said. We wanted something that could potentially be haunted, and the Wildey Theatre has a history to it and its very old. It also has the look were going for.

As soon as I talked to Al Canal on the phone, I knew it was the right place for us. Hes such a good dude and everything just kind of clicked.

The success of Ghost Hunters and other television shows and the success of the The Conjuring Universe series of movies, which have spawned eight films with at least two more on the way, shows that there is a big audience for stories about ghosts and haunted building.

The premiere of Sleepless Unrest is a way for Whelpton to acknowledge that audience.

We love the paranormal community and we want to celebrate it, Whelpton said. We make these movies for our community and this has gotten a lot more traction than we could ever imagine.

Were starting to get some worldwide press, which is pretty amazing. Before it hits the ground for the general public, we wanted to do this premiere for the paranormal community.

Films such as Sleepless Unrest are a labor of love for Whelpton, who has a special connection to Ghost Hunters.

Ive been a cameraman on a lot of these adventure TV shows for over 16 years now and Ghost Hunters was my first real job on a TV show, Whelpton said. I stuck with Ghost Hunters up until last year when it went to A & E and thats how I met Brian and Richel.

Ive been faithful to Ghost Hunters and Ive been behind the scenes of the shows. Ive done Ghost Brothers and met my wife on Ghost Hunters Academy. My world became Ghost Hunters shortly after I applied for the job.

For the people who cant come in to see the documentary, Whelpton and the other cast members will be available outside the theatre after the show to sign autographs and pose for photos.

Were excited to see Edwardsville and were looking to hanging out, Whelpton said. The Q & A session will be right after the show (in the theatre) and well also have a slideshow before it with some behind-the-scenes photos.

Read the rest here:
Sleepless Unrest coming to the Wildey - The Edwardsville Intelligencer

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero