Nicolas McCarthy (born November 10, 1970) is an American film director and writer based in Los Angeles. A lifelong lover of film, McCarthy struggled for the first decades of his career, receiving his first break into the motion picture industry at the age of 40 with the release of his 2012 feature film The Pact. In 2014 he released At the Devil's Door, establishling himself primarily as a maker of horror film. Early life McCarthy was born in New Hampshire to an Irish-American Catholic family. His family relocated to the Boston area when McCarthy's father took a position as headmaster at Brookline High School. His mother also worked in education as a schoolteacher. McCarthy began shooting films at the age of 10 with a Super 8 camera. One of McCarthy's first movie theater outings was seeing the movie Jaws with his older sister, and he later frequented Boston's many repertory cinemas, such as the Coolidge Corner Theater, which screened 35mm prints of older American and foreign films. Local television station WLVI also provided McCarthy with free access to B-movies through its weekly science fiction and horror movie program Creature Double Feature McCarthy became fascinated with cinematography and by junior high was drawn to the films of David Cronenberg, George Romero, John Waters and David Lynch. When he entered Brookline High, McCarthy struck up a friendship with future author and humorist John Hodgman. The two shared a love of weird films and co-edited the controversial magazine Samizdat. Named after dissident underground literature in the Soviet Union, the friends published the magazine for free. The handmade high school publication's open editorial policy sparked a free speech debate among the school's students and faculty and brought citywide attention to its young publishers. During his teens McCarthy also made short movies using a video camera and dabbled in animation through classes in high school and a local arts center. Filmmaking career After high school McCarthy lived in Chicago and took filmmaking classes at Columbia College before relocating to New York to attend SUNY Purchase full-time. After graduating with a degree in film, he moved to Brooklyn and worked as a bartender. In his spare time, McCarthy worked in his apartment using a rented editing machine to finish a film that he'd started at SUNY. McCarthy only showed the film once, to a group of his own friends in a rented movie theater. In 2000