David Goyer Gives Beaks A Peek At THE UNBORN!!

When was the last time you were scared by a horror movie? Not "shocked" or "repulsed" or "wishing you could be home watching the original", but genuinely, unequivocally, down-to-the-marrow terrified by the story unfolding on the screen in front of you? This is a question writer-director David Goyer put to himself not long ago, and what he came back with was a list of movies that emphasized atmosphere over Rube Goldberg acts of torture: SESSION 9, THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES, THE OTHERS and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. Using those films as a tonal model, he wrote THE UNBORN, a supernatural thriller about a young woman who finds herself slowly (and quite unwillingly) ceding control of her own body to the pissed-off spirit of her expired-in-utero twin. Finally, having spun a yarn that prefers a good slow burn to a series of slow, painful deaths, Goyer did what any established filmmaker in Hollywood would do: he went to Michael Bay's Platinum Dunes! So much for nuance, right? Wrong. As is probably not at all evident from the recently-released trailer, Goyer has somehow managed to craft a moody supernatural thriller under the aegis of the men who've made their names on titillating teen audiences with as much gore as an R-rating will permit. At least, this is the sense I'm getting after viewing somewhere around fifteen minutes of footage with Goyer and his editor Jeff Betancourt (who previously cut THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE and THE RUINS). Though the film is unabashedly targeting teenage girls (the protagonist is a nineteen year old with body issues... c'mon!), the pace of the opening eight minutes is glacial compared to the pre-credit kills favored by the SAW franchise. And to hear Goyer tell it, the movie favors this kind of unnerving understatement until the final twenty minutes, which is when all hell literally breaks loose (what else do you expect from an exorcism presided over by Gary Oldman and Idris Elba?). Back to that opening sequence, it's amazing how eerie a forest in the middle of winter can be - especially when captured in a 2.40:1 frame. As I mention in the below interview with Goyer, I think horror works best in widescreen; also, the longer you can let any shot play, the better (basically, the more you ape John Carpenter's aesthetic, the more likely I am to get utterly creeped out by your movie). Goyer does this very effectively, following Yustman's Casey from the seemingly innocuous discovery of a blue glove (discarded in the middle of a jogging path) into a wooded area, where she inexplicably digs up an antique doll (never a welcome find in a horror filck). This is all punctuated by a mild jump scare, but Goyer quickly reestablishes the sense of quiet menace in the next scene, which builds to Casey's run-in with that scary-lookin' kid and the hand mirror. As is often the case in exorcism tales, no one believes Casey's physical maladies (which includes a bizarre fleck of blue in her iris) are the manifestation of an evil spirit - or, in this case, a dybbuk. This includes Rabbi Sendak (Oldman), who, while well-versed in the Jewish mythology relevant to her possession, is disinclined to believe that such folklore has any basis in reality. But he's convinced soon enough (running across dogs with human faces will shake up even the sturdiest of skeptics), which leads Sendak to consult a priest (Elba) with some hands-on experience in driving demons from human bodies. Goyer wouldn't tell show me what happens in the final twenty minutes, but he was downright gleeful in describing its effect on test screening audiences. Once we were done watching the footage, Goyer opened up for a forty minute back-and-forth which yielded some fascinating insights about the sound and visual design of the film (e.g. how certain colors signal the presence of the spirit), the joy of "directing" Gary Oldman, the role of Kabbalah in the story, exorcism "licensing", and, most importantly, everything you want to know about the status of the Batman sequel. We also briefly touch on THE INVISIBLE MAN and MAGNETO, but, for the most part, we stick to THE UNBORN (which is opening in the HOSTEL slot on January 9, 2009).

Mr. Beaks: I like the kid in the raincoat. That's very--

David Goyer: DON'T LOOK NOW. I'm not hiding it. (Laughs) And it was pertinent to [the story]. We have a little kid who gets taken over by this other entity anyway, and he does go after one of the characters. So I said, "Well, we might as well have it raining so we can put him in a slicker." But it was kind of fun because there's a ton of symbolism and color theory that I put into the movie. There are two colors. One is the color of the spirit's eyes. And anytime that shows up in the movie, whether it's a prop or on an extra who crosses through the frame, it's an indication that the spirit is there - whether it's there yet or not. I never explicitly spell it out, but it's kind of cool; we charted the movie, and every time the spirit is around, that color is there. It's not so flamboyantly obvious. I actually don't even know what percentage of the audience will get it.

Beaks: Perhaps it's something that could hit them on a subconscious level.

Goyer: Yes. Like in that scene with Gary Oldman, there's a blue light over his right shoulder. And later on, in the scene that precedes him going down and seeing that dog thing, he's in the office translating the book, and all of the lights go out except for that blue light. It's not really obvious, but there are a bunch of other times that that color shows up. And then there's a sort of inverted color, the color of that book cover, a sort of rusty red... that's supposed to represent the safe lineage of the exorcism and her grandmother and mother. Anytime that color is around, that's supposed to represent the counterpart to the blue. Again, it's not really spelled out, but it was a fun thing to track throughout the movie. There were like fourteen scenes where the blue showed up, so I was like, "I want the blue in here." Sometimes it's an item of clothing, sometimes it's an object of set design, sometimes it's... an offscreen light that flashes right as she's talking about [the spirit]. It's my horror version of THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG.

Beaks: (Laughing) And didn't someone mention that the wind chimes signal the presence of the spirit? That's a cool way to generate suspense.

Goyer: What I try to do... I mean, everybody knows the rules of vampire movies. This is an exorcism movie, so we wanted to come up with our own set of rules and telltale signs that [the spirit] is around. The wind chimes is one that you set up, and there comes a point in the movie that she hears them tinkle and knows the spirit is there. It's funny. I was a little worried about that movie MIRRORS. But the mirrors aren't as integral to this story as it was to that film. It's based in the Kabbalah, and there's this whole thing about how Lillith, who's supposedly the mother of all demons, entered our world through mirrors. Because this has to do with twins... there are a lot of shots that involve reflections. A twin is like a literal reflection of somebody, so that's how the mirrors got in there. It's more subtextual than...

Beaks: An actual malevolent force that makes you tear your face off?

Goyer: Yes.

Beaks: There's a rich tradition of creepy twins in cinema. There's SISTERS and...

Goyer: THE SHINING.

Beaks: Right. What sparked your interest in twins?

Goyer: It's interesting. The way I got into twins was this whole thing with heterochromia. You just come up with these ideas, and... I was coming up with the notion of eyes being the "window to the soul", and what would happen if irises start changing. So I started researching that medical condition, and one of the medical reasons is that sometimes when you have twins the placentas become fused. So the chromosomes from one twin will get into another. Now [Casey] develops heterochromia as a nineteen year old. Most people are born with it, but on very rare occasions it can be caused by a tumor. She has an MRI, and it's not that, so the only thing I could think of is that it's a twin. And she says, "But I'm an only child." And that's what sort of starts the whole thing unraveling.

Beaks: And this is hastened by the hand mirror.

Goyer: She finds a fleck of blue in her eye the day after she gets hit with the mirror.

Beaks: In movies like this, an important component is who performs the exorcism. After all, THE EXORCISM had Max von Sydow. You've got to get a formidable presence or else why do it?

Goyer: And Tom Wilkinson in THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. You really need someone with gravitas to perform an exorcism.

Beaks: Like Richard Burton.

Goyer: When we were in preproduction, there was a list of five actors who could sell that crazy stuff. So I said, "Well, I glancingly know one of them, so I'll take a stab at him." I knew Gary, but I wasn't on those sets that much. I'd met him a few times at premieres and junkets, but we never had dinner or anything like that. So we took at stab at him, and his representation was like, "No way." So I got on the phone with them and said, "Why don't you read the script?" And his manager liked the script. But then they were like, "Gary's not Jewish." And I said, "But I don't want to cast a guy who looks like he should be in YENTL." A lot of rabbis aren't like that; that's just a stereotype. And the character was written as a very progressive guy who doesn't believe in spirits. So then they said, "But he doesn't know Hebrew." And I was like, "Come on, he can learn it!" And Gary really got into it. He studied Hebrew for a month.

Beaks: Watching the footage, I'm amazed again at how easily he can slip into any accent. Does he just show up on the set with everything figured out? Is there much "directing" of Gary Oldman?

Goyer: We had a conversation in L.A. about the character. I wanted him to be American, but not Jim Gordon. Then we talked about Sephardic Hebrew and Ashkenazi Hebrew, and which one his character use - because Gary's very detail oriented. (Laughs) Then we talked about where his character came from. And he called me a couple of times after that, asking me who this guy was. And that was it: he showed up on set, and he was that guy. He's an amazing actor.

Beaks: So you never had to give him a line reading?

Goyer: (Laughs) No. It's funny... I called Chris [Nolan] to ask what it's like directing him, and he said, "You just talk about the character, and then he shows up and does it. But here's the good thing: it's always amazing." (Laughs) And it is. He asks you a bunch of specific questions about "Why did you do this?" and "Why did you write it this way." He challenges you on all of these things. But he doesn't like to improvise. He just does his thing. But I like the idea that [Casey] comes to him, and, at first, he thinks she's kind of crazy. I hope that comes off in the scene.

Beaks: It does. He says it with his eyes.

Goyer: Yeah! Because he doesn't believe in medieval demons; he probably got an initial degree in psychology or sociology. Most progressive priests and rabbis don't believe in it either. I did a lot of research, and I remember talking to this one guy. I asked him "What would you do if someone told you they had this problem?" And he said, "I would think they were crazy, and I would recommend a number of mental health people they should talk to." So I said, "But what if you saw something that might make you believe it's real?" And he was like, "I don't know. I'd do some research, and maybe I'd call the Catholic church." And that's how I got on the idea [to incorporate a Catholic priest]. Then I had a [consultant] who was an Episcopalian priest. He'd never performed an exorcism before, but he had an Episcopalian priest friend who had. And I asked him, "What steps did he take?" "Well, first he went to the ecumenical council and said, 'What do you think?'". He had to get permission. (To Betancourt) Did we cut the scene out with the releases?

Betancourt: Yeah.

Goyer: That's the one thing I still wish was in the movie. They're so worried about liability that they make you sign releases and check your IDs before they'll let you do an exorcism. So I actually had this moment where the Idris Elba character says, "Can I see your ID? I've got this release here, and you've got to sign it." (Laughs) They're worried about it. Every now and then an exorcism will be performed, and some person will end up dying. I also read this article where they were comparing the amount of sanctioned exorcisms performed in the twentieth century before THE EXORCIST came out and after. It jumped, like, 200% after THE EXORCIST. Talk about the tail wagging the dog...

Beaks: One thing that stood out in the footage is the way Chicago feels like a character in the movie. I never noticed it before, but there's something spooky about that city.

Goyer: Well, I wanted to set it in an urban setting. And I wanted winter to be a character, too. I just thought it would be different. So when you say you want to do winter - and we made this movie for $21 million - you can't just assume you're going to have snow. You have to take what they give you. Some of the scenes have snow, and some don't. We carried some fake snow with us, but the end result is that you have this patchy snow throughout - which is cool! But I just find that bleak... I was trying to go against type in terms of the old spooky house. I mean, there is an old spooky house, but aside from the place where she jogs in the beginning, everything is urban.

Beaks: When you're going for midwest bleakness, I don't think you really need snow even. Just bare trees and frozen ground. You can really feel it in your bones. And shooting widescreen... I prefer my horror in widescreen.

Goyer: You can play with a lot more negative space. With this, we use a lot of what I call "observational shots", where we're just hanging back and seeing what happens. For me, there aren't a lot of movies made in the last twenty years that actually scare me. There was a real push-pull on this film; on one hand, the studio recognized that it wasn't a slasher film, but on the other... they didn't want it to be THE MOTHMAN PROPHECIES - which I liked, by the way. But I wanted that atmosphere. I think you can startle people, but I think to get scares, you have to be atmospheric, which is why the first eight minutes are a pretty slow burn. There's not a lot of big scares in the first eight minutes.

Beaks: There is a nice undercurrent of unease in that first scene. Although you do have those eyes shooting open.

Goyer: But as shitty as that temp thing is, in the preview it got a big jump. The goal is to set people slightly ill at ease. We've previewed it a couple of times, and it seems to work. And then the last twenty minutes are just a bunch of "boo!" scares and Sam Raimi mayhem. Eventually, you have to, as I think Guillermo [del Toro] would say, "show your dick". But Jeff cut EMILY ROSE, and there was a lot of things in that that I found disturbing. Like those moments when the tape recorder would go on in the middle of the night, and she would walk out... I don't know, I just find stuff like that spooky. And I don't know why, but when [Casey] walks into the woods at the beginning and finds the mask on the ground, I just find that unnerving. People find the dog unnerving, too.

Beaks: Dogs wearing masks are just inherently creepy. But that's true. I think the eeriest moments in my life have been when I was just walking by myself in the woods. Something just comes over you, and then your imagination starts working, and you just want to get the fuck out of there.

Goyer: We've previewed it three times, and I think we have a pretty good sense of where the scares are. There are a couple of pretty big "screaming" scares. I didn't show them to you, but there are a couple.

Beaks: The end of the trailer isn't one?

Goyer: That's a big one, but I would say that's number four or five on the list. No, there are a couple that I feel really confident about; they get massive screams from the audience. We'll see, but right now it's playing right where I hoped it would play.

Beaks: I think the biggest scare I've experienced over the last twenty years is that scene in MULHOLLAND DRIVE with the homeless guy.

Goyer: Completely! And why is that so scary?

Beaks: It's the sound.

Goyer: A lot of it is the sound. It's in broad daylight, and yet I was horrified by it. It's interesting... when we went into our temp mix, we had a lot of music. But now we've got a bunch of scenes like the opening scene in the woods; there used to be music over that, but now it's just atmospheric sound of her stepping on leaves and stuff. That made it a lot scarier. There's a lot of silence in the movie. It's been exciting to actually pull music out of the movie.

Beaks: Has it been a relief to go through this process knowing that you don't have to be faithful to some kind of established superhero canon?

Goyer: Yeah! It's not based on a novel; there aren't any negative preconceptions in terms of BLADE or the previous BATMAN movies. This is the first spec I've written in probably a decade, and it was nice. Now, that can work against you, too, because you're starting from scratch and you're trying to do a new wrinkle on an old mythology. That was weird, too. The character isn't Jewish, but it sort of comes from Jewish lore and Kabbalah. I was wondering if a predominantly non-Jewish audience would embrace it, but so far no audiences have had an issue with it. They've really embraced it.

Beaks: Well, the Kabbalah stuff has permeated the culture.

Goyer: It has, but I was wondering how an audience would respond to it [in this movie]. I didn't really know, but they all kind of like it. I think it would be interesting to do another horror film with a predominantly Islamic bent. If this one's successful, I've half a mind to do it. That's not something most gentiles know about, and there's a really rich history there. (This leads to me hazily recalling a movie called SPHINX when I really meant to cite THE AWAKENING. What's great about this tangent is that neither movie touches on the subject Goyer would like to explore.)

Beaks: And through the testing, you haven't been pressured to make any massive changes?

Goyer: Honestly, the big issues have been modulating the scares. It's like comedy: "Now that we've done it three times, how much is too much?" It's modulating explanation, too. Fortunately, there weren't any big characters that people had a problem with. There was something at the end that people saw coming, but we did it again and nobody saw it coming.

Beaks: Was it an instance of underestimating the audience?

Goyer: I found that, during the process, we underestimated them both ways. Things that I thought would be a problem weren't a problem, and things that I never in a million years could've predicted would be a problem were a problem. Betancourt: Without giving anything away, they picked on so much early on. Goyer: More than anything, we pulled shit out. I was surprised. Betancourt: Especially in a scary movie, I think they were attuned to look for clues. So they picked up on stuff that we never expected. They wanted to be challenged. They were really smart.

Beaks: When you remember that film is a visual medium and use it that way, it's amazing how engaged audiences can be.

Goyer: That was one of the interesting experiences. I wrote this script and sold it to Universal [Rogue Pictures] a week before the writers strike. Originally, I was going to do MAGNETO as a pre-strike movie, and [Fox] decided to do WOLVERINE first. That was a bummer, but I had this in my back pocket, so we sold it to Universal. But then I couldn't change it. So the strike got settled a week before we started shooting, and... I did a pass where I overexplained shit. But film is a visual medium, and you get into it and realize that so much can be conveyed either with a look or a little flashback to something or a camera push. Fortunately, when we got into our preview process, everybody realized that we should just pull all that shit out.

Beaks: You brought up MAGNETO, so I have to ask. Is it kind of a wait-and-see right now with WOLVERINE coming next May?

Goyer: That's completely what it is. (Laughs) It's not "kind of". They were developing him, and ultimately they decided to do WOLVERINE first. I don't blame them. And they're waiting to see what happens with that. I mean, I've got this and THE INVISIBLE MAN, which I'm writing for Universal. And then I've got this pilot that I wrote on spec which ABC just bought. I"m not going to wait around.

Beaks: Is THE INVISIBLE MAN reliant on THE WOLF MAN doing well?

Goyer: I don't think so. I hope not. (Laughs) THE WOLF MAN is an R-rated gothic thriller. THE INVISIBLE MAN is closer to THE MUMMY in tone. It's a romp. It's PG-13. He becomes a secret agent for the percursor to MI6, and the bulk of the movie takes place in Imperial Russia. It's a steampunk movie. There's airships and steam robots.

Beaks: So there's no meddling in things that man must leave alone?

Goyer: No. It's got things in it that are scary, but it's more Indiana Jones than it is THE WOLF MAN.

Beaks: And here comes the obligatory series of questions...

Goyer: I'm not telling you anything.

Beaks: Okay, but did you see the Production Weekly listing? They apparently had Nolan down as director, which means it's a done deal, of course!

Goyer: All I can tell you is that Chris is taking a long vacation. I think he is under no pressure to get back on the stick.

Beaks: Let me put it this way: do you think he's going to make another movie before the next Batman film?

Goyer: I'm not sure. He hasn't even committed to doing another Batman, so I can't say for sure. I will say that I read Cher is going to play an aging Catwoman.

Beaks: That was a good one. I think we've covered everyone and gotten every actor, living or dead, involved in the next Batman. It's all recycled speculation.

Goyer: I heard Leonardo DiCaprio. I heard Philip Seymour Hoffman as the Penguin. Cher and Angelina Jolie as the Catwoman.

Beaks: One of the rumors is going to end up being right just by virtue of everyone getting mentioned at one point or another.

Goyer: I guess it will, but that won't be a backwards way of me confirming anything.

Beaks: If I leave here without asking, my readership won't think I've done my job.

Goyer: You know, Chris really doesn't like to talk about that stuff. As with every other [Batman movie], even if there were something, he would never let it be known. He believes in working in peace and saving as much as he can for the audience. He's not into teasing stuff.

Beaks: You know what disappoints me? I talked to Aaron Eckhart recently for TOWELHEAD, and I got him to emphatically confirm that Harvey Dent is dead. But then I get people writing in saying, "Yes, but this could all be misdirection, we didn't see him embalmed, we didn't see him in the casket, etc."

Goyer: When the movie comes out on Blu-ray, when they go to the exterior and they show Batman hanging there... you know there's that moment where Batman's hanging by that girder and then he falls? Freeze-frame it, and look how high that fall is. Then ask yourself how even Batman in that armor would be so fucked up. There's no way! It's like eighty feet!

Beaks: And my point is "Why do you want him to come back? Doesn't that violate what's special about Nolan's universe?"

Goyer: Why is that?

Beaks: I think people just want to believe that he could come back.

Goyer: But why?

Beaks: Because they want more Two Face? I honestly don't know.

Goyer: I started reading comic books in '74 or '75, so I was around for X-MEN 137 when Phoenix got killed. I was moved by that. And I was bummed when they bought Phoenix back. I'd like those characters to stay dead. I feel like, in the first two movies, we did some really cool villains, and if there's another [movie], we'll find some other cool villains. If Heath was still alive, I guess that would've been a different issue.

Beaks: That's what Eckhart said, too.

Goyer: I don't think anyone wants to do another Joker. You know, they killed Hawkeye in Brian Bendis's AVENGERS. I've always liked the character of Hawkeye, and I was bummed that they killed him. But then I was even more bummed when they brought him back a few years later. I was also bummed when they brought Elektra back.

Do with that what you will. And be on the lookout for THE UNBORN come January 9th. Faithfully submitted, Mr. Beaks