A member of a famous K-Pop boy band, whose face has been disfigured by an accident, must undergo surgery to repair his fracturing image.

Director Biography – Benedict Chue

Benedict Chiu is a Taiwanese-American filmmaker originally from Saratoga, CA. He graduated from USC with a joint degree in Business Administration and Cinematic Arts. He worked at the NBCUniversal Page Program, APA Agency, and Scott Free Productions, before being selected for the Warner Bros. Television Writers' Workshop. He was most recently a staff writer on Season 3 of CALL ME KAT (FOX).

As a writer-director, Benedict’s K-Pop horror short film BOY BAND starring Jay Lee (CSI: Vegas) won the Audience Award for Best Midnight Short at Dances With Films NY. It also played at CAAMFest, HollyShorts Monthly Screening, and Aesthetica Film Festival in its ongoing festival run. He also wrote and directed S.Q.A.G. (SHORT QUIET ASIAN GIRL) (2022), which premiered at New York Asian Film Festival and LA Shorts Fest, DANCING SHOES (2018), which was featured in Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie’s “Danser” exhibition in Paris, France, and SICK SUPERHERO (2017), which won the DJI Campus Stories Short Film Competition.

He is also an SFFilm Rainin Grant finalist and a Rideback Rise Circle member.

Director Statement

I’m fascinated with boy bands. I mock their near-religious fandoms, while simultaneously being envious of their collective stardom. I pit individual singers against each other in my head, trying to sift out who’s actually talented, and keep an intangible scorecard once they eventually “take a break” and go off onto their fluctuating solo careers. In another life, I would’ve loved to be in one, but in this life - with all my college acapella group rejections - I can only write about one.

I love what Jordan Peele has done with the horror genre, re-defining Black protagonists in what he describes as “fucked-up films” he’s “not supposed to make.” Challenging our cultural perceptions while making entertaining thrillers.

I want to use genre as a storytelling vehicle for Asian-American characters as well, and Boy Band is my horror take on a K-Pop movie. It’s a response to Hollywood chasing the trend of greenlighting K-Pop movies during the explosive popularity of K-Pop in the past decade (ie. BTS). It’s a subversion/rejection of the glitzy glamour of K-Pop and similarly stitched together boy bands like One Direction, and an exploration of the darker side to celebrity and fandom. It’s essentially a fucked up, twisted joke I wrote taken too far…

What if someone you idolize isn’t exactly who they say they are? What if public personas are carefully, surgically constructed for your pleasure? Sometimes we can’t escape who people say we are… because they’ve already decided who you are, for you.