At Fantastic Fest 2023, writer/director Francis Galluppi made his feature-length directorial debut with The Last Stop in Yuma County, a tense thriller involving bad timing, worse luck, and oh so much greed. By May of 2024, it was released in theaters and on digital, distributed by Well Go USA and, by July 2024, out on physical formats with a small collection of bonus materials. The feature would be a jumping off point for Galluppi as he’s now been tapped by Jose Cañas of Ghost House Pictures to direct the next cinematic entry in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead Burn (TBA). However, that’s not the most interesting part of the journey of the film; it’s how the film itself was made and the critical contribution of James Claeys, founder of Local Boogeyman Productions and best friend to Galluppi, who sold his house to finance the making of Yuma County. Having its world premiere at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2026 is co-director Eric Foss (The Bare You) and Brandon Pickering’s (One Night, in an Alley) Sell Your House, the feature-length story detailing the making of Yuma County and its impact on both Galluppi and Claeys. Eschewing the typical behind-the-scenes, glossy, corporate expectations of a making-of tale, Foss and Pickering infuse Sell Your House with a kinetic punk rock approach that wears its heart on its sleeve as the experience of movie-making is itself a miracle and one that’s hard on any relationship.
L-R: James Claeys and Francis Galluppi in documentary SELL YOUR HOUSE. Photo courtesy of Not A Serious Human.
Before moving forward with this review, a disclosure feels required: As remote press for Fantastic Fest 2023, I reviewed The Last Stop at Yuma County and EoM Senior Interviewer Thomas Manning sat down with Galluppi for a remote interview to discuss the project and its premiere. Not only was my review pull-quoted in the trailer, but I would conduct a home review for Yuma County’s home release and Manning would conduct a second interview with Galluppi on an episode of Meet Me at the Movies. It’s because the story of Claeys selling his home is included in the making-of featurette on the home edition that I reached out to the Sell Your House team to try to cover this film as part of my SBIFF 2026 remote coverage. Upon watching it, I discovered that my pull-quote is partially shown (no attribution) and Manning appears long enough to say “Yuma County.” Additionally, current contributor AJ Friar also appears briefly, though within the context of his work with a different outlet. None of the three of us were aware of our inclusion prior to screening the documentary and none of the inclusions are significant to the intention of the documentary to influence the opinions on the making of the documentary to to warrant shuttering the review as a whole. in the interest of transparency, however, it is necessary to point out EoM’s connection to both Yuma County and Sell Your House before continuing.
L-R: Francis Galluppi and James Claeys in documentary SELL YOUR HOUSE. Photo courtesy of Not A Serious Human.
The opening of Sell Your House is a banger. Literally. It opens on Day 22 of a the planned 21-day shoot in which they need to blow up a gas tanker truck. They get one shot at this to get it right. It’s tense for a number of reasons through a combination of the obvious and the implied. The obvious stems from the limited nature of their resources (one tanker; one actor) and that the shoot has gone longer than anticipated (22 out of 21 days); while the implied goes to what must be running through Director Galluppi’s mind. Amid balancing the needs of his script, the unpredictability of shooting outside, getting the cast where they need to be to achieve the goals of his story, and craft a film that he can be proud of, there’s also the tension of ensuring that it’s a film he can afford to make, to keep the balance sheet in the black, and, most of all, that the finished film is one that people will want to see. That’s a great deal of pressure from the jump and Foss and Pickering ensure that the audience is aware of all of this before they drop the big bomb whose fallout hovers over the rest of the experience: Claeys sold his house to fund the project. Established as longtime friends who communicate regularly and who bonded over their love of movies, Foss and Pickering use this bombastic moment at the start to illustrate the closeness and drive that both possess, as well as use the explosion as a metaphor for the presumed ridiculousness of Claeys gamble. Because it is a gamble. But it’s not all about the money and that’s why Sell Your House ends up landing like a surprise sucker punch. Using a mixture of talking head interviews with cast and crew of Yuma County throughout the pre-production, production, post-production, and promotional periods, as well as chats with Claeys’s mother and Galluppi’s wife, Foss and Pickering present a story that’s about more than the monumental act of making a film and the hope of recouping the financial investment, it’s about the unexpected difficulty of recouping the emotional one.
A still from documentary SELL YOUR HOUSE. Photo courtesy of Not A Serious Human.
