Mild-mannered 'Villains'
Donovan mines dark side for laughs in horror farce
Horror films usually focus on the macabre. “Villains, which opens Friday, ratchets up the terror — with laughter.
“At SXSW (the annual Austin, Texas, film fest), they started to laugh in the first two minutes,” said Jeffrey Donovan, who plays George, a charming Southerner whose remote woodland house is burgled by a young couple.
That duo, Mickey (Bill Skarsgard, “It Chapter 2”) and Jules (Maika Monroe, “It Follows”), have just (ineptly) robbed a gas station and run out of gas. When they break into what looks like a deserted house, the fun begins.
“These kids think they’re the
smartest in the room, but the minute they enter, they’re in way over their head,” Donovan, 51, said.
Abetted by his spacey wife, Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick, “The Closer”), George is keeping “a dark secret” in the basement, one that freaks out Mickey and Jules as they realize what really bad people they’ve encountered.
“The absurdity of these characters is what’s appealing,” Donovan continued. “When I first read it, I was so impressed but I was going, ‘Are they really going for farce in what is usually a terrifying home invasion genre?’ Because that’s almost impossible to do.”
Best known for starring in seven seasons of “Burn Notice” as a declassified undercover agent in Miami, Donovan developed his slyly malevolent “Villains” character in tandem with Sedgwick.
“People can hide their true characters. They show what they want you to see. This couple would never be suspected of anything.
“They’re almost from an old era, polite and genial. Kyra and I had creative conversations on the history of these guys. We had to agree and be on the same game plan.
“So we started to build from this premise that they’ve got to be likable, a Ward and June Cleaver, Ozzie and Harriet. You realize they’re villains not from their behavior but their actions.”
An Amesbury native, raised with his two brothers by a single mother, Donovan is a University of Massachusetts Amherst grad with an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
In addition to his series, he’s played Angelina Jolie’s tormentor in Clint Eastwood’s “Changeling,” Robert Kennedy for Eastwood’s ‘J. Edgar’ opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and JFK in Rob Reiner’s “LBJ.”
“I’ve been very lucky. It’s been a smorgasbord of a career. I walk down the street and I get ‘loved you,’ ‘despised you.’ All sorts of reactions.”