Director wants to make you feel uncomfortable
Trey Edward Shults has directed two films: “Krisha” and his latest, “It Comes at Night.”
Critical acclaim isn’t the most important thing in the world, but for what it’s worth, at the moment “Krisha” checks in at 97 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes, a leading site that compiles reviews; “It Comes at Night” weighs in at 86 percent positive. And yet…
“I just saw some bad reviews today,” Shults, 28, said during an interview.
“We got a negative review the other day, and I saw another today,” he said. “Today a guy said it is impersonal, insignificant and the characters are hollow shells. That was like, wow, that’s a bummer (laughs).”
You can tell the affable Shults is proud of his films. He talked about critical reception, building tension and more.
Question: Do negative reviews really bother you?
Answer:
It’s tough. I think I pay more attention than I want to just because I haven’t made a lot of stuff, and I’m curious how it’s being perceived. It does and it doesn’t.
Q: Why do we like being so uncomfortable? We should run from it.
A:
That’s a good question. It’s arguable a lot of people do run from it, right? A lot of people won’t see that kind of movie. It’s not like I have all the answers, but my guess is that us as human beings, we’re pretty complex and we have a range of emotions. I think being tense, or dread, if it rings true to us and feels true to our lives, that’s fascinating. But then just from a fun level, maybe it just makes us feel more alive. I don’t know, man. Clearly I dig it.
Q: Was “It Comes at Night” harder to shoot than ‘Krisha?” There’s a lot more going on. A:
Yeah. It was different, you know? Tough to say. Obviously, literally, there’s stuff that’s harder. Almost every element is tougher. You have a bigger crew. You have actual set pieces, action pieces, you have boards on all the windows and you need a different day look for your interiors. So there’s all of that. But I know, just like approaching it, I just wanted to flex different muscles. Subtlety was a big one with this one, that (cinematographer) Drew (Daniels) and I were drawn to.
Q: It’s satisfying if you don’t give all the answers. Was that the goal?
A:
That’s always my goal, and I’m certain it’s going to stay that way with whatever I make. There’s a kind of storytelling I like, like one is just being thrown into it and experiencing it with the characters, and getting what I can get only when they get it, if that makes sense.
My favorite kind of movies are the kind that I’m continually drawn to and I see new things in them. So a lot of movies that do that for me are movies that don’t give all the answers and are left open, so I can draw new things from them. And this movie, too, it’s left open to where you can take different things from it, and I hope it can be about different things for different people. I know one way I approach it, and what I think it is about, is it’s about fear of the unknown. So I think that unknown should literally drip through into the storytelling. At least that was my approach. I love that.
Q: Not everyone will. A:
I already am aware that that’s going to be frustrating for people, but I hope the movie sticks with some people, like you keep thinking about it after you leave the theater, if you have a conversation about it.
Q: Horror films are notoriously hard to end, because the buildup is so much more fun.
A:
Yep. It seems like a lot of horror movies, it’s the build-up. What is your big climax? Inevitably I feel like, obviously not the case with everything, it can never quite equal all you would want it to. One thing with this, what happens, to me it’s devastating. It breaks my heart . ... I’m sorry, I’m trying to speak around how not to spoil this. When that thing happens, these families are broken, both of them. That’s devastating to me. Just letting that hit and being stuck with that is interesting.
Q: Kelvin Harrison Jr., who plays the son, Travis, is great.
A:
I agree. So huge. It’s his story, it’s Travis’ story, and it’s told through his eyes, and I hope through him, and I’m so grateful we found that kid. My casting director just sent me tapes of kids, and the kids didn’t have the full script. They just had scenes, and one of the scenes was just the midnight kitchen scene with Kim (Riley Keough, in which they have a conversation fraught with sexual tension), which is like a sweet, charming scene, I think, and everyone played it charming. Kelvin played it sweet and charming, as well, but you could tell there was another layer there. There was like a hurt under his eyes. This kid had stuff going on in his head, and that was Travis. And I was also fascinated that he chose to play it like that, when he has no context for the rest of the story, but he intuitively felt it.
Q: Guillermo del Toro once told me that directing is solving a series of problems. How many did you run into? And could you tell when, for instance, Harrison was really nailing a scene?
A:
The first time I saw our dog, who is 12 years old, they tried to get him to run and he couldn’t run (laughs). It was like, oh (expletive), what are we going to do about this? That was just one of the dozens, millions of problems that came up. That’s why it’s a miracle good movies get made.
But then there’s another time, probably a million other scenes, where this is a moment where crazy (expletive) is not going on all around you and you’re 100 percent honed in and I start crying and I start crying, like a performance breaks my heart. It’s full of waves, ups and downs.