Despite not having met each other until the first day filming with the cast and crew due to summer activities. Director Aaron Bandy and Arik Hess (Kyle), became really good friends during filming and agreed to work together on more projects following completion of the film.
Kennon Bellile was picked to play "Richard" after co-producer Caleb Stevens recommended him and showed Bandy his video production semester final video called "Take a Step Back" in which Kennon was the lead. Bellile also kept the cast and crew laughing during long days or stressful times. Bandy thanked him on one of the last day shoots as they needed some laughs occasionally.
The Idea for the movie goes as far back as 2012. Director Aaron Bandy and his friend Cory Dolecheck were sophomores in high school and had just gotten into filming silly videos for Youtube and decided they wanted to do a full length movie with some friends. Zombies were big back in 2012 so it will easily decided that would be the main subject. Bandy wanted it to be different from other Zombie movies so its set in the Bermuda triangle instead of a apocalypse. They had also planned on playing parts themselves along with their best friends. Bandy would play Brogan and Cory would play Richard. Due to school work and other activities, the film never got going like planned for 5 years. Bandy had wrote a script which has stayed mostly the same for this film all these years. The title was a big change as it was originally called "Zombie Recon Team". Dolecheck pointed out the it wouldn't make sense for being on a deserted island. Bandy finally decided to get the film going after a couple years taking the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC) Video Production classes as well as had more equipment. While Dolecheck was not able to take on a full length role. He was able to make a appearance as smaller character "Samuel". Dolecheck used the same name "Richard Smith" during their Youtube videos and asked Bandy to use the name for Bellile's character.
Dylan Jaeger (Brogan) and Samantha Callison ( Sarah) are actually dating in real life and are expecting their first child in 2018. Chayce Jaeger is Dylan's brother.
Emily Kincaid was Bandy's first and only choice to play "Zoey" in the film as he was impressed by her acting skills and easy to work with attitude while filming a music video in his video production class for Joshua Sinclair ( who makes two cameos in the film). She accepted immediately.