One of the hardest parts of running a film festival is when I can’t find space in the program for a film I genuinely really enjoy. With my upcoming 5th year of Skate or Die Film Fest hitting Ringing Rocks Roller Rink on Black Friday, I had several such instances this past week when the notifications were sent to the filmmakers. One of the films I love that I can’t find room for this year is Christian Leon’s Death Spin 2. I was lucky enough to get a chance to reach out to them before their premiere on Halloween, though. So, below is a short, but great little email interview that I had the chance to do with Christian.
Hey Christian, thanks for taking a few minutes out of your day to chat. I absolutely love your new film DEATH SPIN 2. Thanks for giving me a sneak peak. Before we dive into this weekend’s premiere, let’s start with the basics. Who is Christian Leon?
First of all Justin, let me thank YOU for taking the time to watch and carefully appreciate our film. Submitting a film to festivals nowadays seems so shallow and transactional, you never really know if they really want to showcase and share your art or just are looking for an excuse to make a profit. So thank you so much to you and Skate Or Die Film Festival for the enthusiasm and this space you so generously have given us.
Christian Leon aka CXS is an American visual artist born in Mexico City in 1980. I am a Virgo and ever since I can remember I’ve been obsessed with records and books and movies. I love all kinds of films but horror was always the reason why I would daydream of someday making my own films. I dedicated my previous movie, a film about vampires, Love Bites, to my dad, Sergio as he would rent movies and watch them with me, so I watched The Fly by Cronenberg when I was like 6, and all those 70’ classics like Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist, the only film he wouldn’t show ma was The Evil Dead by Raimi but one day I found the tape and could only watch it in 5 or 10 minute increments because it was so damn scary!
I studied film in Mexico City in my 20s but I found film school to be too expensive and snobbish for me so I dropped out. I made a living as a University teacher but after meeting my wife Samantha, I moved to Rochester, NY, completed college again (now as a graphic designer) got back into teaching and suddenly I found myself ready to write, produce and direct my films on my spare time. Death Spin 2 is my third feature length project. So um, you could say Christian Leon is kind of an obsessive, resilient, crazy person who is very passionate about movies, music, and art in general.
Your new film is called Death Spin 2 and premieres on Halloween night in Brooklyn. Tell us about how this sequel came about and a couple sentences on what it’s about… spoiler free, obviously!
So after making Death Spin, I got invited to a horror movie podcast to talk about my project, a film distributor listened to the episode and got intrigued by my ideas and watched Death Spin, he and his team loved it and offered to distribute it for me and now it is available on Amazon Prime. Then I made Love Bites (2024) which won a big bunch of international film festival awards but didn’t find distribution and because Death Spin kept growing in popularity I decided to make a sequel.
The coolest thing is that a company in Beverly Hills fell in love with both Love Bites and Death Spin 2 so both films will also be available for downloading and streaming in several international platforms early next year. This will be the first time any of my films finds distribution before the premiere so we all are very excited about that. We love the idea of sharing our creative horror baby with the world.
As a person of a certain age, married to a middle aged white woman, you know that I have some experience with true crime podcasts and docs. Are you a big true crime fan or what was it that inspired the use of a true crime podcast as the vehicle for this story?
In Mexico, as a teen, I worked at a Tower Records like store called Mixup and I was in charge of ordering DVDs so I would get in trouble sometimes because I would order like 7 copies of Titanic and 26 stranger European films and documentaries. I particularly remember an A&E double DVD called Serial Killers: Profiling the Criminal Mind that came with documentaries on Dahmer, Gacy and Manson. I remember suddenly Natural Born Killers by Oliver Stone and American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis made so much more sense after that. I became obsessed and fascinated by the American cultural collective obsession and fascination with sex and violence.
So yeah, Death Spin was about a DJ messing around with occult messages hidden in records which result in a massacre and said massacre is what is discussed in the true crime podcasts that our protagonist in Death Spin 2 obsessively listens to and which somehow trigger something in her mind that pushes her into a downward spiral of death and destruction. I love the idea that the audience can choose to believe she is actually possessed or just going completely insane!
While I’ve listened to my share of true crime podcasts and my wife has easily quadrupled my input, I’ve never encountered haunted audio that I’m aware of. Some of the real life recordings they play in these podcasts is downright haunting though. Have you, yourself, ever heard audio that thoroughly disturbed you?
Absolutely. In Mexico a famous pop star was abused and mind controlled by her manager, he had like a house full of girls he “managed” and he forced them to do horrible things. So, in one of her albums, he did the backmasking technique (which is when audio is hidden in a recording that can only be understood when playing the record backwards) and his voices saying : “you must obey”, “you did it wrong”, “punished”… I remember when the press found out this guy was already in jail and died shortly after but that sound bite TERRIFIED ME.
When I was a kid I tried to play records backwards (for example, “Shout at the Devil” by Mötley Crüe) but it wasn’t until the owner of Bop Shop Records, Tom, taught me how to properly play vinyl backwards that the idea for Death Spin hit me. I was like YEAH! I got it!
A Ouija possessed Regan in The Exorcist, the Necronomicon possessed the kids in the cabin in The Evil Dead, so… a cursed album played backwards shall be the vehicle of evil for Death Spin!
“Obodedio” is a Latin fourth-configuration verb meaning to obey which I used in both films as a reference to that horrific case that I just mentioned. Yes, the Beatles did it, and Led Zeppelin and countless others but no other back masked audio is as scary and disturbing as that one made in Mexico.
