ARTS&LIFE

group in Toronto. The funeral was 
the following morning, and the 
overnight shooting schedule wore 
on her. But surrounded by strangers, 
she didn’
t speak about it for most of 
the night. 
Barkan, noticing something was 
wrong, worked to create a friendly 
atmosphere on set. He played games 
between takes to pass the time and 
peppered Fisher with jokes over the 
shoot’
s long hours. 
“
Ariel realized that I wasn’
t exactly 
a creep. She still didn’
t know what 
word to use exactly, but it wasn’
t 
‘
creep,
’
” Barkan recalls. “Then, when 
it came out that I was Jewish as well, 
immediately we were able to speak 
the same language in a way that oth-
ers weren’
t.
”
As a bonus, both lovebirds have 
blurry background cameos in the 
finished film.
Barkan and Fisher are what one 
could call a Jewish horror movie 
power couple. Barkan works in pro-
ducing, acquisition and distribution 
for independent horror films. He has 
overseen titles including Shifter, about 
a time-travel experiment gone awry, 
and Blood Vessel, about a boat infested 
with Nazi vampires. Previously, he 
was an editor and critic at horror 
websites Dread Central and Bloody 
Disgusting. 
Fisher is a freelance horror writer 
and editor for a range of outlets, 
including the influential Fangoria 
magazine, and runs The Bite, a weekly 
newsletter published by the horror 
streaming service Shudder. The 
couple split their time between Ann 
Arbor and Ontario.
Within the devoted, tight-knit 
community of horror fans, Barkan 
and Fisher are revered for their 
open-hearted enthusiasm for the 
genre, as well as a deep well of 
knowledge about its many grisly odds and ends. They’
re as con-
versant in Nightmare on Elm Street sequels as they are in brutal New 
French Extremity films.
The two got engaged in October 2019. They’
d initially planned 

for a long engagement and a wed-
ding that would celebrate both their 
shared Jewish identity and, fittingly, 
their love of horror. (They had an 
engagement photo shoot at Storm 
Crow, a Toronto bar with different 
themed rooms modeled after Twin 
Peaks, H.P
. Lovecraft and other 
creepy classics.) 
But just days after they returned to 
Fisher’
s hometown of Toronto from 
a trip to Israel, the COVID-19 crisis 
escalated into a global pandemic. 
Given the circumstances, it 
seemed best to make things official 
on paper and worry about a fuller 
celebration later. So, the couple 
found a magistrate in Cornwall, 
Ontario, held a small secular cere-
mony with a few close relatives, and 
blasted a mix of rock and metal on 
the drive home to a dinner of sushi 
and champagne. 
“It wound up being kind of per-
fect,
” Fisher mused with a smile. 

CHILDREN OF THE DAMNED
Over a distanced interview with the 
couple and their dog, Dante, in Ann 
Arbor’
s Gallup Park, they recounted 
their earliest ties to the genre. For 
both Barkan and Fisher, these date 
back well into childhood.
Fisher’
s maternal grandfather lost 
much of his family to the Holocaust 
but managed to flee from pres-
ent-day Belarus to Western Europe 
and later Argentina before settling in 
Ontario in the 1970s. The trauma left 
him distant from his faith, shaping 
the more secularized Jewish identity 
that was passed on in her family 
going forward.
Fisher recalled listening to the 
films her older brother was allowed 
to watch in the other room of her 
family home in Thornhill, a Toronto 
suburb. She could overhear scream-
ing and crunching during films like Jaws and Carrie; those noises
alone during her single-digit years were enough to reel her in.
“I have vivid memories of being in my childhood home in 
Thornhill and doing a puzzle with my mom in the dining room,
” 

continued from page 25

“SCREAMS OF PEOPLE 
BEING EATEN BY A SHARK 
LULL ME TO SLEEP LIKE 
A LULLABY.”

— ARIEL FISHER

26 | OCTOBER 29 • 2020 

