Synopsis
Four friends reunite to watch scary movies while cat sitting, but an unexplained power outage and the nagging suspicion that they’re not alone threatens to kill the vibe. One thing’s for sure: they aren’t splitting up. Cat Sitters is a queer comedy-horror that celebrates queer friendship, plot twists and a gorgeous hissy cat.
Director Biography – Claren Grosz
Claren Grosz is a queer Canadian director, visual artist and writer. Originally hailing from Calgary, she currently lives in Toronto where she is the Artistic Director of Pencil Kit Productions, a company dedicated to generating new work for stage and screen. Her directing practice focuses on visually compelling work and collaborative, alternative creating processes exploring all that is strange, novel, chewy, and magic. She is the recipient of the 2018 Ken MacDougall Emerging Director Award and the 2015 My Entertainment World Outstanding Direction (Small Theatre) Award. She was nominated for the 2023 Dora Mavor Moore Award for outstanding projection design for her autobiographical solo show, I love the smell of gasoline (Nightwood Theatre, 2023). Her first illustrated chapbook of poetry, starting with the roof of my mouth, was published by Gap Riot Press (2022).
Cat Sitters is Claren’s film directorial debut. She is an experienced director for the stage, some favourite past projects including I love the smell of gasoline (Expanse Festival 2025; Nightwood Theatre, PKP, 2023); CHICHO (Theatre Passe Muraille, PKP 2019); Shadow Girls (Gladstone Hotel x PKP, 2018; Rhubarb Festival 2017).
Cat Sitters is an equally joyous and suspenseful ode to queer friendship. A horror laced with a healthy dose of comedy, the film subverts audience expectations with a cast of characters who stubbornly refuse to fall into classic horror film traps. The project was born out of my and Liz Der’s total love of horror films and writer Margarita Valderrama’s absolute disdain for them after we collectively “watched” a horror film. Margarita didn’t come out from under a blanket the whole time, Liz and I had to narrate what was happening to her (a circumstance we nod to within the film).
In horror films, queer, gender marginalized and racialized people are often expected to be morally pure victims in order to win our sympathy and ultimately survive. People of colour are often the first to die, with little character development. This unwillingness to see marginalized people as complex and deserving of safety on screen mirrors our real life expectations of women, trans and racialized folks. The prevalence of female protagonists in the horror genre also makes me question our cultural desire to watch [“good”, beautiful, often sexualized] women suffer. Cat Sitters challenges this by centring the characters’ joy and relational bonds.
That’s all quite serious, but mostly Cat Sitters is just plain fun. The film harnesses typical horror narratives and flips them on their head in a delightful, comedic way. It’s a film made for and by Queer people.