Jim Mickle

With his early low-budget horror films "Mulberry Street" (2006) and "Stake Land" (2010), Jim Mickle became known to gore fans as one of the 21st century's hippest horror directors before broadening his scope with the dark drama "Cold In July." Mickle was born in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, and first knew he wanted to pursue film as a career when he saw Sam Raimi's zombie film "Army of Darkness" (1992). He studied film production at New York University, graduating in 2001. There he met aspiring actor and screenwriter Nick Damici, and the two came up with an idea for movie that brought zombies and gentrification together. The result was "Mulberry Street," a horror movie directed by Mickle and starring Damici. The low-budget film saw a very limited release, but it won praise from horror fans. Mickle and Damici went on to collaborate on the vampire film "Stake Land" and the cannibalistic horror flick "We Are What We Are" (2013). Moving away from the low-budget horror films with which he made his name, Mickle's first big-budget production was the dark drama "Cold in July" (2014), adapted by Damici from the Joe Lansdale crime novel of the same name. Mickle said that he considered the film a mixture of noir and Western, two genres he was passionate about. Starring Michael C. Hall and playwright Sam Shepard, the film debuted at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival to rave reviews and was released on the art house circuit that summer.