Since he was a little kid, Ramone Menon has always imagined the birth of Jesus must have been pretty scary.

So he decided to make a horror movie about it.

His short, “Virgin”, premiered at this year’s FilmQuest, which took place from Oct. 24 to Nov. 2. He and his team — on which he served as director, writer, and producer alongside cinematographer Tommy Oceanak and co-producer Annalea Fiachi — finished the film just two days before it played at the festival in Provo, Utah.

“When I was growing up and listening to the biblical stories, I always thought the nativity story sounded like it was a scary haunted house story to me. I couldn’t imagine being Mary and Joseph all alone out there while Mary was about to give birth to baby Jesus,” Menon tells MovieMaker.

“The idea of what could have been going on in Joseph’s mind at this time – wondering if his fiancee and the woman he loves, Mary’s pregnancy is immaculate or not – was fascinating especially since this aspect of the story is very seldom analyzed or written about in detail.”

Menon has a background in both Hinduism and Christianity, giving him a unique perspective on the nativity story.

“Since I grew up in a household where multiple religions were worshipped – Hinduism from my mother’s side and Christianity from some part of my father’s side – my relationship with religion was always complex and ambiguous as I was exposed to both religions and went to a Catholic school,” he says.

The film follows Mary and Joseph, renamed Miryam (Jessica Damouni) and Yosef (Herman Gambhir), as they prepare for the birth of Jesus in a barn. Yosef is still unsure if he believes that Miryam’s baby was immaculately conceived. As Miryam begs God to show Yosef a sign that she’s telling the truth, the Devil (Katie Lynn Stoddard) pays them a visit.

“I wanted to make a movie that was similar in tone of The Shining, The Witch and Beyond The Hills. The idea of mixing retelling the nativity story as a haunted house movie is what I wanted to do — this would allow the themes of love and faith to be explored in an entertaining genre fashion,” Menon says.

“I wanted to ensure that throughout the film you cannot tell for certain if Miryam and Yosef are being haunted or if the hauntings are the projections of Yosef’s jealousy and/or Miryam’s guilt.”

More From Ramone Menon About ‘Virgin’

In addition to using more period-accurate names for Mary and Joseph, Menon also had the script translated into Aramaic in order to make the film more realistic.

“Making the film in the Aramaic language added an extra depth and challenge as I wanted to ensure the characters and story was grounded in reality before the story is invaded with the supernatural and scares. Both the actors had to learn and rehearse their dialogue in English first and then translated it to Aramaic with the help of an Aramaic translator,” he says.

Back in biblical times, around 4 B.C., women who were found guilty of committing adultery would have been stoned to death, Menon says. He wanted the gravity of whether or not Joseph believed Mary’s story to be felt in the movie, because if he had not believed her, he would have had the power to have her killed.

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“Mary and Joseph were engaged, and then she goes to her cousin’s house for four months, and she comes back pregnant. And when she comes back, Joseph apparently went into a depression, and the only reason he decided to stay with her is because otherwise she would be stoned to death, because they would think that she’d cheated on him and was unfaithful,” he says. “But according to the Bible, Joseph, in one of his drunken stupors, sees the Archangel Gabriel who comes and tells him that, no, this is the Son of God.”

Shot with a budget of $26,000 on a DJI Ronin 4D 4-Axis cinema camera and gimbal in 8K, Menon is in the process of developing the feature length version of “Virgin.”

“My cinematographer Tommy Oceanak convinced me to shoot on DJI Ronin 4D because we could move faster while filming since we had a lot of scenes to shoot in three days and the Ronin 4D gimbal allowed us to get away without using dolly tracks and the steadicam,” Menon says.

The short version of “Virgin” is currently being submitted to other film festivals, with the feature length version scheduled to being shooting in early 2025.

Main Image: Jessica Damouni as Miryam in “Virgin” courtesy of Ramone Menon