Shelley Duvall's final movie, written and directed by Glen Cove's Scott Goldberg, gets weeklong Long Island screening

A locally produced horror movie featuring the final screen appearance of the late Shelley Duvall is gaining traction — not just on Long Island but all over North America.

"The Forest Hills" will play a one-week run at the Showcase Cinema de Lux in Hicksville’s Broadway Commons mall starting Friday and ending Oct. 31. By the end of the month, the film will have played at roughly 75 venues in the U.S. and Canada, according to its Glen Cove-based writer and director, Scott Goldberg.

"We were very excited for the process to get into as many places as we could," Goldberg, 42, said. "We wanted to make sure people were able to see it on the big screen."

"The Forest Hills" tells the story of a man (Chiko Mendez) who experiences head trauma during a camping trip and begins to suffer nightmarish visions that include his mother, played by Duvall. While the actor's scenes were shot at her home in Blanco, Texas, most of the movie was filmed in such Long Island locales as Oyster Bay, Mount Sinai and Glen Cove.

The movie’s run in Hicksville is part of Greenberg’s monthslong effort to book the movie into as many theaters as possible. While independent filmmakers often resort to "four-walling" their movies — that is, paying up front to rent a cinema’s screen, then keeping the ticket sales — Goldberg said he’s splitting the box office with theaters on a 50-50 basis. That’s closer to the way the major studios release their movies, and Goldberg said it suggests that participating theaters have a level of faith in his film.

"The cinemas will watch the movie and decide if it’s something they’d like to play," he said. "And in this case, thankfully, there’s been interest." (A spokesperson for Showcase Cinemas could not be reached for comment.)

Duvall was best known for her turn as a terrified mother in Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 classic "The Shining" and appeared in several films under director Robert Altman (including "McCabe & Mrs. Miller, "Nashville," and "Three Women"). Following some success as a television producer for "Faerie Tale Theatre" and "Shelley Duvall’s Bedtime Stories," she all but vanished. Her unexpected appearance on a 2016 episode of the "Dr. Phil" show, looking disheveled and confused, shocked viewers who remembered her as a charmingly offbeat ingenue.

But Goldberg reached out to her, he said, because "I think she still had something left in the tank as far as wanting to act." After shooting an initial scene of Duvall talking to the camera, he recalled, she asked to expand her role so she could play opposite other actors. Goldberg rewrote the screenplay to oblige her. Duvall died this past July of diabetes complications at the age of 75.

Goldberg said his movie’s run at the Hicksville theater has special meaning for him, as he goes there frequently with his five-year-old daughter. "The first film she saw there was ‘Barbie,’" he said. "So it’s really cool to be able to play in a place where I also share memories with my daughter."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman