Christian McDonald

Personal Bio

Christian McDonald is the son of a rural Missouri dentist and a graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. He is the writer of the recent nuclear war thriller ‘AFTERMATH’ – starring Andre Royo, Edward Furlong, and Monica Keena. ‘Aftermath’ premiered at London’s Film4 FrightFest, and was released theatrically in 2015. It can currently be seen on Amazon Prime & Tubi in North America, and Sky Cinema in Europe. 

Christian also wrote & directed the comedic feature ‘OPTIMISM’ – a finalist for the Wetzel Award For Independent Comedy. The film screened at the Siskel Film Center’s “Best in American Comedy” series in Chicago, as well as festivals in North America & Europe.

McDonald’s sci-fi comedy screenplay ‘TIME-JERK’ is a Scriptapalooza semifinalist, a ScreenCraft Animation quarterfinalist, an Emerging Screenwriters Comedy quarterfinalist, and a Final Draft Big Break quarterfinalist. His adaptation of Voltaire’s ‘CANDIDE’ is a semifinalist in the ScreenCraft Public Domain & True Story contest, a ScreenCraft Animation quarterfinalist, an Emerging Screenwriters Comedy quarterfinalist, a quarterfinalist in Stage 32 Feature Comedy, and a semifinalist in Script2Comic. His teen rebellion comedy ‘MORNING IN AMERICA’ is a ScreenCraft Comedy quarterfinalist, Emerging Screenwriters Genre quarterfinalist, and was in the TRMS-Austin Top 100. His elderly sex & drugs comedy ‘AN UNLUCKY MAN’ is a ScreenCraft Comedy quarterfinalist and a Stage 32 Feature Comedy semifinalist.

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“Writer Christian McDonald has fashioned an involving, slow boil of a thriller that’s as eerie as it is grim.” – Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times (review of ‘Aftermath’)

“Aftermath is about nine people, most complete strangers, who hole up in the cellar of a farmhouse after a nuclear attack has demolished pretty much everything – it’s there that screenwriter Christian McDonald delves into the dread & darkness that lives deep within each character. Aftermath offers no zombies, nothing supernatural, and little else that fits into the realm of “escapist” horror cinema, but it is a dark, brutal, gory, and fascinating rumination on how long humans will actually last, if left entirely to their own devices.” – Scott Weinberg, FEARnet

“Aftermath comes into focus as less a story of survival than a bare-bones morality drama on the different ways in which the end might be faced… ending with images of such austere beauty and sadness as to have the raw impact of an epiphany. Rarely has existential horror been so moving.” – Anton Bitel, Little White Lies

Resume / CV