Ever since she was a little girl, Iris has wanted to be a filmmaker. For the last five years though, she's been trapped working in reality television, directing episodes for a series that's barely able to compete with Ghost Hunters. Iris sees her big chance to prove herself when gets sent on assignment to her hometown of Black Falls, a small town harboring an abandoned insane asylum that has a dark history of excessive shock therapy. Filming inside the asylum brings back childhood memories for Iris, memories of sneaking into the asylum with her friends to shoot homemade horror movies. Little does Iris know, her life is about to imitate her art.
Raised in rural Wisconsin, proud graduate of UC Berkeley, currently loving Los Angeles.
Elaine's first feature film as a writer/director was the horror movie The Purgation. Spinechillr called her film “one of the best horror movies I have seen this year, if not the best,” and Horror Cult Films declared “Elaine Chu is a name to look out for in the future.”
Elaine has also directed several award-winning short films, commercials, and music videos. Her Japanese-English film Maneki-neko won Best Comedy at the Post Alley Film Festival, and her video short Be Your Beautiful was a semi-finalist in Glamour's 2017 #NewView Competition.
At the moment, Elaine is developing her second feature. When she's not on set, she plays basketball with the LA Nail Clippers and performs improv at Westside Comedy Theater.
