'Black Wood,' filmed entirely in South Dakota, to be shown at State Theatre next week

A director who spent his teen years growing up in Hill City returned home to shoot his full-length film debut, “Black Wood,” in the Black Hills.

Chris Canfield graduated from Hill City High School in 2007 after moving to the area when he was 13. Since graduation, he attended film school in Colorado and has worked on a number of movies and directed a few short films, but “Black Wood” will be his first full-length feature.

Canfield said he has a love for the Black Hills and wanted to showcase them as much as he could, as well as the “Native American culture that was immersed here.”

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The South Dakota connection

The horror-western “Black Wood” is set in the colonizer’s Gold Rush-era of Black Hills history, as evidenced by the first line in one of the official trailers: “You like gold? We know where enough of it is to make you a rich man.”

In Canfield’s film, the white men in search of gold in the Paha Sapa (Lakota for Black Hills) encounter a legend known as the Wendigo, which he said is from Great Plains Native American lore. It’s an evil spirit sometimes depicted as a creature with human-like characteristics that can possess human beings and drive them to murder or cannibalism.

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Some of South Dakota’s local culture is featured in the film, Canfield said, noting actress Tanajsia Slaughter speaks Lakota in the film, along with the Wendigo.

Spots only locals may know, such as Hippie Hole, are seen in the trailer. Canfield said much of the film was shot on private property in just 22 days between September and October 2019 in the Black Hills, including at a rock maze and Black Hills Caverns.

Canfield said he’s grateful to businesses that stayed in season a little longer to feed and house the cast and crew in Rockerville, Rapid City, Custer, Hot Springs, Edgemont and Keystone when they were still shooting.

The budget for the film was between $200,000 to $250,000 budget, producer Ryan Hall said.

Hall said as he read the script for “Black Wood,” he was inspired by the idea of main character Dowanhowee, played by Slaughter, finding her inner strength in an unlikely situation.

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“You have more inside you than you know,” Hall said of the message he took away from her story.

Canfield said the film is a “roller coaster of fun and emotion,” and isn’t the typical “creature feature” one can expect of the horror genre.

“Black Wood” joins a growing list of movies fully or partially shot in South Dakota, along with Chloe Zhao’s Academy Award-winning “Nomadland” and Andrew Kightlinger’s “Tater Tot & Patton,” who is formerly of Sioux Falls.

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Where to watch the "Black Wood" movie

The movie will be shown at the State Theatre in Sioux Falls July 22-24, and Canfield will be at the Elks Theater in Rapid City on July 22 for a premiere, where the show will also run July 22-28.

“Black Wood” will be available on Apple TV, iTunes, Prime Video (Amazon), VUDU, Google Play, YouTube Movies, Microsoft Movies and Redbox On Demand starting July 26.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Black Wood: How to watch the movie filmed entirely in South Dakota