From several of the same twisted minds that created the
“V/H/S” trilogy, the new indie horror anthology film “Southbound” resembles
what might result from Rod Serling taking a
cross-country roadtrip with The Cryptkeeper.
Presenting five intertwined “Twilight Zone”-esque
morality tales all taking place on the same stretch of lonely desert highway,
“Southbound” is a bloody joy ride that should please genre fans and horror
enthusiasts alike. You can read City’s full
review here. “Southbound” is now available On Demand and on iTunes.
City spoke with one of the film’s creators, writer-director
David Bruckner, to discuss horror’s unique ability to let audiences face their
darkest fears, the appeal of anthology films, and working with those
imaginatively gory effects. An edited transcript of that conversation follows.
City: I’m curious about the collaboration process on these
type of anthology-style films. Were there preliminary meetings to get everyone
on the same page? How much detail did you know about what the other directors
were working on?
David Bruckner: Well, in the past, several of us had
worked on the “V/H/S” films — Radio Silence and myself
were on the first “V/H/S,” and then Roxanne [Benjamin] and Brad [Miska] produced the first two “V/H/S” movies. For that
first movie there was very little communication, we were sent a concept, and
then we pitched ideas, and then we all went off and made our own pieces. Many
of the shorts were shot in different states altogether. With “V/H/S,” I didn’t
even see the full film assembled until it premiered at Sundance. I didn’t
really know what we had until it went up.
With “Southbound,” we knew we wanted to do something
different. We wanted to do something that mimicked a real dramatic structure. And
one of the pitfalls of anthology films is that you kind of have to stop and
start quite a bit for an audience. It’s like when you start a new chapter in a
book, and you meet new characters, and for just a second you kind of have to
reinvest yourself. The whole story loses momentum. So we’d be talking about it
as a five “Act One” kind of problem, and that’s a common problem for
anthologies. We really wanted to shape the way these pieces related to one
another and where one left off and the other picked up the thread. So this one
was a very collaborative process.
We all came to the table with various ideas, we went out and
drove around the desert, scouted some locations, brainstormed about theme and
structure and how the whole thing would work together. So in a sense each story
is its own individual creation, led by those writers and directors, but we
collaborated a great deal in how they related. And I know oftentimes throughout
versions of our drafts or concepts that we wanted to do, we adapted them more
into something that would be beneficial to that overall journey.
That collaboration really helps “Southbound” feel much
more cohesive than a lot of anthology films. Each story transitions pretty
seamlessly into the next. Did you specifically plan out how each story would
shift into the next?
It was definitely something that we planned. We kinda knew from the get go that certain concepts that we
wanted to do generally lend themselves better to different parts of the story.
Like Roxanne’s concept with “Sirens” felt like a really great slow burn
introduction where you get to know these characters. It really felt like an
“Act One” kind of experience to introduce the audience into the world. Whereas
Pat [Horvath’s] concept — of a character who kicks in the door of this crazy
sort of insidious place, and already sort of understands its designs — felt
very appropriate for something that would come later in the movie, once the
audience has grown more accustomed to this world.
As you’ve mentioned, you’ve done a few anthology films
now. Is there something about this format in particular that you’re drawn to?
I love the collaboration, it’s a great learning experience
for me to just see how other directors work. It’s been
a little circumstantial that I’ve ended up doing two, arguably three, of them at
this point. Part of it is that they’re a little quicker to get made. Sometimes
features can be challenging to get into production, so something like this is
really great ’cause we were
able to just band together and shoot it very quickly.
A lot of the segments play with horror movie tropes: home
invasion, satanic rituals, and in your case, a good person desperately trying
to fix their one terrible mistake. As a filmmaker, how do you approach taking
those familiar elements and giving them a new twist?
I think with horror in particular, it’s all about finding
that preexisting anxiety, something that the audience can relate to, because
most horror tropes are kind of abstractions. They’re metaphors for our
anxieties and our fears. If you can draw an audience in with something that’s
extremely familiar — oftentimes it’s just something that we talk about in the
writing process: “This is something that scares me; this is something I’m
genuinely afraid of. Or this is an area of my life where I don’t think I have
control. Or this is something that haunts me.” And then you either dress that
up in a way that’s not so obvious to your own life, or you really just run
right at it. And that will become an entry point. I think the tropes for me are
something that come later. You start to go, “Ok, how do I articulate this? What
kind of nightmare is this at the end of the day?”
