| None Shall Pass | |
|---|---|
 The title card of None Shall Pass (2007), the first film | |
| Produced by | Phat N Phunky Philms |
| Original work | None Shall Pass (2007) |
| Years | 2007 to 2018 |
| Films | 9 |
| Total runtime | 1 hour 58 minutes |
| Setting | Cupertino, California, and the South Bay |
| Format | Black and white |
| Prequel | The Necromancer Hunter: The Static Age (in development) |
| Characters | Beef Nate · Vincent the Necromancer Hunter |
None Shall Pass is a black-and-white supernatural backyard-noir series made by a group of friends in Cupertino, California, over eleven years, from 2007 to 2018. It comprises nine films, released under the production name Phat N Phunky Philms, that tell one continuous and continually escalating story.
The story begins with the smallest possible conflict. A young man named Beef Nate Kavanaugh asks a girl out on a date, and her brother, a gangster with darker allegiances than anyone suspects, says no. From that single refusal the story escalates film by film, through kidnappings, resurrections, an ancient undead sorcerer, a living prophecy, a war for the soul of the South Bay, a fractured timeline and, eventually, Excalibur.
At its heart the series is an argument about whether people can change. Beef Nate begins as a stubborn young man fighting for his friends and his lovers, loses everything, and becomes the villain of his own story; he is then given one impossible second chance to choose differently. The villains of the series insist that people are what they are. The final film is Beef Nate's answer.
¶ Premise
The first three films are set in the early 2000s South Bay and follow Beef Nate and his circle of friends into a war with a local gang, the Syndicate, whose leader answers to an ancient, rarely seen master: the Necromancer, a sorcerer who raises the dead. The friends who die in that war come back, some as themselves and some as the Necromancer's thralls, and the series' first title line, "None shall pass," is spoken by the Necromancer to Beef Nate at a barred gate.
The second trilogy takes place eight years later. Beef Nate has returned from a long absence as Evil Beef Nate, the tyrant of the shadow war, and is hunting three artifacts, the Key, the Codex and the Amulet, which together would let him break the world. Against him stand his oldest friend Mike, the Necromancer's repentant son Ronald, and Vincent, a Necromancer Hunter of the Geomancer order who believes himself to be the Messiah of a rival prophecy. The trilogy ends with Evil Beef Nate victorious and with Ronald using the Codex to travel back in time and kill Beef Nate before he can turn, an attempt that fails and splits reality in two.
The third trilogy is set in the divergent timeline that the attempt created, a world of demons, a Demon Lord, and a Brothel that is a door to Hell. There a younger Beef Nate, stranded from the moment before the first film's war began, must find a way to rejoin the two realities, while Evil Beef Nate crosses over to pursue him. The series ends with the creation of a third, safe reality, and with the Prophecy that drove nine films undone by a single choice.
¶ Films
| No. | Title | Runtime | Timeline | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | None Shall Pass (2007) | 2 min 58 s | A | A date, a refusal and a war. |
| 2 | None Shall Pass 2: The Children's Crusade | 4 min 03 s | A | The dead start walking. |
| 3 | None Shall Pass 3: The Dark Ages | 6 min 27 s | A | The true enemy comes out of the shadows. |
| 4 | None Shall Pass 4: A New Hope | 5 min 20 s | A | Eight years later, a new evil rises. |
| 5 | None Shall Pass 5: The Gift of Fire | 10 min 09 s | A | The hunt for the three artifacts. |
| 6 | None Shall Pass 6: The Blood Oath | 27 min 38 s | A, ending in the Split | Total war, and the moment the world breaks. |
| 7 | None Shall Pass 7: When the Storm Came | 10 min 21 s | B | A world that was never supposed to be. |
| 8 | None Shall Pass 8: The Necromancer's Daughter | 17 min 52 s | B | Two Beef Nates in one timeline. |
| 9 | None Shall Pass 9: Red Tooth and Claw (2018) | 41 min 13 s | B, ending in a third reality | The end of days. |
The series was conceived in trilogies: the first three films, the second three, and the last three. The early entries are compact, trailer-style shorts, dense with title cards and montage. The later films grow into full narratives, culminating in the 41-minute finale, complete with an opening cast roll, an intermission, and an ending a decade in the making.
¶ Setting and timelines
The films take place in Cupertino and the surrounding South Bay. The first six are set in the series' original reality, referred to as Timeline A. Ronald's journey back in time at the end of the sixth film creates a divergent reality, Timeline B, in which the seventh, eighth and ninth films are set. In Timeline B the gang war of the first film never happened, the dead of Timeline A are alive, and the supernatural is closer to the surface: demons walk, the Demon Lord is married to the girl from the fountain, and the Necromancer has a daughter. The finale ends with the two realities rejoined into a third, Timeline C.
¶ Production
The series was shot in black and white in Cupertino, California, by a group of friends, with the same cast playing the same characters throughout and aging eleven real years on camera as the story leaps forward through time. The production name on every film is Phat N Phunky Philms. The films were released between 2007 and 2018; the finale's closing card gives those years as the span of the whole project.
¶ Prequel
A prequel series, The Necromancer Hunter: The Static Age, following Vincent in Seattle before the events in Cupertino, is in development.
¶ About this wiki
This wiki documents the series: a page for each film, entries for its characters, and the lore of its world. Every page beyond this one contains spoilers for the entire series. Character entries published so far are Beef Nate, the central character of the series, and Vincent, the Necromancer Hunter.