By: Lotti Pharriss Knowles
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/29/2025 – Chicago-based filmmaking team Miles August and Chris Paicely (known professionally as Chris & Miles) have just released the poster image and a trailer for their latest short film, entitled The Girl in the Street. This is their second collaboration under their production banner Swym Good, after their first short ALUS hit the film festival circuit (and won some awards) in 2022.
I was lucky to get a sneak peek at The Girl in the Street and hope to soon be announcing its festival premiere. The film is well-crafted on all levels (from writing to acting to cinematography) and decidedly creepy (think Midsommar meets Get Out). It also left me wanting more and could be easily translated to a feature-length project. My fingers are crossed that someone like Jason Blum or Jordan Peele will help take this talented duo to the next level.
Trailer:
The film centers around the character of Malachi (Shawn Roundtree, Jr.) and a job opportunity that requires he relocate to a small town. Once there, he is physically removed from his very ill sister whom he’d been caring for and psychologically unmoored from anything (or anyone) familiar. The titular girl in the street outside his new home forces him to answer the question: What is one willing to sacrifice to be a good person? (I will spoil no more, but the answer chilled me to the bone!)
I sat down with Chris & Miles to discuss their collaborative journey, the development of this project, and how they were able to secure a voiceover cameo from horror icon Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street). Enjoy our conversation:
“We wrote the script while we were at SXSW in 2024, one night in our Airbnb, and from there it just snowballed,” says Paicely. “The film itself has a lot of us in it, in that some of our personal experiences were inspiration for the story. Not quite as crazy as what Malachi goes through, but definitely influenced by us being people who lived in a city and then moved to suburban or rural areas, and how you change in order to fit in.”
As for Langenkamp’s involvement, August explains: “We are not well-connected in the film industry, we just take really big shots. There’s a certain level of delusion that we have, like, ‘I wonder if we could get this person? Let’s just try to reach out to them!’ And with the internet, it makes (celebrities) more accessible.” In this case, like so many others, dreaming big paid off for these filmmakers.
To find out what’s coming up for The Girl in the Street, and for Chris & Miles, you can follow them on Instagram: @thegirlinthestreet and @swymgood.
