The Tide: Acadian roots clash with horror in short film shot at Mavillette Beach in southwest N.S.

When former Clare resident Danielle LeBlanc and her boyfriend Ian Rayburn came home for a visit to the Acadian region where LeBlanc grew up, the two filmmakers were inspired by the haunting beauty of Mavillette Beach in more ways than one.

Of course, there was the scenic beauty.

But there was also other inspiration that replaced this beauty with something else.

The Toronto-based filmmakers say what began as a spontaneous creative experiment during a summer trip home to southwestern Nova Scotia became The Tide, an atmospheric horror short film that was filmed entirely on location at Mavillette Beach in the Municipality of Clare.

The film was written by LeBlanc and Rayburn, directed and edited by Rayburn, and features LeBlanc as its actor. It was filmed with a compact Osmo Pocket camera.

The film had no budget, but is rich in creativity.

The film has now begun its film festival run. Its Nova Scotia premiere screening is set for Sunday, Oct. 18, at 3:30 p.m. at Carbon Arc Cinema in Halifax as part of the 7th annual Hellifax Horror Fest.

The filmmakers hope to tap into other film festival opportunities in Atlantic Canada, Toronto, and beyond.

“Once all that is said and done, we will be putting the project online,” LeBlanc says.

On her @danielleannie Instagram account, LeBlanc describes the short film, which has a run time of seven minutes, as a film about loss, the pull of the ocean, and what waits beneath the surface.

“After a devastating breakup, a woman follows a mysterious figure into the fog on a remote Nova Scotia beach, plunging into a supernatural nightmare the ocean won’t let her escape,” reads her description.

But LeBlanc says the film represents something much deeper than a filmmaking exercise.

LeBlanc was born and raised in Clare. This Acadian region is nestled on the shores of St. Mary’s Bay, which is also part of the Bay of Fundy. Growing up, LeBlanc spent her summers at Mavillette Beach.

“My parents would take us there every day of the summer,” says LeBlanc. “We’d swim and play until sunset. As I got older, I started to notice how haunting the beach could be. Beautiful one minute. Eerie and almost ominous the next.”

For the two present-day filmmakers, Mavellitte’s landscape became the film’s inspiration. The sandy beach is 1.5 kilometres long.

“Known for its dramatic Bay of Fundy tides, the beach can see the shoreline retreat by up to approximately 800 metres, exposing vast stretches of sand,” reads a description in a media release about the film. “Fog, wind, shifting weather and the constantly changing tide can transform the landscape within minutes.”

The beach setting provided the perfect conditions for horror, say LeBlanc and Rayburn.

Rayburn, who is a longtime horror filmmaker, had purchased his Osmo Pocket camera for their two-week trip to Nova Scotia. It was a practical solution. He could use the compact camera, intended mostly for travel footage, without needing to lug around a much larger cinema camera.

Like her summers when LeBlanc grew up in the region, the pair found themselves visiting Mavillette Beach each day during their trip, regardless of the weather.

That compact camera, they say, became the catalyst for something else.

“We kept feeling like there was something incredibly cinematic about the place,” Rayburn explains in the media release. “The weather could change so quickly, and the beach itself could look completely different depending on the tide and the fog. We started talking about what we could make there.”

The conversation quickly took on a life of its own.

With just a few days remaining in their trip, LeBlanc pitched the idea for a horror short film shot entirely at the beach. She and Rayburn developed the concept and began filming.

There were challenges, namely the unpredictable Atlantic Canada weather.

They describe how the production became a race against these elements. Still, they persevered with virtually little time to spare. They say there were several failed attempts to capture key scenes as the weather and ocean conditions repeatedly forced them to abandon plans.

The filmmakers then found themselves up against a hard deadline. They only had one day left in Nova Scotia.

They seriously considered calling it quits, they say.

Instead, they went back to the beach.

“On their final day, they managed to capture the bulk of the film, including the footage they had been struggling to get throughout the trip,” the media release reads. “What began as an experiment with a travel camera had suddenly become a completed short film.”

Once back home in Toronto, they continued building the film, creating practical makeup effects for several of the film’s supernatural apparitions and combining them with composited footage.

They describe The Tide as “a tense and atmospheric horror thrill ride shaped as much by the landscape as by the filmmakers themselves.”

LeBlanc says the film, and working on it with Rayburn, was a particularly personal creative collaboration. Their backgrounds are rooted in live performance and what they call physically driven storytelling.

LeBlanc is a former Acadian step dancer with La Baie en Joie – an Acadian dance troupe in Clare formed 47 years ago that has seen generations of dancers go through its ranks. LeBlanc also performed and toured internationally as a step dancer with the Acadian fiddle band Grand Dérangement.

In addition to his work as a filmmaker, Rayburn is a former professional independent wrestler and has worked in stunts within the film industry.

The pair says their shared backgrounds in performance, movement, and storytelling have defined their collaborative approach to independent filmmaking.

Both filmmakers have built their creative lives in Toronto after moving there to pursue their respective artistic paths. LeBlanc made the move in 2010. Coincidentally, that same year Rayburn, who hails from Hamilton, Ont., also moved to Toronto, where he’s since founded IRAYBS Films.

LeBlanc says this film project feels like a homecoming.

“Nova Scotia is home,” she says. “Mavillette has been part of my life since I was a kid, and getting to return there and create something with it was incredibly meaningful.”

Adds LeBlanc, “As an Acadian filmmaker who has spent the last 16 years building a life and career in Toronto, it means a lot to me to return to my roots and create something inspired by the landscape where I grew up. There’s something special about bringing a place you know so intimately to the screen, especially when its natural beauty can also feel so mysterious and unsettling.”

• What: An atmospheric horror short film written and produced by Danielle LeBlanc and Ian Rayburn, directed and edited by Rayburn, and featuring LeBlanc as its actor. The film explores the unsettling intersection of landscape, isolation, and the forces that lie just beneath the surface.

• Where: Filmed at Mavillette Beach in the Municipality of Clare in southwestern Nova Scotia.

• Production: IRAYBS Films

• Follow the filmmakers on Instagram: @danielleannie and @ianrayburn