This Thanksgiving weekend, Clint Elliott ’97 will mark a major milestone: the release of his first feature film on the big-screen. His screenplay, Stone Creek Killer, centers on a man haunted by his past, whose arrival in a remote town sparks a chain of suspicious events. When shadows from the community’s history begin to close in, he is forced to navigate a mystery that becomes more perilous with each revelation.
Elliott says the inspiration for Stone Creek Killer goes back decades. Long before he wrote a screenplay or even stood on a live set, the stoic beauty of Maine’s Midcoast had been shaping his career path from the get-go. He grew up in Cushing, a place where the Saint George River meanders towards Maple Juice Cove, and the enigmatic stretch of land known as Stone’s Point looms across the water. He saw it every day, a quiet landmark that shaped his early sense of place and would eventually become the seed of a story he carried for decades.
Elliott spent his childhood moving between Cushing and Thomaston, immersing himself in Maine’s rich creative history – books, art, music – you name it, he admired it. Stories came to him quickly, he said, often fully formed, as if they had been waiting for him to notice them.
Elliott left the Midcoast for the University of Southern Maine in 1989. He arrived as a psychology major but soon discovered his strengths lay elsewhere. He found himself gravitating towards English and theatre, where he began to understand that storytelling could become something more – that his cacophony of thoughts could take actual form.
At USM, he learned the difference between having a story and crafting one. His English professors pushed him to refine every sentence, to write with precision and to cut what did not belong. He often recalls learning to “take a sharp knife” to his own work, a habit that would later help him shape his screenplay with clarity and intention. Theatre classes added another layer, showing him how a character moves, how silence carries weight and how performance enriches emotion on the page.
By the early 2000s, Elliott had finished a script inspired by the atmosphere of his childhood. He named it Stone’s Point after the land he grew up looking at from across the cove. Encouraged by his wife, he printed the script, spiral-bound it and submitted it to the Maine State Screenwriting Competition, expecting little more than experience.
Only, he won. And that changed everything.
The award brought him into contact with Robert Enriquez, a seasoned talent manager whose unwavering enthusiasm for the script became a pivotal force in Elliott’s career. Henriquez became Elliott’s creative partner for the next 20 years, guiding the screenplay through countless revisions, close calls and near productions. There were moments when they believed they were weeks away from filming, only to watch their plans fall apart overnight. Still, they persevered.
The trajectory of their project took a significant turn when they discovered a region in Minnesota that mirrored Midcoast Maine’s aesthetic almost perfectly, providing an ideal backdrop that allowed the story’s essence to flourish. With that change, Stone’s Point became Stone Creek Killer, and production finally began.
What followed was extraordinary. With a budget of just $295,000, the team shot the entire film in 10 days across dozens of locations. Actor Clayne Crawford anchored the project with a level of preparation and presence that elevated every scene. Elliott described watching Crawford work as “seeing the story take on a life of its own,” even after knowing it so well.
When Elliott saw the completed film, he said it felt fresh to him, as if he were watching a familiar story for the first time.
This Thanksgiving weekend, Vertical Entertainment will release Stone Creek Killer as a featured theatrical and premium VOD title. It has already gained industry attention, including a front-page feature in Deadline.
Looking back, Elliott sees every part of the journey connecting through Maine and USM. The landscapes that raised him became the soil where his stories began. The classrooms at USM taught him how to shape those stories with intention. Together, they built a foundation strong enough to carry him from Cushing to a national theatrical release.
He hopes to film a future project in Maine, drawn back to the places that first sparked it all. As he put it, “I want to bring a story home. Maine stays with you; it always does. “
For Elliott, the journey from Cushing to a national release has been long, patient and deeply personal. And even as his work reaches new audiences, the heart of it has never moved far from the coast where it began.