Candlelight

Candlelight is a 2017 horror short film by Mike Barkhoff. Released months after Into The Wild, it received attention at a quick pace, amassing over 300 views in it's first forty-eight hours (the first feat for original content of theirs) and gaining acclaim from an online presence. It is considered by many to be Barkhoff's magnum opus.

Production
Upon receiving a new camera, Barkhoff wanted to try it out. He wrote the script for this and filmed it in a day. Halfway through, the camera battery died and they had to switch to the lesser camera.

Reception
Due to it being shared, the film amassed over 300 streams in it's first two days, and received a large amount of acclaim from the online community, with Barkhoff's family enjoying it especially. Barkhoff entered the film into festivals and got nominated and won awards, for writing and directing, respectively. It is widely considered to Barkhoff's best film yet.

Aftermath
Barkhoff made comments on the hardships of trying to battle Candlelight from 2018 until 2020. In 2019, he released Candlelight II, an unrelated short film where he ponders aloud if anything will ever be as good, and, if not, if it's worth moving forward. In 2020, Barkhoff admitted his interest in having the film removed from his category. Nonetheless, on the urge of family and friends, it was his first film submitted and approved for an Amazon Prime featuring. This was because, weeks prior, he had done a remastering for it's third year anniversary, which again sparked a life of it's own, gaining 500 views and over 60 comments reviewing the film positively, as well as boosting the Live Free channel's subscriber count. Barkhoff admitted that one time someone offered to pay the production cost of a full length film, but he turned down the offer, wanting it to be a "one and done".