Indie Film of the Day: ‘Low Low’
Nick Richey’s 2019 indie feature Low Low captured four working-class high-school girls on their final day of summer, a day that spirals through sex, drugs, violence, and the small acts of loyalty that keep them upright. The film still stands as a raw snapshot of that last stretch before adulthood lands, and its story remains the clearest window into Richey’s early feature work.
Richey came up in Portland hosting a local Kids WB block, then spent seven years on the road as a rapper in Thick as Thieves before shifting to screenplays. His production company, Halfway Crooks Entertainment, sold the short Birthday Boy to HBO Films in 2017, and a television series called Bedlam sat in development at CBS Studios with Karyn Smith-Forge and Tiffany Grant attached. Another series, Section 8, carried Jonathan Frakes and Brent Spiner in early talks; neither project advanced past that stage in any public record.
Subsequent Feature: 1-800-Hot-Nite (2022)
Richey’s second feature, 1-800-Hot-Nite, extends the same coming-of-age lens. The story follows thirteen-year-old Tommy after his parents are taken in a drug raid; he reaches out to a phone-sex operator who becomes an unlikely lifeline. Odin’s Eye Entertainment acquired international sales rights in November 2022, confirming that Richey’s focus on working-class teens had traveled beyond the Low Low ensemble.
Recent Awards and Recognition
In 2022 Richey received the Best Director prize at the Vashon Island Film Festival for work completed after Low Low. The award placed a concrete marker on his directing record and gave festival programmers a reason to revisit the earlier film.
Upcoming Projects
Profiles list Richey in pre-production on a third feature, Bits, Body and Bones. Details remain limited, yet the project continues the pattern of original scripts built around characters navigating limited options and sudden responsibility.
Current Availability and Legacy
Low Low continues to be hosted on lowlowmovie.com and promoted through Halfway Crooks Entertainment. No new wide theatrical windows have opened since the 2019 release, but the film remains the foundation of Richey’s feature career and the clearest example of the tone he carries forward.
The plot of Low Low centers on Ryan, Cherry, Lana, and Willy as they face one last day before the school year restarts in a town already sliding. Ryan skips study time for parties, fails her exit exam, ends up in a fistfight, and crosses a line with her mother’s boyfriend. The other three girls each confront their own pressures, and the group hits bottom together. Their friendship holds. When Ryan opens her exam results, the single word “PASS” arrives as a quiet reset rather than a miracle.
Richey’s own background supplies the texture. He grew up blue-collar in a lower-middle-class neighborhood where supervision was thin and checks bounced. Mall theft, shoulder-tapping for beer, and parents working doubles or cycling through rehab formed the loop he wanted to put on screen without softening the edges. The director’s statement makes the intent plain: the film replaces the usual high-school-girl betrayal tropes with the simultaneous strength and insecurity these characters carry while trying to reach an identity they can claim.
Nick has previously worked on these well received projects:
The Girl in the Cellar (2019): Producer
This drama and horror short follows a successful but emotionally fractured woman who must confront a horrific secret from her past when her daughter befriends a spirit haunting the cellar.
Bedlam (2017): Star and producer
This comedic thriller follows a film crew who set out to create a redemption story for a recently released psychiatric patient, Colin Krynak (Nick Richey). Their documentary is transformed into a comedy of horrors as the realization sets in: they’ve set a raging sociopath on the loose. No verified public updates on the later CBS series development have surfaced since the 2019 article.
After the Tone (2016): Writer, co-producer, co-director
This comedic short follows an anxious young woman who is repeatedly forwarded to her boyfriend’s voicemail as she finds herself spiraling into a comedic world of irrational frustration.
Star of Relativity (2012): Writer, producer
This drama, action and sci-fi film follows a rogue scientist whose fear of death leads him down a dangerous and destructive path as he risks everything in his search for immortality through time travel.
First Date (2011): Producer
This comedic short follows a boy named Tom who is extremely nervous about his first date with his dream girl, Julie. After some reassuring that he’ll be fine, he goes to pick up his date in his brother’s car. He arrives at Julie’s house, but he must meet the over-protective father before they leave. They never end up leaving.
Still on the fence? Here’s what industry experts have to say
“…Richey’s instincts…prove impeccable…the visceral way in which the writer-director captures his subjects’ triumphs and travails provides an unflinching portrait of modern teens on the fringes of society.” —Variety “ …a strong debut… [Richey] shows a real compassion and understanding for these women…empathizing with the worries and woes of some people whose lives are rarely reflected on screen.” —Los Angeles Times “Let’s start by just saying Low Low is a fantastic independent film about the transition in life from teenager to young adult…A beautiful coming-of-age story that literally comes out of nowhere…” —Film Threat Follow Low Low on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.
Low Low is a fresh, bracing take on the coming-of-age teen drama that finds four working class high-school girls navigating their last days of high school through a haze of sex, drugs and violence, each trying to find their way to the next phase in life without losing everything. Starring Ali Richey, Alexis Raich, Kacie Rogers, Montana Roesch, Elaine Hendrix, Sean Carrigan, Dominique Columbus, Tyler Chase, Adam Elshar, Savannah Stehlin, Moniqua Plante. Directed by Nick Richey. Low Low was released in select theaters on August 16, 2019.
Director’s Statement
I was a teenager once. I’ll spare you the boring platitudes. Blue collar to the bone in the lower middle class, my crew basked in a lack of supervision. We were jacking clothes from the mall, peddling our virginity and shoulder-tapping for cheap beer. At home, checks were bouncing, Mom was working a double at Red Lobster and Dad just checked in to a state-sponsored NA rehab facility. You can put this story on loop, multiply it by fifty and you’ll have an idea of the havoc that teens like us could unleash on a community. Low Low is entrenched in this community, this socioeconomic class that always seems to be slipping through the cracks. A coming-of-age drama for a new generation, this film exposes their world through the fading youth of four young women, beset by the obstacles of their circumstances. The weary trope of high school girls betraying each other in petty disputes is the sort of chaff cast aside and replaced with an honest reality that deals in the simultaneous strength that young women must grasp to navigate their high school lives and the insecurity that they battle to arrive at an identity they can be proud of. Over the course of these scripted thirty-six hours, Ryan, Cherry, Lana and Willy are spending the last moments of their final high school summer confronting drugs, sex and violence, the lower–class rites of passage. Within their uncertain future there is a unique opportunity to lay this world bare. There’s no rose-colored lens from which we fantasize and hide behind. It’s apparent in the style and tone of the production. Scraping together every resource we could muster, our Low Low team is now able to present a film as unforgiving and raw as our bellicose group of girls. I grew up watching Kids. Christine Vachon and Larry Clark changed my life. It was the first time I sat in a movie theater and saw teens like me – like my friends. I set out to make a film that truly represents the young women I grew up with, while also putting a spotlight on a vastly underrepresented lower-class culture. Straddling the line and reveling in the moral grey area of society provides a deep well of questions and conflict from which the themes of this film arise: the idea of corrupted youth; the unapologetic actions of teenagers that have grown up too quickly, almost unaware of their own sustained innocence. Low Low is an empowering film about setting a course against the implacable powers of low expectations. It’s a film about the untold stories of friendship.
