USA TODAY International Edition
Kevin Bacon worked through COVID- 19
There’s nothing like filming a horror movie in an isolated house in Wales to prepare Kevin Bacon for several months of being stuck at home during coronavirus.
The star of the new psychological thriller “You Should Have Left” ( streaming Thursday on digital platforms), about a man who can’t escape the supernatural terror of a modern residence, finds it to be a “sort of serendipitous” situation.
“Not that I wouldn't like this all to go away, but it is interesting kind of preparation,” Bacon admits. “While I was making the film, I also isolated myself in a little cabin near the house that we shot in. So instead of going back to the village at night and to the inns and pubs, I was really out in a kind of quiet and darkness that I've never really experienced before.”
Written and directed by David Koepp and produced by Jason Blum, “You Should Have Left” stars Bacon as Theo Conroy, a middle- aged man with a bit of an infamous streak that follows him. Theo ventures to Wales with his younger actress wife Susanna ( Amanda Seyfried) and their 6- year- old daughter Ella ( Avery Essex) to spend time at an idyllic getaway they find online before Susanna’s next job. There’s something definitely off with the house, though, when a sinister dark force doesn’t let them leave and makes Theo face a complicated past.
Bacon, whose horror history goes back to 1980’ s original “Friday the 13th,” talks with USA TODAY about “You Should Have Left,” what kind of movies scare him and getting back to work during the pandemic:
Question: This movie wasn't even really announced until a few weeks ago. Is that a silver lining of this streaming era, that you can just surprise- drop a horror film?
Kevin Bacon: It seemed like a time when people would be hopefully interested in some good, scary, entertaining content to enjoy. As an industry, we were so inundated with stuff to watch that, before the pandemic, it was like, ‘ Ah, it's too much! My list is so long, and I can't even figure out what to watch.’ And now I think that list is getting a lit
tle shorter. ( Laughs)
Q: What on your own watch list have you and your wife Kyra Sedgwick been able to knock out in quarantine?
Bacon:“The Last Dance” – I just was kinda knocked out by that. We just finished “Normal People,” which I thought was fantastic. “My Brilliant Friend,” I enjoyed that. It's been a lot of good stuff.
Q: What's the last film that frightened you?
Bacon: I just recently watched the documentary about James Baldwin called “I Am Not Your Negro." I found that really, really shook me, especially given the current situation that we're seeing in this country. Sometimes when you see films that talk about a history that doesn't seem to have changed much, that's the type of thing that shakes me. I love horror movies but I'm not one of those people ( who watches them and goes), ‘ Oh, I don't want to turn out the lights tonight because I watched a movie.’ They affect me and I'm a really big consumer of them, but it's more things of a real nature that really shake me to my core.
Q: Hollywood's gearing up to restart productions. What are you most concerned about going back to work in a pre- vaccine landscape?
Bacon: I have recently started chipping away at the suggested protocols because it's very long. I'm not quite sure yet how I feel about it. Well, I can tell you that I want to go back to work. I miss the time in between ‘ action’ and ‘ cut’ – I'm a workhorse kind of person. . This is not a vacation for anybody's mind. It's going to have a lot of challenges.
Listen, it's not digging ditches or being on the front lines of health care, but it's a job where we're used to connecting with each other in emotional ways. And I'm not just talking about scenes between actors. You feel a really strong bond with a crew and based on the amount of hours that we spend ( together), you get to know people in a fairly kind of intimate way. And when you think about the fact that there will be masks and probably gloves and some kind of PPE on everybody, it's going to be hard.
Q: Any Father's Day plans?
Bacon: Is that this weekend? I honestly didn't know. But thanks for telling me. I gotta tell everybody to get going on that. I had no idea.