Joel Haver — spearheading an indie revolution with 12 feature films in 12 months

Joel Haver epitomizes everything I’ve been trying to get across with my series on low budget films. Like many creators on Youtube, he’s proven time and again that great stories only need talent and dedication. His video Fast, Cheap, Good, Pick Three explains how working within your limitations can spur monumental filmmaking, and that the constraints of the industry only kneecaps the art it’s ostensibly there to make. His annual Instead of Watching the Oscars, Make a Movie event has led others to make hundreds of films in short order, and his Havermation tutorial kicked off an entire genre of animation.

Joel’s films usually capture a place and feeling in time. Island tasked him with the difficult prospect of intimacy and socialization. Drowning in Potential painted the picture of a struggling actor, working to dig his way out from the bottom of LA’s heap of hungry and strapped professionals. His short films got him fame and financial success, but weren’t enough to sate his artistic interests or prove his point about independent film. Throughout 2024, he set out to complete 12 feature films, using the Academy of Motion Pictures definition of greater than 40 minutes. If he had made just one of these in a year, I would have been impressed. I can easily call a few of them the best movies of the year, and Hello My Beautiful Creatures one of my favorites of all time. To have succeeded at this task with such quality is incredible. Impossible. Something that I am comfortable saying should cement him as one of the greatest living filmmakers. Whether the filmmaking industry recognizes this achievement is irrelevant. That industry has proven itself to be out of touch sufficiently enough. Today I’m going to quickly run through his twelve films and hope you take the time to check some of them out, and start making art yourself.

1. The Hero’s Journey aka My Life aka the Caleb Johnston Story (I’m Caleb)

We all know someone like Caleb. He never quite grew up, and drifts through life without direction while everyone around him grows up and finds their place. The film depicts a kind of quiet, regular sadness that holds power because of how it manages to hit close to home. Caleb isn’t a great guy, but he isn’t terrible either. He means well but he doesn’t have the skills to stand on his own. What results is funny, sad, moving, and utterly empathetic. A look at someone who somehow manages to be pathetic and endearing at the same time.

 

2. Anyone Else But Me

Dealing in the artificial self importance of would-be filmmakers, Anyone Else But Me starts with a sin that spirals out of control. Its lead goes on dates as different characters to challenge himself, but doesn’t know when to stop. After impersonating a millionaire, he gets a date kidnapped for ransom money he doesn’t have. The madcap screwups that follow are hilarious to be sure, but also surprisingly thoughtful about the types of personalities that make their way into filmmaking, for what are sometimes the wrong reasons. One of my favorites, this ties itself together wonderfully by the end, with lots of small details paying off in unexpected ways.

3. The Text

This year’s during the Oscars film was shot in one take; after a party, a group of friends wakes to find the wreckage of the night before. Mostly that consists of solo cups and detritus, but Dax Flame finds a drunken text to his ex-girlfriend, so egregious that the gang has to strategize a response before the situation implodes. A simple premise played out with great actors, it develops impressively from the start.

4. Hello My Beautiful Creatures (my pick of the year)

In the space of two and a half months, Joel and Erik Bernhagen animated the longest stop motion film of all time. What results is an existential look at the inner lives of children’s dolls. Toy Story as filtered through a layer of dread and comedy and shameless, lovely cynicism. If this were the only movie of the year, hell, of Joel’s career in general, I would have called it a masterpiece of a lifetime. Holy Hell, I can’t gush about how much I love this movie. Its existence at all is impressive in a way most people can’t understand. Though the framerate is low, it does nothing to diminish the grimy yet playful aesthetic, and the story that results has to be seen to be believed. Please, in the name of all that’s holy, if you ever took any of my recommendations seriously, watch this movie. It needs to be seen to be believed.

5. It Just Takes Time

A smaller, simpler story, It Just Takes Time shows us friends coming together after a tragedy, struggling and failing to find some moments of joy and community. Nothing has ever captured grief as brilliantly, with its quiet and powerless dread. Most visually and conceptually striking is its fireworks scene, in which eruptions of color and lights on blank, empty faces do little to hold back the darkness. I also have to give a shout out to the score from Droodle which is a great listen on its own.

