When Callie Ott sat down to create “Final Girl: The Musical,” she reflected on being cast in her ex-boyfriend’s horror movie project and how that relationship had its own creepy moments.
The actress and writer thought about some of his past interactions that bordered on emotional and mental abuse with a tinge of stalker tendencies. After some introspection, Ott had the idea to tell her story through the lens of a final girl.
“To me, a final girl is the last girl standing who’s gone through it,” said Ott in a phone interview. “Despite all the odds, she’s gritty, smart and capable of really fighting for her life and what she believes in.”
This year at Midsummer Scream, happening at the Long Beach Convention Center Aug. 7-9, Ott will perform “Final Girl: The Musical,” a comedic-horror telling inspired by true events with some embellishments. The musical, inspired by Carol Clover’s 1992 book “Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender,” where she introduced the final girl concept, will happen Saturday, Aug. 8 at 3:00 p.m. and then Sunday, Aug. 9 at 5:00 p.m.
“There’s obviously some things that I’ve kind of made up, to ease the tension and add some comedic elements by tapping into some of the campiness,” she said. “I love this show because it has the dramatic parts that may resonate with you if you had a similar experience, but it’s not preachy or anything like that. There’s so much comedy and ridiculousness that it helps you breathe and relax a little bit in the show.”
The musical runs about an hour and is performed entirely by Ott, who sings all 11 songs and delivers all the dialogue. The production is bare-bones, meaning nothing too fancy, which Ott said was on purpose. She wanted the show to be something easy to pull off so she wouldn’t have an excuse to back out. However, doing the brunt of the work has required some extra effort.
“I feel like I’m training for the Olympics every time I gear up to do it again,” she said.
Ott said she practices with Tony Gonzalez, who was the musical director and arranger for the musical, for a couple of days to get her voice up to the challenge, as well as by herself the days leading up to the show.
She first performed the musical in 2024 at the Hollywood Fringe Festival, where it won “The Screamiest” award, a special prize presented by Midsummer Scream to the production that best embraces horror, the macabre, and the spooky spirit of Halloween. Ott has performed the show since and has embraced the spirit of the final girl in her own life.
“The show is holding a mirror up to the truth of who I am, the things that I’ve survived, the decisions that I’ve made, the ripple effect that those decisions have had on my life, and taking ownership of them,” she said. “It’s really asking about the part that I play in my own suffering and how we can be our own hero. I’m the only person that’s going to save me, and I can’t keep relying on other people or waiting around for them to come in and save the day.”
Midsummer Scream is leaning heavily into horror-comedy musicals this year, and will feature Ott’s musical along with “Stephen King’s IT: A Musical Parody,” “Scream’d,” “Monsterville,” and “Return of the Living Drag Musical” at the Ghost Light Theatre.
Actor, songwriter and musician Matthew Patrick Davis and his friends at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater also created “The Shining! The Musical!” that will be part of the musical programming at this year’s Midsummer Scream.
The half-hour show is a comedic retelling of the iconic Stanley Kubrick film that will be performed at 1:30 and 4:00 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 9. Davis will take on the role of Jack, his girlfriend will play Wendy and Anne Gregory will play Danny.
Midsummer Scream marks a decade of fear and frights in Long Beach
“At first I imagined creating a score as Stephen Sondheim did for ‘Sweeney Todd’ where it is all very scary,” said Davis in a phone interview. “But in creating a comedic musical, we found that it’s best to have the scary things under a peppy up tempo and the juxtaposition would hopefully be humorous.”
Davis said that he wrote the music and lyrics, and his friends Zack Paez and Joe Chandler wrote the story and helped him punch up the lyrics in between. The actor also has experience writing for children’s shows such as “The Ghost and Molly McGee” on Disney Channel, “T.O.T.S.,” “Pupstruction” and “RoboGobo” on Disney Junior. However, writing the music for a reimagined version of one of his favorite movies felt like a special treat for him.
“Being able to write a peppy song about a man who has abused his son and is about to go on a murderous rampage trying to murder his wife and child is fun to me,” he jested. “You start realizing like, ‘Oh, daughter, rhymes with slaughter.’”
One of Davis’ most prominent roles in horror was acting as The Mother in the film “Barbarian,” and he will be signing autographs at the convention for fans in attendance on Sunday. He said he is tickled by being a part of a Venn diagram between horror and comedy where he can play scary ladies but also write songs for Disney.
“As far as shooting ‘Barbarian,’ I was aware of the bonkers script and that I was going to be doing some wacky-weird things that I never thought I’d do, like forcibly breastfeed Justin Long,” Davis said. “I was grateful for everyone’s sense of humor on set, but at the same time I was taking it very seriously. I did all this research on feral children that have been raised in cages like dark, depressing things to get into the psyche of The Mother, but then you are also laughing between takes at the absurdity of it all.”
He said that “The Shining! The Musical!” is going to be a lot more of a scrappy fringe-style production, like many of the others, and he’s optimistic that what they lack in production they will make up for in humor.
“I hope that people get a lot of laughs and that they have a one or two peppy tunes stuck in their head as they leave the theater,” he said. “I also hope they come over to my table and let me bottle-feed them as The Mother.”
Midsummer Scream
When: 6-10 p.m., Friday, Aug. 7; 11 a.m.- 7 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8; and 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 9. VIP and Gold Bat Passholders receive 10 a.m. entry on Saturday and Sunday.
Where: Long Beach Convention Center, 300 E Ocean Blvd., Long Beach.
Tickets: $42 for Friday, Aug. 7; $60 for Saturday, Aug. 8; $54 for Sunday, Aug. 9; $80 for the weekend. Gold Bat VIP passes are $199.
Information: midsummerscream.org.