Moorestown History Inspires Movie

Moorestown’s history as a stop on the Underground Railroad has inspired an upcoming movie, which is set in the township both hundreds of years ago and in the present.

This past weekend, Haddonfield stood in for Moorestown during a film shoot for The Underground, a supernatural thriller/historical drama hybrid. A cast and crew 70-strong swooped into Haddonfield Oct. 8-9 to shoot scenes of a home and a graveyard, inspired by real places in Moorestown.

And although the shoot didn’t happen in Moorestown, there are plenty of connections to the Quaker-rooted community. Besides the story being set there, The Underground’s director, David Boorboor, and producer, sister Tierney Boorboor, both lived in Moorestown for a time and graduated from .

The cast and crew of The Underground haven't shot the movie itself yet—just a trailer in an attempt to get full funding for the filming.

“This is the new successful way to get a movie produced,” explained David Hunt, who turned over access to his Kings Highway home and yard in Haddonfield for the shoot. “Before you would pitch with a treatment or a rough script, but now you need an actual trailer to be more effective at getting funding.”

Hunt and wife Janice fell into the movie business accidentally. Traffic scofflaws hoping to avoid the light at Kings Highway and Warwick Road frequently use their driveway as a cut-through, and David reprimands them every time. This time, though, it wasn’t scofflaws, but a sibling pair scoping out his house for the shoot several weeks ago.

“We were drawn to it and pulled in,” Tierney Boorboor said of the Hunts' property. She and David Boorboor run Eye in the Sky Entertainment, a Cherry Hill-based production studio that seeks to “bring Hollywood to South Jersey.”

“This area is just so beautiful and quaint,” Tierney Boorboor said. “The look of the house itself was exactly what we wanted for The Underground.”

Abolition Meets the Sixth Sense

The Underground tells the story of a group of slaves who escape the South, using the Underground Railroad to flee to safety. But at one Moorestown stop, a supposed abolitionist chains the slaves in a basement tunnel, enticed by the reward money for their capture. The group dies there.

In modern times, a young woman (Megan Elizabeth Gaber) returns to the same home to care for her recently orphaned brother, Mattie (Sebastian Banes). Elizabeth tries to move Mattie away, but the ghosts of the slaves who died there have a connection with him she can’t understand.

Screenwriter Holly Zuelle, from Mount Laurel, drew inspiration from a friend who lives in Moorestown, and whose home is said to be part of the Underground Railroad.

“She was telling me about her parents’ home and it inspired me to look more into that history,” Zuelle said.

Over a two-year process, Zuelle’s original script went from more teen thriller to its current iteration. Her co-writers on the later scripts were Craig Robbins and David Boorboor.

“This is the one time in life you can be a little cocky and look around and say, ‘People are here because of something I did,’” said Zuelle as she observed filming Oct. 8.

Cecile Parker, who plays Frederick, the patriarch of the slave group, said he and fellow actors support the project because of its subject matter.

“To the best of my and our knowledge, there hasn’t been a film done on this area’s involvement with the Underground Railroad,” Parker, a Philadelphia actor, said. “That history just isn’t widely known.”

Owing in part to their Quaker roots, Moorestown and Haddonfield hosted Underground Railroad stops to aid escaping slaves—presumably, most did not then turn in the slaves they sheltered for a bounty.

Lights, Camera, Cash

The trailer shoot started early Saturday morning and didn’t wrap up until 4:30 a.m. Monday.

“They’ll shoot 30 hours of footage for a 120-second trailer,” Janice Hunt said Saturday as she watched the activity in her yard.

Movie filming occurs in spurts of action, with long lulls in between. A call for “quiet on the set!” could be followed by a take, or could peter out into more waiting.

When the action heated up, filming took place in a basement set built over the Hunts’ backyard basketball hoop. Actors also filmed in front of a green screen, used to easily impose a background during editing.

For a short trailer, there was no lack of people or equipment. The Hunt family ceded control of their yard and gave up a lot of their indoor space, with bedrooms becoming costume and makeup areas and the family’s furniture, photos and even front doors giving way to props.

The Hunts’ front porch was outfitted to look like an attic. Their side yard became a break area and spot for craft services tables. Actors and crew lounged on the wraparound porch between filming, sometimes playing with the family’s dog. People in headsets scurried about.

After the huge weekend undertaking, it’s not clear if The Underground will ever become a full feature film. David Boorboor will begin shopping around the trailer to studios when it’s finished.

Given that the movie takes place in Moorestown and the trailer was filmed in Haddonfield, could Moorestown play host to the full filming? No one is sure yet. New Jersey isn’t as generous with its filming credits as other states—Pennsylvania, for example—so the Garden State may not win even though the movie takes place here.