She’s taking a stab at horror
Sophia Takal’s ‘New Year, New You’ views the sinister side of social media fame.
At a time when women are making strides in film and television production, the horror genre remains primarily a boys’ club. Sophia Takal, Blumhouse’s first female horror director, is aiming to change that.
The former actress has been directing well-received female-led psychological thrillers since 2011’s “Green” and made waves with “Always Shine” in 2016. Her latest, Hulu’s reunion thriller “New Year, New You,” is streaming as the first installment in Blumhouse Television’s “Into the Dark” anthology series.
The feature-length episode, which premiered Friday, follows four high school friends, including a popular social media influencer dubbed Get Well Danielle (Carly Chaikin of “Mr. Robot”). They must reckon with sins of the past after a New Year’s Eve celebration turns deadly. Suki Waterhouse (“Assassination Nation”), Kirby Howell-Baptiste (“Killing Eve”) and Melissa Bergland also star.
“There’s nothing the same about any of the movies [in ‘Into the Dark’], except that they’re holiday horror movies,” Takal said by phone from New York. “It’s a fun concept. Christmas and Halloween are classic horror movie holidays, but so many others would be fun.” Blumhouse contacted Takal to direct the New Year’s Eve episode.
“Usually, when I come up with an idea, I’m going through some big emotional thing,” she said. “I’m struggling with something that I want to work through my art. But with this, I had to do something that someone else was thinking about and find my way into it. It felt a little bit like working from the outside in.”
By focusing on a reunion among friends at differing levels of success, Takal explored themes of female jealousy and resentment, a through-line of her previous work.
“I really related to the idea of people regretting how they’ve lived their lives and having a quarter-life crisis. All the themes around the New Year’s Eve backdrop were exciting and relatable to me,” she said.
The Times talked with Takal about social media, working with Blumhouse and bringing the female gaze to horror films.
You seem especially interested in the dark side of social media influencers. What was the inspiration?
I gravitated toward this idea that social media can be psychologically damaging. People compare themselves to these curated images that social media celebrities put out, in particular this “self-care, selflove” way of thinking. I think self-care is really important, but when it’s taken to the extreme, it can cause people to be pretty narcissistic. This is about exploring that.
What was your experience like with Blumhouse? Jason Blum recently had some blowback for saying that women are less inclined to direct horror than men, and he apologized.
I’d shot this by the time that came out ... I didn’t experience any sexism. . I was supported throughout the process. I also love the movies Blumhouse makes. “Get Out” is one of my favorite horror movies, and I think they do a great job of finding different voices to tell different stories.
Is there something about horror that’s pushed female filmmakers away?
I can’t speak for anyone but myself. I think there is a strain of horror movies that is a little misogynistic. There’s another strain where the women are the heroes and really powerful. But there are certain pockets of horror that I think can be a little bit… I don’t know.
I think something that’s really exciting for me is that in the past it has been maledominated — like much of movies in general — and so it feels like it’s an opportunity for me to put out a new point of view or to show a new way of thinking about things within this genre.
Do you think studios’ interest in hiring female filmmakers and directors of color is more of a gimmick?
This experience was pretty illuminating to me in that I didn’t feel like I was just being hired because I was a woman. I felt they were really interested in how a woman would tell this particular story.
My own opinion is like, “Whatever it takes to get us in the door.” I think it’s OK for people that are aware that they have had blind spots [to acknowledge] that men, especially white men, have gotten the majority of jobs in film for so long, so it’s OK to make a concerted effort to open the door to new types of filmmakers. I don’t feel like it’s gimmicky. I kind of feel like if I looked at it that way, it would be loselose. Because either they won’t do it at all or if they do, they’re doing it for the wrong reasons.
What do you think a female director brings to horror that a man doesn’t or can’t?
I’m a particular woman, and I bring what I bring to it. Another woman might bring a totally different thing to the table in the same way that different men bring different things to the table. What I bring to the table comes from the fact that I was an actress before I started directing. One of the things that drew me more to direct as opposed to focus on acting was that sometimes being on set I felt a little bit like a man’s puppet. I did one movie where I had to get naked, and I walked away from the process feeling a bit like, “All they wanted was for me to show my boobs.” They didn’t really care about the artistic side of things or what I thought would be creatively interesting.
My experience as an actress on traditionally male-dominated sets definitely informs not only the way I interact with actors but the way I choose to shoot. The male gaze definitely influences the way we choose to frame women on-screen, how we shoot them and the stories we are comfortable telling about women. People shy away from telling stories about flawed women. There’s an idea that female characters have to be likable . ... I feel more comfortable with showing the nastier sides of [our experiences] and don’t feel the need to show perfection on-screen. I’d say that’s what I bring to it as myself, who happens to be a woman.
Psychological themes about women dealing with envy and resentment recur in your work.
[Women are] very, very cutthroat. But because [we are] taught that being aggressive is unattractive and unfeminine, the ways in which we compete with one another is so subtextual and psychological. I’ve experienced it a lot on both sides as someone who’s been teased a lot and also as someone who was competitive and totally felt like there wasn’t enough to go around.
I feel like it’s changing a little bit, but I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or because ... as a society women are being really supportive of one another right now. I think both are happening, but for a long time in the past there was a scarcity mentality — [that] there wasn’t enough to go around for all the women in the world. [Now] I’m definitely feeling a lot of support among other female filmmakers. I hope that’s the direction we go in, continuing to be more and more supportive of one another, rather than being pitted against one another.