Sam Thompson kicked off 2022 by being named one of the ISA’s Top 25 to Watch.

“I was super excited about that,” he said about the win. “It definitely felt like it’d been a while since I got a little wind, so it was nice to have that little bit of momentum going into this year and we’ll see what happens! Just gotta keep going. Keep grinding, keep doing the work, and hope something happens.”

The one-time journalism major at West Virginia University has always had an “active imagination.”

“One day I saw a poster for the school's Film Club and procrastinated going for a few weeks, but once I did, they were looking for ideas to shoot a short film and I pitched them something just and they loved it!” Thompson said.

“And then they said, ‘Go write the script.’ I'd never done that before,” he chucked. “I had never written anything before. I liked movies, but I wasn't really as obsessed with them as I am now. But I went home, and I did a bunch of research, and I just fell head over heels in love with it. I also got to help produce and act in it and getting to wear all those hats and watch cameras roll and watch the editing process and just be there from start to finish—I fell in love with every aspect.”

The short film he created during his time in the club was called My Other Half and dealt with some heavy and important subject matter.

“I struggled with bipolar back in my sophomore year of college when we did that film,” he recalled. “I had survived two suicide attempts, and this was on the heels of that. It was a way for me to kind of reconcile with what I felt like was the other half of myself because you have the manic version and you have the depressive state.”

Thompson added, “It felt like they were constantly at war with each other…the process really allowed me to identify them in a way that I’d never been able to before.”

“It really shone a light through all of that and it gave me direction,” he said. “It gave me a reason to get up the next day and to try and be better, and become more empathetic; it gave me motivation and purpose and all those other buzzwords—and ever since then, my life just has never been the same.”

Eleven short films later, all of which Thompson both wrote and directed, he realized that he wanted to get better at writing more than anything else.. While working at the school’s bookstore after graduation, Thompson did nothing but research, devouring craft books and scripts nine hours a day, five to six days a week.

“The more I studied, the more I figured out how to translate the pictures in my head into words onto the page,” Thompson said. “The more I just fell in love with it. And the more I realized that, ‘Wow, I'm probably more of a writer than I am a director!’ Which is all a roundabout way of saying that I want to do all the things.”

“I look at someone like M. Night Shyamalan who does everything,” he continued. “I look at someone like a Paul Thomas Anderson or Tarantino, and I love and respect that there are people out there who are able to write what they want to make and direct it how they want to. And obviously, you need to be a certain kind of person to get that clout to be able to kind of walk that way without people criticizing it, but that's the hope and the goal is to one day be able to walk in their shoes.”

His next step is shooting Blood Sugar, a short film he wrote and is co-produced by fellow Rising through the Ranks alum April Sánchez. The short follows a desperate mother who must retrieve insulin for her diabetic daughter in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. Buried in the film is the symbolism of the American healthcare industry.

Thompson has always been drawn to horror, more specifically to horror movie covers.

“Some of my most vivid memories are walking around Blockbuster and looking at the backs and the covers of horror movies; I would always have these nightmares after,” he said. “They were very, very vivid and detailed and brutal — and they were all based on the backs of these movies.”

The catharsis of filmmaking has allowed Thompson to work through some of his own struggles.

“It feels like horror is a way for me to not just externalize things, but put other people in a position to do something about them and watch them succeed,” he said. “I feel like the more I've written in horror, the more I've really started to understand myself and where a lot of my fears come from.”

One of his favorite things about watching a horror movie is when they can subvert people’s expectations, which all comes down to knowing the tropes.

“I love writing zombie movies and vampire stuff, basically any worn-out kind of thing,” he said. “I love looking for deeper or even more niche corners of those and finding more character-focused ways to use that backdrop to prop up these characters. And then with that, I feel like I'm able to weaponize a lot with the expectations and tropes that people go in expecting, then I can serve it to them on a platter and when I lift the plate it's something completely different.”

While working in IP isn’t a dream of Thompson’s, there is one particular world he’d love to play in: a horror remake of The Grinch.

“I texted my manager, like, ‘Listen, I know it's a long shot. But if Universal ever opens that IP for a Horror remake, I want to throw my hat in the ring as aggressively as possible,’” he said. “That 2005 Jim Carrey version—it’s one of my all-time favorites. I watch it three times a year, every year.”

Thompson also hopes to be one day be in the position to not only write, direct and produce his own work, but “produce other people's work that may not have a chance in the studio ecosystem.”

“My ideal goal way down the line is getting to make scripts that just really spark and stick to me, getting a chance to push those up the hill and make them happen,” he said.

When it comes to wise words for other writers, Thompson tells other writers that “it's so difficult to be a very empathetic person—or for someone who has a mental illness and put yourself out there as it is.

“Then to constantly get either rejections or people telling you that ‘No, you didn't do this well enough’ or ‘No, you didn't do this correctly,’ it can kind of take the air out of every inch of the body,” he explained. “But if you do it because you love it, and if you do it because you look forward to the work and just have stories that you can't live without telling, then you'll be fine.”

"You'll be able to do this as long as you need to until something happens,” Thompson continued. “I genuinely have the mindset that the only people who don't find success in this industry, it's for one of two reasons: either you're a dick, or you gave up.”

While there may be some exceptions, he said understanding the distinction has “really helped me to keep moving forward with everything.”

“For directing and producing, I'd say just write something that you can make for under $1,000 and then just go make it!” he said. “Whether it's with a flip phone camera, or an iPhone camera, or a DSLR or just some Fuji film, making a bunch of stills like a flipbook or something… and then just go get the shot.”