Without Your Head
Without Your Head
Neal Jones
FORTUNE HOUSE: Gambling with Demons for a Green Card | Yihong Exa Huang & Forest Lin Interview
30 minutes Posted Sep 2, 2026 at 6:12 am.
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What would you risk for the chance to stay in America?Director Yihong Exa Huang and lead actor Forest Lin join Nasty Neal to discuss their new horror short FORTUNE HOUSE—a supernatural immigration fable blending demonic horror, magical realism, dark humor and a deadly game of mahjong.Set in a near-future Los Angeles, Fortune House follows an undocumented Chinese delivery driver who stumbles into a mahjong parlor operated by three demons. They offer him a life-changing bargain: win the game, and they’ll grant him a green card.Exa and Forest discuss the film’s striking mythology, its Faustian bargain, the realities and anxieties behind the immigrant experience, and the challenge of transforming those themes into an original genre story. They also explore the film’s ideas about karma, reincarnation and systems that profit from desperation.Logline:A desperate immigrant delivery driver stumbles into a mahjong parlor run by three demons, where he enters a demonic deal: win the game, and they will grant him a green card.Directed by Yihong Exa HuangWritten by Jeff Athey and Yihong Exa HuangStarring Forest Lin, Tony Kim, Alexandre Chen, Vivian Lee and Joel ChangSubscribe to Without Your Head Horror for more filmmaker interviews, independent horror, festival coverage and emerging voices in genre cinema.Join this channel to get access to perks:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCOmwH7xVAhD-OOAqFWyTYTA/join#FortuneHouse #HorrorInterview #IndieHorror #YihongExaHuang #ForestLin #HorrorShort #AsianCinema #MagicalRealism #Mahjong #WithoutYourHead