HORROR DIRECTORS
2020 was, if nothing else, amazing for horror. EMPIRE gathers the directors of five of the year’s scariest movies to discuss how they gave us comfort in cinema’s darkest places
A round table with Rose Glass, Rob Savage, Leigh Whannell, Natalie Erika James and Remi Weekes, directors of the best horrors of the year. Brave of them to get on Zoom after seeing Host, mind.
AN INVISIBLE, GASLIGHTING stalker. A religiously unhinged nurse. A literally haunted refugee couple. An elderly woman whose dementia turns supernatural. And a demon-plagued Zoom call. If you required proof that horror is a rich, relevant and ever-evolving genre, you need look no further than the 2020 movies of Leigh Whannell, Rose Glass, Remi Weekes, Natalie Erika James and Rob Savage. It seems there’s no end to the ways these inventive, daring filmmakers can find to give us the willies.
So, one evening in late November,
Empire summoned them all together — from LA, Melbourne, London and, in one case, the middle of a film shoot — to share their appreciation for the dark side and reflect on a fantastic year for fright-crafting. Of course, we had to do it via Zoom. And, of course, Rob Savage, the creator of the ingenious, Zoom-set Host, suddenly vanished from the call part-way through. (Don’t worry, he survived.) But, above all else, our 80-minute, genre-dissecting discussion showed us that this diverse group of horror makers truly do scare because they care.
2020 has been such a horrific year, on many levels, you might have thought it would turn people off horror movies. Yet the opposite has been true. Why do you think that is?
Rob Savage: I suppose there’s something nice about being able to squeeze all the horror of your day into a nice, two-hour chunk and say, “I’m just gonna be scared in this moment and hopefully I’ll be able to face the rest of the
day.” With Host, the only question we were asking ourselves was: what’s the movie we’d want to watch right now? And that was a fun, scary rollercoaster ride, rather than something overly bleak. I don’t know about you guys…
Rose Glass: Yeah, just using my film as an example, on the surface it sounds like there’s a lot of bleak stuff in the subject matter, but the sort of stories I’ve always gravitated towards have been things which have taken dark ideas and told them at an almost operatic level. So it’s like Rob said: when you have this condensed burst of horror constructed in an entertaining way, it’s kind of like a release valve.
Leigh Whannell: Horror movies are my safe space. [Laughs] It’s when the horror movie finishes that life becomes scary.
Natalie Erika James: I agree. If I’ve had a long day, I will always put on a horror — or a comedy. You understand the rhythms of what you’re expecting with horror. You can kind of switch your mind off and enjoy it for what it is. There’s something really primal about it, in that way.
Whannell: When things are bad, when there’s a disturbance in the Force, if there’s a dark side of human nature that’s being exposed — whether it’s a global pandemic, or whether it’s the #Metoo movement — there’s something cathartic about watching horror films. It’s funny to be on this call, because Natalie and Rob, I’ve watched your movies during this quarantine. So thank you to you guys for helping to improve quarantine!
Savage: Yours was the last movie I saw at the cinema before we got locked down. Whannell: [Laughs] Wouldn’t it be cool if this is the end of civilisation and when the aliens come down, in the rubble they’ll see a marquee with “The Invisible Man”? It would be a cool little footnote in history, like: “The last movie ever before we all went away.” Remi Weekes: I still see The Invisible Man on posters around London.
Savage: Have you got a sense of how it’s played differently in cinemas versus at home, Leigh? Because it’s a super-claustrophobic movie.
Whannell: I don’t know. One thing I do know is people don’t have a problem just tweeting that they’re loving a movie while they’re watching the movie. It’s hilarious when @Zombielover15 is like, “Man, your movie’s awesome! Can’t wait to see how it ends!”
Glass: Just wait 30 minutes!
Whannell: I do love watching horror movies and comedies in theatres, though, because of that communal, audible reaction. I can’t imagine what it’s like to direct a drama, then just stand at the back of the theatre looking at the backs of all these heads and wondering with complete and total terror what they’re thinking. Savage: The really interesting thing about Host is we released it during lockdown, so everyone was watching it in their own homes, mostly on their laptops.
Whannell: Yeah, I mean, it seems custom-made for that.
Savage: At home, I think people find it really,
really scary. I keep getting people tweeting, saying, “I’ve slept with the light on for three nights,” and, “I can’t go on my Zoom meetings.” I think because the idea of it was to reflect the situation we were living in in lockdown, that people feel it in a different way at home.
