We were joined on the Popternative show by Richard Harmon (Final Destination: Bloodlines, The 100) and Alexandra Essoe (The Pope’s Exorcist, Midnight Mass) who star in the survival horror Pitfall, now available on digital. Pitfall had its premiere at Screamfest Film Festival in October 2025 followed by its theatrical release in May.
Directed by James Kondelik (Behind the Walls, Dam Sharks), Pitfall follows a remote hiking trip that takes a deadly turn after a hidden trap leaves a young man seriously injured and hunted by a mysterious figure. The cast also includes Marshall Williams (The Ice Road, Exile), Jordan Claire Robbins (The Umbrella Academy, Supernatural), Matt Hamilton (Murder for Sale, Turner & Hooch) and UFC Champion Randy Couture (The Expendables).
The synopsis reads, “Hunted, isolated, and forced to survive by a killer’s rules, a group of hikers must escape the maze before the final move is made. A remote wilderness trip turns deadly when Scott falls into a concealed pit trap and is left badly injured. As the group searches for help, they discover the forest has been rigged with calculated traps by an unseen hunter who is watching, testing, and manipulating their every move. To survive, they must outsmart the predator before his twisted design claims them all.”
“You look for different levels in a script like that. You don’t want to risk [it] just being one note the whole time. And it was cool that the script had a lot of different types of notes to play,” Essoe says on first reading the script.
For Harmon, Pitfall immediately stood out as pure entertainment. Recalling his first reaction to the script, he tells us, “that’s purely [how] I read it. That’s what I wanted. When I read it, I was like, this is the type of movie that if I had a couple of drinks with my pals and we wanted to put on a horror movie, which we do, this would be the type of movie I’d watch.”
While the film has a slasher feel to it, Essoe also notes the psychological aspect: “I [also] feel with the way the villain is portrayed, there is also a psychological horror element as well because he does toy with the people. He hunts [them] psychologically. So there’s that as well which [was] really fun [for us] to play.”
Watch the full conversation with Richard Harmon and Alexandra Essoe below.
Pitfall is now available on digital.
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