Dead Dawn and Silt Premiere: Aaron Jay Rome’s Double Bill

One horror-comedy, one cosmic horror, one shared cast, one Beverly Hills night.

Dead Dawn and Silt Premiere: Aaron Jay Rome’s Double Bill | Features

Dead Dawn and Silt, two new features from director Aaron Jay Rome and producer Isaiah LaBorde, open together in Beverly Hills on Saturday 7 November 2026. The Dead Dawn and Silt premiere is a red carpet double bill at Lumière Cinema at the Music Hall, with a filmmaker Q&A after each film. One is a pitch-black horror-comedy about a small-town post office clerk. The other is cosmic horror at a lakeside retreat, with Tommy Wiseau as its caretaker. Neither film has a distributor yet, and worldwide rights to both are available. Here is everything you need to know about the night, and why putting the two films together might be the smartest thing about it.

Dead Dawn gives you a woman who cannot say no. Silt gives you a caretaker who shares a name with literature’s most famous refuser. Whether or not Aaron Jay Rome meant it, the double bill turns two very different horror films into one argument about saying no, with the same faces arguing both sides.

Two Films, One Night on Wilshire Boulevard

Two films, one cinema, the same actors in both, and no buyer waiting at the end of the night. That is what Aaron Jay Rome and Isaiah LaBorde are putting on in Beverly Hills next Saturday. It is a more interesting shape than most premieres.

Dead Dawn and Silt are both finished. Both run long for indie films, at 103 and 110 minutes. Both need a buyer. Rather than wait for one, Rome and LaBorde have booked a red carpet world premiere. They want the public to see both films back to back.

The venue matters. Lumière Cinema at the Music Hall sits at 9036 Wilshire Boulevard. Its own site calls it an Art Deco landmark from 1937, and the only commercial cinema in Beverly Hills. It has premiere history, too. Cinema Treasures says it hosted the world premiere of John Cassavetes’ Faces. Blue Fox Entertainment took it over in 2019, after Laemmle Theatres stopped running it. A small horror double bill on that screen says something.

Inside the Dead Dawn and Silt Premiere

The night runs on Pacific time. The red carpet starts at 5 PM, with cast and filmmakers arriving, and doors open at 6 PM.

The films run back to back in one order. Dead Dawn starts at 6:30 PM, then Silt follows at 8:45 PM, and the night ends at about 10:50 PM. Each film gets its own Q&A with the filmmakers.

A general admission ticket costs $35 and covers both films. The ticket page says the code TOMMY takes $10 off. Seats are not numbered, but the page says you keep yours for both films. A VIP upgrade adds drinks with the cast at 5 PM, better seats and the after-party. Both films are unrated, and the team says they are best for over-18s.

Tickets and full details are at demandthescreen.com/la-premiere.

Dead Dawn: The Clerk Nobody Saw Coming

Dead Dawn is written and directed by Rome and produced by LaBorde. It is billed as a pitch-black horror-comedy. Anna-Beth works the counter at a small-town post office. Nobody notices her. She cannot say no to a rude customer, a worse boss or an ex who will not let go. Then something dark arrives with the dawn, and she learns what she can really do.

The ticket page lists Ashley Lenz, Olivia Grace Applegate, Malcolm Goodwin, David Anders, Krishna Smitha, Michael Papajohn and LaBorde himself in the cast.

The film has been a while coming. In November 2024, Rome and LaBorde went on The Cult Classic Horror Show podcast to talk about it. They also pointed fans to a Wefunder campaign, which let them buy a stake in the film. You can watch the Dead Dawn trailer now.

Rome is not new to this. He directed and starred in the ride-share horror End Trip (2018), which Terror Films picked up for release around the world. He also directed Go Crazy Go Mad and the series iLove. He acts a lot, too.

Silt: A Lake That Keeps Secrets, and a Caretaker Who Keeps His Own

Silt is the stranger prospect. Rome directs again, from a script he wrote with LaBorde, on a story by Vernon Davis and Tiffany Toney. LaBorde produces. A fractured group of friends meets again at a lakeside retreat, and the water there holds secrets of its own, as well as theirs. The organisers file it under cosmic horror.

Andrea Sixtos leads a cast that also includes Wiseau, Goodwin, Anders, Applegate, Smitha, Davis, Papajohn and LaBorde. The Silt trailer is out now.

Then there is Wiseau. The man behind The Room (2003), and the subject of James Franco’s The Disaster Artist, plays the caretaker. Creepy Catalog names the character Bartleby. It calls him the odd owner of the resort, a man who treats the land as sacred. He thinks the lake’s water holds something divine.

Here is the bit I keep coming back to. Wiseau is famous for guarding his past. Where he was born, how old he is and where the money for The Room came from have been puzzles for twenty years. Casting him as the keeper of a lake that hides things is a joke, or it is sincere. I suspect the film works best if it is both.

Why a Shared Cast Makes This a Repertory Night

Look at the two cast lists side by side. Applegate, Goodwin, Anders, Smitha, Papajohn and LaBorde are in both. Book the full night and you will watch the same actors play different people, a couple of hours apart, in two kinds of horror.

That feels more like a theatre company in rep than a normal premiere. It has been done before in indie horror. Dread Central once covered Dry Bones and The Legend of Six Fingers. Both were shot back to back in Buffalo, and they premiered there as a double feature because they shared so much of their crew. Rome and LaBorde are doing the same on a bigger stage.

And then there is the name. Dead Dawn’s heroine is a woman who cannot say no. Silt’s caretaker is called Bartleby. That is also the name of Herman Melville’s clerk, the man whose whole story is a polite refusal to do anything at all. I have no idea if Rome planned the rhyme. But the night runs in the right order for it. First comes a film about a woman learning to refuse. Then comes one run by a man whose name means refusal.

The Case for the Double Bill, and the Case Against

The double feature has been creeping back. For Halloween 2025, XYZ Films, Flawless and AMC put Hallow Road and Vincent Must Die out together. It was billed as the first new double feature in cinemas for nearly twenty years. Variety traced that gap back to Grindhouse in 2007. Creepy Catalog also reported that Silt’s team was using Demand the Screen to ask local cinemas to book it, with Dead Dawn as its partner.

For two films with no buyer, the logic is plain. Two films sell as a package. A horror-comedy and a cosmic horror reach two crowds who might never pick the other film alone. A buyer at the back of the room sees one team make two very different films.

There are honest reasons to be wary. Three and a half hours of film, plus two Q&As, is a long sit. And Wiseau brings a crowd that comes to laugh at a film, not with it. Silt could easily be watched through the lens of The Room, whatever it is actually trying to do.

The running order helps with both. Dead Dawn goes first, so the laughs go where they are meant to go. By the time Silt starts, the room has had its fun, and the lake gets a crowd that is ready to take it seriously.

Either way, Rome and LaBorde are not waiting to be picked. On 7 November they pick the room, the screen and the order. Then they ask the rest of us to sit through both.

That is the right instinct for indie horror. It is the same one behind the festival films we cover in our Nightmares Film Festival reviews. If you are in Los Angeles next weekend, it is worth your Saturday night. If you are not, keep an eye on our horror features and on Ginger Nuts of Horror for what happens to these two films next.