Before a new feature-length movie made its Billings debut last month, it already had achieved more than most independent films.

For one thing, it got finished, something that many underfunded independent efforts never manage. For another, it made its debut at the prestigious Cannes film festival in France.

“So You’ve Downloaded a Demon,” a supernatural comedy, was filmed in Billings and features actors who are prominent in local theater productions. Typically, say filmmakers Todd Livingston and Nick Capetanakis, a feature production costs $40 million. This Accidental Films Inc. production, Mr. Capetanakis told an opening night crowd, was made for about $40 million less than that.

In a Venture Theatre screening, complete with free popcorn and candy, for cast members and enthusiastic guests in January, the production values showed. Special effects were sometimes convincing but not always state of the art. Particularly in outdoor scenes, the sound was often muddled – a problem the filmmakers say they can correct when a distributor is found.

But they did not skimp on the script or the cast. Mr. Capetanakis and Mr. Livingston are veteran comic writers and performers, and they move the plot along at a brisk pace. When Mr. Capetanakis praised the cast in advance as uniformly good, it sounded like the sort of condescending lie one bestows on amateurs. But the praise held up with believable performances at all levels.

Music also is a strong suit, with a score by Andrew Kubiszewski of Stabbing Westward, who has played with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. And for the Billings crowd, just seeing scenes play out in familiar locations – Montana State University-Billings, Pioneer Park, Dahl Funeral Chapel – added richness to the experience.

The collaboration between Mr. Capetanakis and Mr. Livingston has roots going back to Virginia. They performed together in Open Season, a comedy group that toured the United States and Canada and played places like Los Angeles’ Comedy Store. Eventually, Mr. Livingston wound up working in television production in Los Angeles, where his projects included a pilot for a science fiction series, “The Odd Squad.” He also writes well regarded graphic novels, including “The Wicked West” and “The Black Forest.”

Mr. Capetanakis wound up with Big Sky Computer Products in Billings. But he kept on performing and writing. His “The Annual Data Analysis Report” won the People’s Choice Award at Venture Theatre’s annual one-act play festival in 2002. Now the short play is scheduled to be Accidental Films’ next production.

For “So You’ve Downloaded a Demon,” the two men combined their interests and skills. Both wrote the script, Mr. Livingston directed and Mr. Capetanakis is billed as producer. With Seth Hanser as director of photography, they shot the film in 25 days, then spent a year in post-production.

It’s a lightly seasoned comedy. Zak Kreiter plays a college student with political ambitions who becomes possessed after entering a mysterious web site that requires visitors to click on one of two options: “Yes, I want to sell my soul” or “No, take me to Disney.com.” His roommate and political adviser, played by Daniel Paul Schafer, tries to shield him as his political campaign suddenly starts going terribly wrong: He drenches potential voters with projectile vomiting and tells a crowd in a campaign speech, “If you don’t vote for me, I will devour your souls.”

Two Goth co-eds (Casidee Riley and Sommer Lynn Fain) try to get back in good graces in their coven by performing an exorcism. Naturally, complications crop up, including meddling by Malcolm (Mr. Livingston), a discredited exorcist whose titles his memoirs “Malcolm X Communicated.”

Followers of local theater will see plenty of familiar names there. Ms. Riley has played numerous parts, including Galileo in an MSU-Billings production. Mr. Kreiter wrote “One,” an entry in the one-act play festival. Ms. Fain played Eliza in a Billings Studio Theatre production of “My Fair Lady,” and she appeared in Venture’s production of “Radium Girls.” Mr. Schafer wrote Venture’s “The Strike Show,” a comedy about the School District 2 teachers’ strike, and played the title role in “Woyzeck,” a recent Venture production.

The movie also lands German actress Xenia Seeberg in a small role. Ms. Seeberg plays in “Lexx: The Dark Zone” a science fiction TV series. She made Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 list in 2001.

The movie touches all of the comic buttons and most supernatural cliches: green vomit, a computer geek, a fake fantasy sequence, cosmic meddling. What saves it from the banal is the wit of the co-authored script. A line in the credits reads, “Very few of the animals used in this production were harmed.” When Mr. Schafer’s character, for example, has to obtain holy water to assist in an exorcism, he wanders into a church and asks the priest, “Could you put that in a to-go cup?”

The filmmakers got a break when a public television crew followed the story of how a small movie made it to the world’s most famous film festival in May. In an interview with Scoop Magazine, Mr. Livingston said that the film crew brought lots of attention to the small project.

“The French loved it,” he said. “But the French also love to eat snails, so you have to take that with a grain of salt. Salt, by the way, kills snails.”

He used French peculiarities for another joke at the Billings screening. Referring to the French reaction to Mr. Kreiter, he said, “Zak is the new Jerry Lewis.”

The film also has played at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Ga., where, Mr. Livingston said, “The response was just outrageous.” Both men hope for another Billings screening in coming months, and they remain confident that they will find a distributor, probably for DVD release. Even if he had the budget to afford big screen production values, he wouldn’t use it, Mr. Livingston said.

“If I had $40 million,” he said, “I probably spend $100,000 on this, and then make 39 more movies.”