Can something be both a masterpiece and an utter disaster? Both have a cult following and have never actually been seen? The Realm is all these things and more: a lost, cursed fantasy film with enough stories surrounding it and cutting through it that the stories it tried to tell—themselves multiple and paradoxical—almost become beside the point. Almost. At once deeply personal for all involved, and a hundred things to a hundred people, the movie’s production and varied drafts read like an intentional Rashomon riff on what a fantasy film should or could be, and how meaningful the genre must be to us even as we feign its frivolity.

Beginning first as a willful act of punk rock “reversion” of Tolkienesque tropes by a Choctaw poet called Dreamenders Labyrinth, every hand that touched the story seemed incapable of leaving it as is, instead using it to preach their own gospel, so that the plots and drafts begin to resemble a game of Telephone. This substack draws on the archives of the original author, along with found footage, transcripts of lost interviews, and any and all extant materials on the film to paint the first coherent picture of a subject once lost to time and the fear of litigation.

In documenting the stories that intertwine with The Realm’s varied, rich worldbuilding, deconstruction, reconstruction, and devolution, the genre of the telling likewise becomes twisting and eclectic. One moment a behind-the-scenes visual history, the next a fantasy world building document, the next a true crime investigation, another a study in the decent into madness and the nature of the cult, A Visitor’s Guide to The Realm is not for the casual enthusiast any more than it is for the faint of heart. Beware the creeping light of day. To defeat the maze, you must become the labyrinth.

Believe in the realm.