All your films use horror to tackle a timely issue or theme. How do you balance the desire to ‘send a message’ with making sure you deliver the requisite chills and shocks?
Weekes: That was a conversation on His House throughout pre-production and also post-production. I’m a fan of horror and
I love that it goes straight for the emotions. So I didn’t really see a disconnect between saying something and also making an audience feel something. The art of being a storyteller is being able to take people on a journey and hopefully not let them go until the very end.
Savage: With Host we wanted to make a movie about how we were all feeling and the claustrophobia of lockdown, but we really pushed against it being an issue movie. For me, as a horror filmmaker, you’re always looking for a way to make the audience bring the horror back home with them.
Whannell: But I almost think you don’t have a choice in that matter, Rob. It doesn’t even matter that you tried to make a fun movie. It felt very much about this pandemic without being about it at all. I mean, the fact that we’re all communicating via Zoom and doing this right now, I feel like horror speaks to the moment even when you don’t want it to.
Savage: It can really bring an audience to a topic that wouldn’t normally engage with it. Like, there’s a movie I’m working on based on a short I made called Dawn Of The Deaf, which is a zombie movie with an entirely deaf cast of characters. That’s an amazing thing I think only horror can do. [At this point Savage drops out of the call]
Glass: We lost him...
Whannell: But it couldn’t have been more thematically in sync with his film, so… [Laughter]
Glass: Most horror films, if you take out the genre, you could probably say they’re really about something else, like domestic abuse, or Alzheimer’s, or whatever it is. I think horror provides a really great framework to explore all these kinds of things.
James: I agree. It definitely goes hand-in-hand, like, what do you want to say with a film? What are you exploring? What’s the human truth you’re trying to get to? But using the horror as the vehicle to tell that story. They’re so enmeshed, and in a lot of ways, the subject matter informs the scares as well.
Whannell: I get very defensive about horror, because I think it’s a much-maligned genre. Oftentimes I’ll be talking to someone and
I’ll get the impression that they think there’s only one type of horror film, when there’s just so many different branches of that tree. I love The Lost Boys as much as I love Natalie’s film. It does make me laugh when people online say, “Horror films are getting political!” And I’m thinking, “They’ve always been like that, from Night Of The Living Dead to Invasion Of The Body Snatchers.” Horror films basically, to me, reflect anxieties in our real society. They literalise metaphorical monsters. So you get to have your cake and eat it.
James: I have a question for Remi: did you encounter any issues with trying to balance the social issues in His House with the horror elements? I definitely got a lot of notes — “We need a scare here,” kind of thing. And that’s fine as a note, I guess, but if the story doesn’t warrant a scare, you can feel the writer’s hand inserting it. So I’m curious whether you had any of those moments.
Weekes: Yeah, totally. Exactly the same. Like, “By page ten, you need to say it’s a haunted house.” I do think, though, that it’s not the producers’ or execs’ job to be creative. It’s our job to say, “How do I give them what they want, but also make sure I’m staying true to what I want to do?” I guess that’s what they pay us for: to turn crass notes into something worthwhile. [Laughs]
Glass: It’s not just notes at the beginning of the process. I am not on Twitter, but I’ve delved into the world of it since Saint Maud came out. It’s been quite interesting seeing the variation of the responses it gets.
Weekes: You go on Twitter to see what people say about your film? Oh my God. I’m terrified of that.
James: I had a guy say to me once, “I would rather get coronavirus than watch your film again.”
Weekes: Ugh. No!
James: You have just gotta laugh at it. Like, what else can you do? Genre bros love to gate-keep, I guess!
Other than Leigh, you’ve all made your feature debut with a horror movie this year — and Leigh’s 2015 directorial debut was a horror movie, too. What makes them ideal for a first-timer?
Whannell: They don’t require any budget. The genre itself is the star of the film. And they also reach people. If someone in Iceland makes a really scary horror film with no name actors in it and no budget, I will be curious to see that movie. It’s a genre that travels. So for first-time filmmakers, you can’t do much better than that.
James: There’s an inherent commercial viability to horror films. Certainly for me it was easier to get up a horror film, particularly as a female director of horror, because that was a thing people were actively looking for when I was pitching Relic around. So timing-wise, that worked out quite nicely.
Whannell: Can I just quickly say that when I directed a film a couple of years ago called Upgrade — which was more of a sci-fi film — Natalie was my assistant on that film.
