Career
Known for his two feature films, Sinkhole (2005) and Alison (2010), Schattel is currently in development with a horror film, The Mourning Portrait. Critical reception to Sinkhole was mostly positive. Film Threat Magazine said that it was ".. a welcome addition to that most agreeable and fascinating of genres: The paranoid thriller … Sinkhole gets under the skin in a big way."
The Los Angeles Times called Sinkhole ".. a highlight," while Philip Martin of The Arkansas Democrat Gazette said “Sinkhole is a minor miracle of a film.”
Perhaps due to problems in Arkansas with methamphetamine use, the film seemed to play there particularly well.
Filmmaker Paul Schattel presents the rural South as it is, not as Hollywood imagines lieutenant”
The trade magazine Variety, however, was not so enthusiastic, saying “Sinkhole has the elements of a potentially nifty noir: evocative cinematography, a seedy criminal underworld and vivid, well-drawn lowlife characters.
But utterly languorous pacing saps the film of its vitality. lieutenant"s like a trip without a destination."
In 2005, Sinkhole was picked up for international distribution by Morris Ruskin"s Shoreline Entertainment.
Schattel reportedly claimed the movie"s long single takes, verbal mistakes and elementary framing were suggested by the European filmmakers Chantal Akerman and Bela Tarr. The Mountain Xpress alternative weekly called it "".. a thoughtful and darkly compelling portrait of a woman in crisis — beautifully photographed, bravely acted, and told with a raw, unerring honesty."
Schattel recently directed the short film Men of Persuasion.