Watching your sequence in particular, I kept thinking
about how there’s a pretty thin line between gory horror and slapstick comedy —
in both cases the response is often to cringe and laugh. How do you find the
right tone in those scenes?
I think for me, it’s kind of funny in the script phase, you
know? The clearest way tone was ever explained to me was that it’s the attitude
of the filmmakers toward the material. So in a sense, if you have a sense of
humor about these anxieties, as horrible as they must be, it’s like part of the
way we cope with it is to find a dark way to laugh at the absurdity. I think
that’s there from the beginning. I think it’s present in the extremity of the
writing. It’s funny ’cause
you pass around the script and a lot of people are reading it and they’re going,
“Wow, this is…” They’ll often comment on the genre stuff that’s gonna be intense and scary or whatever it’s going to be,
and then you’ll hear somebody go, “I think it’s funny.” As though they’re
uncertain or they’re not sure that they have permission to laugh at it. And I
feel like that’s kind of a sweet spot for me for some reason I’m fond of that.
There’s been a bit of a resurgence in the use of practical
effects in horror films. You couldn’t have directed a film like yours without
an appreciation for that art form. Can you explain a little bit about working
with those types of effects?
I’m not real experienced in practical effects. I think my job
is usually story and getting us to that point — and I was very nervous about
this because there’s such a huge effects component. You know, even if there’s a
sense of humor to the whole thing, I still want what you see to be very, very
real. Because there’s a tension in that. It’s like,
“I’m picking up the humor in this, but I also can’t unsee
what I’m seeing right now and that’s very upsetting.”
I was very nervous about making sure we could pull it off on
a minimal budget, and I was really lucky to find a husband and wife, Josh and
Sierra Russell, who saw the opportunities in this and just went crazy with it.
I think if it works, it’s because of their expertise and lots and lots of
preparation. I think audiences are trained to see the line where the real
element ends and the fake element begins. Anybody who’s ever seen a movie where
an actor’s pretending like they’ve lost their hand and you can very clearly see
that the arm where the hand is missing is much longer than the other arm. You
know, obviously their arm is tucked up into their shirt. We’re sort of in tune
with those sorts of tricks. We’ve seen them a whole bunch, so with this we
really wanted to make sure that you have a difficult time placing where we’ve
drawn the line, if that makes sense. And oftentimes even though we’re focusing
on one particular element, we would frame the shot in a very wide way so that
you see part of a body moving that troubles your mind. Obfuscating where the
effect begins and where it ends.
Larry Fessenden is perfect as the Wolfman
Jack-like DJ we hear throughout the film. How did that role come about?
That one was a discovery we made in post. We were stringing
the whole movie together and it all worked, but we felt like it was missing
something to tie the pieces together. We found ourselves wondering how overt
you could get about the themes that were present. It’s sort of a fun idea to
imagine that it’s all just right there on the surface, being broadcast along
this highway, and that would be a fun device to play with.
Many of us knew Larry and greatly admire him as a filmmaker
and producer and a personality in the indie horror scene, so when he said he’d
come on board and voice the DJ for us, it brought so many different elements of
the movie together. And I think it plays really wonderfully. I’m still
discovering how it fits, and it’s a fun flavor to intersperse with the
different pieces. I’m still kind of understanding some of what he says in some
of the other sections. Upon repeated viewings, it gets funnier and funnier to
me.
So many aspects of the film are open ended, from the
specifics of what led the characters to the place we find them in, to the
location itself — which feels like Hell or at least a purgatory of some sort.
Were there ever any conversations about filling in those details?
Yeah, we definitely had some very specific discussions about
what it could be. But if you start answering too many questions, it becomes an
exercise in world-building and we wanted to avoid that. One of the fun things
about anthology shorts is that you can get in and get out, hopefully without as
much explanation, and that leaves it a little more mysterious and a little more scary in a sense. We really want to lean into what you
don’t know. As far as the writer’s room is concerned, those gaps — those things
left unsaid — I find there’s not always a really firm answer for what that is.
It’s always an evolving answer, so it’s a changing thing. Sometimes I’ll see
the movie and I’ll go “you know, this time it occurred to me that maybe it’s
this. Or maybe where they came from was this.” For instance, there’s a secret
told in the last section, that Radio Silence planted, which we don’t hear. I
still don’t know what it is. Every time I’ve pressed them about it, I’ve gotten
a different answer. And I think that’s part of the fun.
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2016.