Weekes: No way!
James: Yes! The government paid me to follow Leigh around for three months, which is kind of insane.
Whannell: In Australia, when you direct a feature film, the government says you have to take on an assistant who is an aspiring filmmaker. So I was presented with all these résumés and short films, and Natalie’s film just stood out so much. I loved the fact that this was a female filmmaker trying to make genre stuff. During the whole shoot of Upgrade Natalie and I would talk about Relic. It’s such a strange feeling to be on this call with you now, and seeing you here as a great filmmaker. I’m a big fan of yours. Can I be your assistant on your next film?
Glass: Remi, I don’t know if you remember, but I was a runner on one of your short films… James: No way!
Weekes: Were you? Oh my God! That’s insane! I know we went to the same school, but
I didn’t know…
Glass: Yeah, it was a very long time ago and we barely crossed paths.
Whannell: This is where Rose is like, “Don’t you remember? You yelled at me and said, ‘Get out of the fucking shot!’” [Laughter]
Glass: You were very nice. It was a lovely experience.
Where would you all like to see horror go next? What’s the next stage of evolution in the genre?
Glass: Just more. [Laughter] People always want scaring and we’ll just keep hopefully finding new, inventive ways to do it.
James: I agree with what Leigh was saying before about horror traditionally having a really bad reputation and being snubbed at awards and that kind of thing. So I’d just love to see it given its proper credit, I suppose, with people seeing that artistic integrity and the horror genre are not mutually exclusive.
Weekes: It’s not that I want to see it go anywhere specific, but as long as there is such diversity that you hear stories that have such different takes on the genre, that is only a good thing, and an exciting thing, I think. Horror has always been really inventive in cinema history, so I hope we continue to make really cool stuff in our own visual ways.
Whannell: Yeah, I agree with what Remi’s saying. One of the great things about horror is it’s the only commercial genre where you can really think outside the box. You can be very artistic and strange and people just accept it. I hope that continues. Just look at the diversity of this group. We’ve got two people from Australia, we got three filmmakers from England, we got two
female filmmakers. I love that. I don’t know that the horror genre looked like that 20 years ago. It’s been a very Hollywood-driven thing for a long time, and I love that none of us on this panel is from the US, and we’re all making such idiosyncratic, personal films. I just hope that keeps metastasising into a full-on movement.
Horror keeps drawing filmmakers back again and again. Do any of you feel you could ever say you’ve made your last-ever horror movie?
Glass: To be honest, going into Maud, I didn’t think it was a horror film, but it did turn into one. And equally with both the things I’m writing now, I don’t think they’re horror films, but the sort of themes and stuff I’m interested in will probably always have at least a foot in the macabre, more twisted bits of life. Whether or not that’s exactly horror… I’ll keep skirting the edge and pissing off Twitter.
Whannell: There’s so much content these days, we live in a content blizzard, and I think it’s getting harder and harder to be original. Every time I come up with an idea, I’m like, “Oh shit, someone already did that!” But it’s also a great challenge to be like, “I’m really gonna have to go outside the box here to do something that people haven’t seen before.”
Weekes: Like Rose was saying, I’m interested in the fact that the world is just one big phenomenon. It’s strange and sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes scary and sometimes bizarre or funny. So I’m interested in those feelings. But what eventual shape it’ll take, who knows?
Savage: [Having managed to reconnect]
Well, I am halfway through making my next horror movie!
Whannell: Yeah, you’ve actually been shooting it while this Zoom call is on! Guys, we don’t know it, but we’re actually the stars of Rob’s next movie. [Laughter]
Savage: Actually, no joke: I’m currently driving from one location to another. We’re doing a travel day today, so I’m in the car with my producer and the star, and we’ve been getting travelling shots as we’re driving.
Whannell: He’s actually made the whole film during this Zoom call. He started shooting it at the start of the call and he’s cutting it now. It should be out next week!
Savage: That’s why I dropped out for a little bit. I just had to go and finish it up!
Whannell: I have to say, I feel like the elder statesman of this group, wobbling in on my walker. It’s so exciting: you guys are all at the start of your careers and you’ve made such great films. I’m just so excited to see what you all do next.
James: Yeah, we’re all like, “What happens next, Leigh?”
Weekes: Yeah, Leigh. What do we do next?
Tell us!
Whannell: It’s just a lot of tears, a lot of whisky… Savage: On it.