★ Featured in Variety Magazine

Grimm Pictures  /  An Elevated Horror Drama

Helen's Bridge

Elevated horror rooted in a real location, a real haunting, and footage that has never been explained.

Genre Elevated Horror Drama / Psychological Thriller
Format Feature Film
Status Final Packaging — 2026
Set Asheville, North Carolina
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A real place.
A real haunting.

Helen's Bridge is one of the most documented haunted locations in the United States — a stone arch in Asheville, North Carolina with a legend that has never been fully explained. This film begins where the ghost tours end.

Helen's Bridge is an elevated horror feature drawing inspiration from the greatest works in the genre's literary tradition — Shakespeare's Macbeth and Bram Stoker's Dracula. Like those works, it is a story in which the darkness is sophisticated, the dread is earned, and the horror means something.

At its heart, this is a story about grief — and what grief does to a person when it goes unresolved. It is about love that feeds on life, consuming everything it touches. About obsession as a slow descent. About the particular sadness and loneliness of falling from grace — of once having everything and watching it slip away, one dark choice at a time.

"Not everything that happens at Helen's Bridge has an explanation. That's not a marketing line. That's the truth that drove this film."

The script is built around a real location — the historic stone bridge in Asheville, NC, recognised as one of the most haunted sites in America. It is grounded in a real haunting, documented over generations and never satisfactorily explained. And it incorporates unexplained footage captured during production that the filmmakers themselves cannot account for.

This is not a found-footage film. It is a cinematic, character-driven horror experience — one with the literary ambition of the classics and the authentic chill of something that actually happened.

She doesn't know you're watching.

Written & Directed By

Stephen Presley

Genre

Elevated Horror Drama / Psychological Thriller

Format

Feature Film

Set

Asheville, NC

Status

Final Packaging · 2026

Production

Grimm Pictures / Atlantic Way

Based

Northern Ireland

Comparable Films

2019 — Netflix

Marianne

Samuel Bodin

A writer discovers the demon she created in her fiction is real — and hunting her. Grief, obsession, and the terror of a story that takes on a life of its own. One of the closest tonal matches to Helen's Bridge in recent memory.

2018 — Netflix

The Haunting of Hill House

Mike Flanagan

Elevated horror built on grief, family, and the weight of the past. Proves that audiences respond powerfully to horror that means something emotionally.

2021 — Netflix

Midnight Mass

Mike Flanagan

Love that literally feeds on life. Obsession, falling from grace, and the darkness that hides inside devotion. A direct thematic cousin to Helen's Bridge.

Additional comps available in the full pitch deck.

Creative Team

Stephen Presley

Stephen Presley

Writer & Director — Grimm Pictures

Creator of Helen's Bridge and founder of Grimm Pictures. Stephen wrote the original script and directs the project, developing a commercially focused slate of elevated genre films through UK/Ireland production pathways. IMDB →

Gemma Essau

Gemma Essau

Screenwriting Assistant

Based in Spain, Gemma works closely with Stephen as screenwriting assistant on Helen's Bridge, contributing to the development and refinement of the script throughout its creative journey.

TH

Thomas Humphreys

Staff Screenwriter & Polish

Welsh and Irish, Thomas brings a Celtic literary sensibility to the project as associate staff screenwriter and script polish, sharpening the voice and texture of the screenplay.

Request the Deck

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Or email directly: films@grimmpictures.com