6. Hiccups

Hiccups is a romance, and sometimes a comedy. Jumping around in time, it shows us each character in a relationship looking back on their time together and asking whether they should stick it out. The answer isn’t certain, all the good and bad tied together, and it shows how well Joel knows the feeling of re-examing a past relationship. Impossible to call it any one thing, this swirl of moments and memories leave a feeling greater than the sum of any individual events. More than most others, this show’s off Joel’s skill at editing and structuring a complex story.

7. The Diarrhea Brothers Save the Day

A comedy about three brothers who sell barrels of diarrhea, this is a ridiculous screwball comedy that is the only one of the year not to catch me. Rest assured, it has great performances, costuming, and props, with special credit due to Sethward for the diarrhea barrel mascot. The Bechdel Test is one of a few running gags that easily makes this movie worth it. I only fell out of love with it because its ultimate plot felt pretty disconnected from the elements set up earlier in the film, while it missed some obvious and powerful potential for jokes based off of its own conceits, like where they source the diarrhea (yeah I know, not the most substantive complaint). Still very worth your time, it was nice to see Joel and friends embrace a concept this ludicrous.

8. Love, Celeste

Three men meet in Dubai to follow instructions left by Celeste, a woman they have all loved. Powerful, quiet, and thoughtful, its brief turn to the supernatural helps the movie lean into the questions of loss and fleeting beauty that are at the heart of many of our lives. While here I also need to shout out the works of its other stars, both lockdown movies. Sheep Theater from Daniel Lotz depicts a man slowly losing his mind as he voices toy sheep he is locked in with, and The Printer and the Boy by Zaid Aftab covers similar but distinct ground, as Zaib comes to grips with knowing himself while alone, and starts a relationship with his sentient printer. Much of that energy comes through in Love, Celeste; the combination of their talents delivers a potent emptiness in the wake of what brings them together.

9. The 9th Movie

During a cabin trip with his friends, Joel becomes disheartened by their lack of enthusiasm for his 12 film project. To teach them what it takes, he gives them an ultimatum to come together and make a feature film in 48 hours or…else. A true ensemble piece, this spirals out of control and turns into a totally new experience as it develops.

10. A Little Film About Friendship

Nothing really happens in this movie, but it’s the kind of deliberate, important nothing that we seek out in friendships. With longtime collaborator Trent Lenkarski, he goes on a weekend trip and talks about random thoughts. Occasionally funny, sometimes introspective, the point isn’t what they talk about but that they are there to experience it together. It’s there to show us that real friendship isn’t about goals or accomplishments, but finding people you can be comfortable around when you’re totally yourself, without other motives.

11. You’re Point Girl

Point Girl (known for her gimmick of pointing at things) is successful enough on the internet to make herself famous and financially independent, but at the cost of any genuine relationships or artistic development. There’s some real genius at work in the simplicity of this movie’s presentation: shot like a phone camera or instagram post, the lengthy shots with darkness on either side of the screen show how isolated she is by social media. All the people around her want something from her that doesn’t come from her at all, as a person. Whether to attack her for clout, manipulate her for money, or stalk her out of a misplaced sense of ownership, they don’t know or value her at all. She starts to realize this, and struggles to break away, finding out how badly she’s neglected her own drives and talent. I’ve seen people slowly destroyed by social media and the parasitic miasma of Los Angeles (seriously, the place is cursed), and nothing has gotten it so well as this movie. To succeed she has to change herself, cut pieces off, and lose whoever it was she set out to be in the first place. Painful and tragic, this is a movie that speaks to the common but unrecognized pains of the modern age.

12. Coming Home

After a year of stories, Joel takes a moment to tell some simple truths. His home, his family, his story. Its power is in its simplicity. A contemplation and reflection on the road that got us here.

See below for our list of partners and affiliates: