When writer-director debuted his first feature THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival, it announced the albeit low-key presence of a filmmaker who insisted on treating his teenage characters like real human being and not like a collection of interchangeable cliches. They were thinking, feeling, still-forming characters full of energy, confusion and an underlying melancholy as another summer wound down. If you haven’t seen it, remedy that.
If you have, then the approach to his second film, the slow-creep horror feature IT FOLLOWS might not seem like as much of a surprise. Taking the AMERICAN SLEEPOVER belief that teenagers are worthy of complex thought and genuine emotion, IT FOLLOWS concerns a curse that is placed on Jay (Maika Monroe), who enlists her close friends to help her understand and beat this slow-moving, but utterly awful evil unknown. By making us care about these fully-formed characters and taking small amounts of the film to get to know them, we actually care about their fates and this ordeal.
I had to chance to chat with Mitchell recently, and I’m excited to see what he’s got in store for us down the line. In the mean time, get out and support original horror that also happen to work so damn effectively, and enjoy my talk with David Robert Mitchell…
David Robert Mitchell: Steve?
Capone: Hello, David.
DRM: How you doing?
Capone: Good. Where are you right now?
DRM: I’m in New York. I’ve been all over lately, but right now I’m in New York.
Capone: I saw IT FOLLOWS right before Sundance. I feel like I was the last critic on earth to see it, though, because I feel like I’ve already seen so many reviews. You’ve been working this film for the better part of a year.
DRM: Almost a year, since Cannes. It’s been a long time since it debuted.
Capone: Are you happy that now non-festival crowds are going to get a chance to see it?
DRM: Yeah, I can’t wait for it to come out. Absolutely.
Capone: I was so impressed with the film, both as a fan of horror and someone who truly enjoyed what you achieved with THE MYTH OF THE AMERICAN SLEEPOVER. I have such vivid memory of seeing that film for the first time because I appreciated that you treated teenagers like human beings and not a collection of types. So maybe not fully-formed human beings, but they’re well on the way. Why do so many people get that wrong? I imagine your version of THE DUFF would have been very different.
DRM: [laughs] I haven’t seen that. I’ve heard of that film. For me, it’s not just about writing for that age or writing for any age. It’s really just about caring about your characters and wanting to create an interesting world. It’s not just about advancing plot. It’s about finding the people that are in the scene interesting or something that you can care about. That’s where it comes from for me, but I can only guess as to why sometimes it’s the other way. It’s like taste and tone and all kinds of stuff that’s probably tricky to define.
Capone: You mentioned that it’s not just about forwarding the plot, but a lot of times in horror films, that’s all it’s about. The idea that you have created a film where there are moments of reflection and moments where characters consider, “What did we all learn from that last attack?Let’s figure out where we go from here.” It’s so unusual, and it seems like such a simple idea, but almost nobody gets it right. How did you come up with the approach that there would be these moments, these breaks in the action.
DRM: The breaks are the reason I was really interested. That’s what was most interesting to me about the movie. The waiting moments—to me the movie is about waiting. It’s about the anxiety of waiting. There certainly are these attack moments when maybe this monster actually appears, and that can be fun, but what I really liked is the anxiety and dread that accumulates during the times in which it’s not there, but it could be there any moment, and the characters feel that, and the audience feels that. But ultimately it’s about these characters doing whatever they would do in those waiting moments, whether that’s dealing with their anxiety or trying to connect with one another in a way. That’s what was fun for me in terms of writing the film. That’s probably more of the film. What happens is, once you create the idea that this thing could appear at any moment, you can actually get away with those longer, softer, quieter waiting moments, because it’s hard to know when they would be interrupted. That’s the trick of it.
Capone: The whole movie is just one giant anticipatory moment, and it taps into those moments in a person’s life—and I’m sure we’ve all had them—when you feel like you’re being followed by a vaguely threatening presence. I have that feeling every day pretty much. Where did your creeping feeling come from?
DRM: The basic idea came from a recurring nightmare that I had as a kid, when I was about 9 or 10 maybe. It’s hard for me to remember exactly. I had it for a little bit and I stopped having it when I was around that age, but I literally remember pieces from those nightmares still. It was about being followed by a monster. It’s all the things in the film. It didn’t look that different. It was very slow, it was easy to get away from it, it was always coming for me. Nobody else seemed to notice it or see it. I think it’s a fairly common nightmare. I’ve talked to other people that have had similar ones. I think it’s an anxiety dream, basically. So I’m guessing that some people seem to have a much stronger reaction to IT FOLLOWS than others. For some people, it’s a film where they have anxiety and they feel that, and for some people it’s genuine fear. There are levels to intensity, and it depends on the person. I think it’s very subjective in a way. But for some, I’m guessing maybe it taps into something deeper for some people more than others. That’s a theory of mine.
Capone: Absolutely. I had a version of that dream, and as a result as a kid when I was arranging my bedroom my bed would always be in the furthest corner of the room from the door. Because like you said, it wasn’t an under-the-bed thing. It had to come through the normal way into the room. So you basically live your life never walking into a room without two exits.
DRM: Exactly.
Capone: I love the very rudimentary rules you set up here. It seems to me like this thing moves at a normal pace. You can drive for a day and be safe from it for a while.
DRM: You can fly to Europe, and maybe you’re okay.
Capone: I want to see someone try that actually. But with the way flights are delayed these days, it’d get you in the plane waiting to leave the gate.
DRM: Yes, yes. Totally. You’re absolutely right. You’d get on the plane, and you’re waiting, and they still haven’t closed the doors. “We have to wait here because of a mechanical error.” Then you’re screwed.
Capone: But at the same time, you don’t lose yourself in backstory, you don’t give us really any backstory beyond a couple of people. I realize I’m sitting here telling you all the things you did right here. You don’t need me to tell you that. But so many horror films are killed with backstory. It’s better and it’s scarier without it.
DRM: That was my idea in the sense that I just wasn’t that interested in it. Again, I love horror movies. I watch everything I can see. I’ve seen a lot of horror films that I really like, but at a certain point, it becomes about solving the origin. Instead of just dealing with the nightmare itself, it becomes an organ kind of thing. And some of those I really like, honestly. But sometimes I wish it had remained what it started as, that it hadn’t turned into the other kind of film. And so with this, I just wasn’t that interested in it, and to me it felt a little more disturbing without it. And I also felt like, for myself personally, if I was actually, legitimately thrown into a nightmare, because that’s what it is. If I were thrown into a nightmare, I just don’t think that I could solve it. I don’t think there’s a logical escape from a nightmare. And to try to add one to it makes it maybe less scary to me. It becomes something else. I didn’t want it to be about the origin of some object or some tragic moment.
I’m not trying to criticize things that are done in other movies, it just didn’t feel right for this one. If you’re in a nightmare, it’s just about trying to survive it and escape it. And yeah, the characters do a certain amount of, let’s try to get to the bottom of this as much as possible, but eventually you hit a wall. Even the rules themselves are things that are created by characters that are in the film. They’re not necessarily my rules; they’re the rules that one character tells another, and as for how that person figured that out, we don’t exactly know. It’s their interpretation of the things that they witnessed and experienced, and whether or not it’s all completely accurate is also questionable as well. The rules are not written in a stone tablet; the origin is not necessarily a clear thing that’s easy to determined. For me, that’s a little more interesting—the movie as a nightmare. You can’t pull yourself out of a nightmare. You can try, but you’re going to hit a wall eventually.
Capone: Have you read or talked to anyone who speculated about the origin of this thing?
DRM: I feel like I’ve heard a couple of things, but no not really. Some people asked me did you have an idea. Yeah, I have ideas but I don’t really spend a lot of time thinking about that. To me it’s beside the point.
Capone: In transferring your dream to the page, you introduce this idea of the curse being sexually transmitted. So you’ve given us one more STD to worry about in the world. Would a condom protect you in this situation?
DRM: [laughs] I don’t think so. Yeah, one of the producers at one point asked me, “Can you just have them say that condoms don’t work?” “No, I don’t want to put that in the film.” But I don’t think so. I get all kinds of questions about those sort of things. What sex acts will actually pass this on?
Capone: People want to be sure. I get it, believe me.
DRM: They want to be sure. I think just in general, whatever is happening sexually, you’re probably in trouble in this film world. I guess I just want to avoid some of the specifics. The more you start to talk about it, it just gets ridiculous.
Capone: I know. It’s like, “Screw the backstory, but what do you actually have to do to get this?”
DRM: Yeah, totally. Let me just say this: the concept on a certain level is completely ridiculous. I remember even before I made the film, somebody was saying to me, “What’s the movie about? What’s the thing you’re trying to make?” And I said, “Oh, it’s a horror film.” I didn’t want to talk to people about it, because any time you try to explain it, it sounds like the worst thing ever. So I felt like what I was going to do tonally would balance that out and I could make it work the way I saw it in my head. But trying to explain it, it’s borderline ridiculous.
Capone: Most horror films are on paper.
DRM: Totally, but it’s how you do it.
Capone: Sex is often used in horror films to sell the film and provide a little titillation, but here it’s a key source of the terror, but it’s also a key plot device because your lead character gets these offers from the boys in her life to take the curse away from her. It’s a strategic usage of sex to solve this problem. Jay has a healthy attitude towards sex, but it’s also a recruiting tool in the fight against this thing.
DRM: It’s certainly the thing that initiates the danger, but it’s also the thing that can free the characters, at least temporarily. It operates in a few different ways for them. It doesn’t feel bad for the boys in the film, who are more than willing to take this on and are very, very naïvely.
Capone: You said you’re from the Detroit area?
DRM: Yeah, I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit, this small city called Clawson, and I went to school, I did my undergrad at Wayne State in Detroit. My family still lives there, so that’s still home for me. I live in Los Angeles now; I have for a long time. So that’s where I live, but I love Michigan and Detroit and the Detroit area.
Capone: Having block after block of empty buildings does add to the isolation feeling that these kids are having. There are not many cities where you can pull that off, where you can have vast spaces like that.
DRM: No, that’s true. I definitely wrote it to take place there. To me, it was about the distance, the separation between the suburbs and the city—the way in which these two worlds operate and how close they are physically close, but how different they are in terms of race and wealth and all these things. There’s a major divide, and it’s very strange and really shitty, to be honest. I’m not trying to be overly political within the context of horror film, but I definitely wanted to make reference to it, at the very least. That’s part of why it’s set there.
Capone: I’d love to re-watch the opening again, because it’s so confusing the first time we see it. Just thinking about it, it would be almost worse because at that point we have some idea of what she’s seeing but not really. It’s such a great kick off. How did you come up with that idea to start out that way, with such an overwhelming mystery?
DRM: I liked the idea of playing with perspective with the movie. We tried to do that a little bit with a few other scenes, but not to that degree. Once you get into the film, we introduce the monster through Jay’s eyes and we experience it with her. It’s almost like we’re in that chair with her being told these rules and initiated into these strange thing. It’s the way you get passed the ridiculous nature of it, and how you get into it and believe it and actually feel it. What Jay goes through later, we experience it with her for the most part, except for a few moments that are seen subjectively from the eyes of her friends. Even if the camera itself is objective, we experience it with her. We’re mostly seeing whatever she is capable of seeing. Even in moments when she’s not seeing it, we have this girth of this vision with her.
But in the beginning, the first part that we see, we’re not with her. We’re experiencing this strange situation from the outside, much like the way Jay’s friends see it. It’s a chance for us to suggest what that might be like to view it as an outsider and how strange that is. Also, you’re not going to totally understand what’s happening there. And it’s one of those things where if you watch it again it’s more clear. It gives you a sense of where things are going and what might be happening, but nothing incredibly specific.
Capone: One of the scariest parts of that opening, and it carries through a lot of the film, is that we’re not exactly sure for most of the film exactly what happens when this thing catches up with you. We have that one final image of the first girl—I won’t say what it is—but that one image of the girl on the beach that gives you some idea. Whatever it is, it’s going to be awful.
DRM: It was important to do that I think at certain point early, because the film isn’t really relying on a lot of gore and violence. Again, I don’t have a problem with that in films, it just wasn’t what we were trying to do. But if you suggest that early on, then I think it adds some tension for the rest of the movie.
Capone: Maika Monroe is a tremendous gift to this movie. I’ve loved her in everything I’ve seen her in. Can you talk about finding her? What did you see her in did that you liked? Or was it an audition?
DRM: She auditioned for the part and she was fantastic. We basically saw her audition, and everyone unanimously went, “Okay, she’s the lead for sure.” And I was very happy to get her on the film. It’s a tricky thing to play a part like this and for it to be believable. There’s a vulnerability that she showed, mixed with strength, and you immediately cared about her. You really cared about her, you were immediately worried about if she’s going to be okay or not. During production, she was able to move between the very soft, gentle moments of the film, and then very believably portrayed the fear and those moments of terror. There’s not a lot of screaming in the movie, but there’s some, and there are some moments you can say that are fright moments, and I think that you really believe her, and it would be very easy to have someone is running around scared and screaming; we all see it in a lot of films. It’s the difference between a character that you really care about and believe in, and something that was into B-movie territory. I’m not shitting on B movies, I love B movies. B-movie horror films, but that’s not what we wanted here. She’s just a very strong actress, and we were very lucky to get her on the film.
Capone: Not everybody in their first time out in a horror film gets it right. There’s a certain sense of timing and pacing and rhythm that is critical. Did you watch certain films that you thought did it the way you wanted to? How did you school yourself into getting that right?
DRM: Like I said, I’ve been watching horror films since I was really young, and I love them. I definitely went back and watched a ton of my favorite horror films before we shot the movie, and I watched some through post. The editor and I would reference some. I’m trying to remember specifically what, but all kinds of stuff. We put a lot of planning into it. The cinematographer and I spent an enormous amount of time planning the construction of the film. A lot of thought ahead of time is really how it happened. If I tried to figure it out when I got to set, it would have been too much given the quick nature of our production.
Capone: I never would have assumed you were doing it on the fly. This looks like something that’s done very deliberately.
DRM: For sure.
Capone: Whenever I see a horror film and someone gets it right, I always think “We’d hate to lose you if you go on to something that’s not horror.” But with you, I’ve always suspected that you’re interested in trying out different types of films. Do you have some idea what you’re going to do next?
DRM: Yeah. I have tons of stuff written. For me, it’s always an issue of what I can get money for next? What’s the next thing? I have two films I really want to do next. Neither of those are horror, but one is a drama, and one is…it’s hard to explain. It’s kind of a mystery with adventure. That’s the worst way to explain it. But they’re very different. I definitely want to do all kinds of movies and my own take on a bunch of different stuff. I would like to make another horror film at some point. It won't be next, because I want to try some different stuff. It’s fun to do. But yeah, I would love to do another one. I think they’re very hard to do, to be honest. I found this one to be really challenging and tough, but I would do it again. Yeah, I feel like I learned some stuff doing this. Hopefully, I’d try to make something better. We’ll see.
Capone: Well David thank you so much. And best of luck with this.
DRM: Thank you so much. It was great talking to you.