With the intro made and the setup formed, Foss and Pickering revert to where the two first meet, giving audiences a little bit about them individually before establishing their meeting and mutual appreciation. Using frenetic editing, the filmmakers infuse the two figures and their lives with propulsive energy that gets the audience to lean-in, almost immediately rooting for them regardless of their personal feelings on filmmaking or Yuma Country specifically. Even the way the filmmakers talk to the subjects, often poking and prodding them through a shared comradery (it’s explained that each of the filmmakers have a relationship with the two subjects) that empowers the two to drop their guard where a third party would have to work harder to break barriers. One doesn’t usually hear a filmmaker verbally nudge or prompt a subject, but here it not only happens frequently, it infuses Sell Your House with an intimacy as we, the audience, are being invited in by the subjects via the filmmakers into their private space. This means that we learn things about the struggle to develop and then shoot the film that goes beyond the official “Making of” featurette accompanied by the Well Go USA-distributed U.S. physical home edition (versus the more in-depth supplements of the U.K. Arrow Video edition), but it also means that we start to notice the repetition of terms and phrases that the subjects might otherwise not utilize in different company. Specifically, the frequency with which Claeys references his lack of home due to financing the project. It’s clearly weighing on Galluppi’s mind, as he brings it up or discusses it when others do, whereas, when Claeys does, it’s often while being facetious or trying to make light of things. The frequency implies that, for all his proclaims otherwise, that Claeys wants something, too. It makes sense that he would — he sold his house — but what does it look like? To their credit, the filmmakers don’t try to make their own suggestion or divine a truth for the audience; rather, through the careful use of interviews and captured footage, we observe the easy and identifiable ways in which the success of Yuma translates to Galluppi achieving his dreams and the near-impossible ways to translate that to an executive producer who financed the entire project.
L-R: Francis Galluppi and James Claeys in documentary SELL YOUR HOUSE. Photo courtesy of Not A Serious Human.
The answer to that lies in the inherent problems within the movie industry. Producers and financiers are a necessary part of the process, but they aren’t the ones who typically get the interviews, the awards, or the acclaim. There are, of course, outliers, big names who make big deals and find themselves lodged into public memory. However, this industry has a tendency to push out what’s deemed less useful or noteworthy and it happens faster than anyone realizes. In the case of Yuma County, the biggest came with the distribution deal that, intentionally or not, removed Local Boogeyman from the premiere (not the film; just the marquee). Now, distributors are often the ones that get name recognition and brand associations (which is why there’s a fan club for A24 and NEON when they don’t make movies, they just purchase and distribute, gaining clout from the work of the filmmakers), so this is, to a degree, understood, but how must it feel to see your best friend recoup his time and energy, his worry and tension, given back with applause and awards, while your name is nowhere? Foss and Pickering never once position either subject as better or worse than the other, nor do they ever cast judgement on one or the other for the choices they make — a difficult job as both filmmaker and friend — but what they do very well is lay out the events and utilize the words of the subjects to showcase the severe difference in the expectation of making movies and the reality; what a hard truth and heavy cost it ends up being.
L-R: James Claeys and Francis Galluppi in documentary SELL YOUR HOUSE. Photo courtesy of SBIFF.
Making a movie is a massive undertaking regardless of which version of the studio system is in place, but, truthfully, it’s even more difficult now. If it’s becoming notoriously difficult for established filmmakers like Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon) to get financing, image what it must be like for smaller or new filmmaking to get a film off the ground. What filmmakers of all stripes have in common is a passion to have their stories told and, typically, the ones around them provide support. Sometimes that support is emotional, sometimes material, and, yes, sometimes financial. What makes the making of Yuma County so remarkable isn’t just that Claeys invested in his friend’s project (again, this has happened before with other filmmakers), it’s the manner in which he did it and the symbolism of the act: Claeys sold his house. As a symbol, it goes beyond the metaphor of giving someone a shirt off your back to give them coverage or safety, Claeys upended his entire existence because he both believed so deeply in his friend and did so out of a personal desire to be part of cinema history. Galluppi made sacrifices as well, there is no doubt, as no one who makes a feature does so without giving up something. In the end, however, both men are now part of cinema history, their film, a tense thriller with an incredible cast, will live on past their days. Whether their story of individual sacrifice and the unknowable costs gain similar traction is uncertain, but those who come next, who dream of seeing their names on a marquee one day should see Sell Your House as a harbinger of how the film industry is now and heed it closely: be creative, work with your friends, and know what matters in the end.
Screening during Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2026.
For more information, head to the official Sell Your House website.
Final Score: 4.5 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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