While we’re on the subject of haunted media, I have a few related questions. First, beyond the obvious (and fantastic) answer of The Ring, do you have a favorite film about haunted media, any type… podcasts, video tapes, found footage, music, anything.
Funny that you mention The Ring because Death Spin works that way too. Except in Death Spin you listen to a record backwards instead of watching a tape. I recently watched the first One Missed Call by Takashi Miike and felt so inspired to keep on exploring this theme. I love the idea of being exposed to media and being changed by it.
I remember as a teenager when DVDs were a brand new format and I bought The Exorcist the second it came out. I actually didn’t even have a DVD player until I bought a PS2. So I was so excited I convinced all my family to come watch it (I had the stereo hooked up too and everything) in the living room and I remember it was WAY MORE disturbing than I could remember, like the crucifix masturbation scene was so disturbing and maybe it felt so extra because my parents were there too and my mom is super religious, okay, so during the final third of the film during the exorcism where Regan levitates, as soon as the priests yell in unison “The power of Christ compels you” the TV and the lights went out and there was a blackout in my entire block. Not even kidding you. So we had to look in the kitchen for candles and that was that. We never finished watching it. Everyone kind of looked at me like it was my fault. It was hilarious. I mean, now it is anyway.
The particular type of haunted media in your film explores the age old tradition of backmasking. I personally always found it so fascinating, from real backmasking to the type of absurdly perceived backmasking in the days of the Satanic Panic. What drew you to using backmasking as another key device in your film?
I even used back masking in the audio mix of Death Spin 2. Idk, I just find the idea of subliminal messages aimed at your subconscious with the aim of manipulation to be terribly scary. Like in They Live by Carpenter but now you have all kinds of idiots spewing nonsense trying to convince people of this or the other just trying to make a profit. ALL LIES.
And don’t get me started with AI. I feel that at the bottom of it I wanted to make a commentary of how messages we are exposed to affect us or have the potential to affect us as negatively as like if we were drinking poison. I think AI is the new poison. Like if ai was food it wouldn’t even have the nutritional value of a couple purple Takis.
Aside from the discussion of haunted media and backmasking, I’m curious… have you personally ever felt like you’ve experienced any type of real life haunting?
Yes. I once found a Barbie doll on top of a tombstone in a cemetery. I took it with me and strange things started to happen. Like STRANGE things. Like for example the videos I took that day were fine but all the video files after I found that doll were corrupted.
I sent the drive to LA to recover the footage and they couldn’t do it. One day I just decided to put the doll away and forget about and the strange shit stopped. I still have that doll somewhere in my house. Lol.
Turning back towards your film, what was it like making the film? Do you have any fun anecdotes from on or off set that you’d want to share?
Oh man. There are so many. Making the film was next to impossible until I bumped into KHX’s audition tape, I felt suddenly the movie would need to be re-written and the film should be about her character. After that, the film was just organic and easy and just exciting to work on. We received about a thousand submissions and she was the one, the perfect actress to play Giselle. We talked on the phone, I explained I wanted to go for a mix of Argento and De Palma and I needed her to be a mix between Isabelle Adjani and Mia Goth. I wanted DS2 to feel like a neo-trash giallo made in NY. I think it’s all in her eyes. Yes definitely she’s a beautiful human being but her eyes just sell it to me. During the scene where she finds the black leather gloves I was so shocked by her performance it took all my strength not to shake the camera or mess our choreography, after the scene was done I knew the movie gods had favored our efforts, I truly felt like I had just witnessed an actual possession and I just happened to capture it on video.
I believe The Exorcist is DEFINITELY the most haunted film out there. Even Friedkin admitted to using and mixing audio from actual exorcisms into the audio mix. Also it’s the best possession film ever. An absolute horror masterpiece.
The film has some LGBTQ+ themes, characters, and elements, something that drew me to the film. While I identify as a straight cis man, I always love seeing representation of other groups, especially those that our current national situation seems intentionally try to hold back or further oppress. Why do you think it’s important for queer, trans, and other other LGBTQ+ voices to be amplified in the worlds of film and horror?
I think the last thing we need are new stories or movies about men. Oh god no. Like, I went to see Project Hail Mary with my wife and while it’s cool to look at Ryan Gosling make friends with a rock for 3 hrs, I just kept thinking how much more interesting the movie would’ve been if the main character was anything but a straight white dude. Y’know? So yeah. Expect to see women populate most of the roles on pretty much all of my future filmography.
I watched RuPaul’s Drag Race with my wife for years then when Dragula came out I just watched that, and I’ve always admired the LGBTQ+ community. I think there is something deeply rebellious and cool about refusing to conform to the ideas and conventions and expectations and tastes of others. I am also very naturally wired to celebrate, pursue and admire subversion and what is subversion if not rebellion.
I think it’s kind of a map to good, important, meaningful art too.
Thought provoking stuff, I can’t wait to see your film get out there and get the love it deserves. For our readers in the NYC area, what are the details of the premiere?
PROSPECT PARK NITEHAWK CINEMA IN BROOKLYN, NYC. HALLOWEEN, OCTOBER 31st 2026, 10:30 AM
There is a VIP guest list so if you want to attend please reach out via Instagram where we will give updates on the film and how to get a ticket or get a link to watch our film.
Thanks again, any parting words?
Don’t let AI ruin your process!
And thank you for giving our film a chance.
