French-born Filmmaker Alexandre Aja is a guy I’m always rooting for, mostly because my first exposure to his work—the brutally shocking 2003 feature HIGH TENSION—left a permanent mark on my brain when I saw a preview screening of it at a very early Butt-Numb-a-Thon. This may sound like a bad thing, but for horror fans, any director that can surprise or shock us in genre that thrives on repeating what the last breakthrough film did is pretty special. As a director, Aja followed up with the worthy remake of THE HILLS HAVE EYES, MIRRORS, and the goofy PIRANHA 3D. I was a solid fan of his previous film HORNS, starring Daniel Radcliffe, primarily because I love truly dark fairy tales.
Being the consummate workaholic, Aja has moved into producing such works as the remake of MANIAC (starring Elijah Wood), the French dramedy ROCK THE CASBAH, THE PYRAMID, and from earlier this year, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR. His latest directing work is yet another sometimes disturbing fairy tale, THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX, about a young boy in a coma, and the doctor (Jamie Dornan) attempting to dig into the kid’s brain and unlock a possible sixth sense, with the help of the boy’s pretty mother (Sarah Gadon). The film also throws in a mystery element as a police detective (Molly Parker) is looking into the circumstances of the accident that put Louis in the hospital to begin with. I recently had a chance to chat with Aja via phone and he was as eager to talk about the art of horror filmmaking as I’d hoped he’d be. Please enjoy my talk with Alexandre Aja…
Capone: Hi, Alex. How are you?
Alexandre Aja: Hey. I’m good. How are you doing?
Capone: Good. So where are you calling from?
AA: I’m in Paris right now.
Capone: Great. I don’t know if this will mean anything to you, but I remember back in very late 2003 at an event called Butt-Numb-A-Thon down in Austin, Texas, which my boss puts on every year for his birthday. At this event that year, your film HIGH TENSION played, not long after it played at Toronto. That’s where I was first introduced to your work, and I was completely mortified by that movie for many months to come. So thank you for that.
AA: [laughs] I wasn’t there. But, in fact, I went to fantastic Fest a couple of years ago, and they told me about the HIGH TENSION screening. It’s a weird thing, because at the time no one told me that HIGH TENSION was going to play [BNAT]. I would have loved to come. I mean, really. When we did HIGH TENSION, the movie did well in France, but not that well, and when we got to Toronto, we realized people really enjoyed the movie, and we would have loved to come and see other screenings. But anyway…
Capone: It was a crazy screening—lots of screaming, lots of eyes being covering.
AA: That’s good. That’s always good.
Capone: And a couple of films later was Mel Gibson’s PASSION OF THE CHRIST. I’m not sure which was more violent, but they played very close to each other. Anyway, on this film, how did you first discover the story? Was it through the novel, or through Max [Minghella’s] screenplay?
AA: It was through Max’s screenplay. We were shooting HORNS, and Max was starring with Daniel Radcliffe, and told me about this novel by Lee Jensen that his father, Anthony Minghella, was supposed to direct before he passed. He told me about the story and said, “I have gotten to know you now because we’ve been working for a long time together on HORNS, and I think there are similar themes. Plus, I see you with your son on set.” And at the time, my son was seven. “And I feel that you should really read the script I’m doing right now, which is an adaptation of the book.”
I read the script, and it was very strong. I had a very emotional response to the material, to the world. I thought it was really with a unique voice, and there a lot of opportunities to create some very interesting visuals. But overall when I read through the lines, I saw a real Hitchcokian mystery with a real psychological aspect to it. I knew it was very different from everything I was doing, but somehow I felt it was the right continuity after HORNS. Basically it was very different, but also quite interesting, and there is something that is very important to me, which is to try to not do the same movie all over again.
I would love to come back and find the right movie to do, the right really scary story. And I’m reading a lot of scripts, a lot of books, I’m writing scripts also, but until I find the right one that brings a fresh take on something scary, I don’t want to come back and redo HIGH TENSION or any movies like that. Meanwhile, the script Max Minghella wrote, and the book I read right after, really moved me in a deep way, and I really wanted to make the movie.
Capone: I will say that this and HORNS both have a dark fairytale quality to them, in that I wouldn’t necessarily play them for children, but I think kids at a certain age might appreciate them. But you’re right, it also has that Hitchcock feel. Jamie Dornan’s character embodies that classic Hitchcock hero who’s torn and doesn’t know who to believe.
AA: And Sarah is amazing.
Capone: She’s the classic Hitchcock blonde. I actually just met her recently for another film, and we talked about this film a little bit. Talk about her, because she’s giving an old-fashioned type of performance andembodies a classic femme fatale character here.
AA: She has exactly that classic quality. What really impressed me with her is I think I saw every movie that she did, and in every movie she did in the past, which are all very interesting, she’s always another person. It’s rare to find such a transformation, outside of the cliche character actor, in some other people that like to change so much. She really becomes someone else, and I thought it was really interesting what she brought to THE 9TH LIFE OF LOUIS DRAX, which was really complex, charming, and manipulating. You don’t know exactly what she’s hiding, or why she’s protecting her violent husband. There are a lot of scenes we cannot, of course, talk about.
It was more than an obvious part for her to play, and I knew she would bring something more unexpected than I had in mind, and I think that’s such an amazing quality for an actress, to be able to be sure that she brings something more for each scene, and she has that acting skill that’s pretty spectacular.
Capone: You’re also working with one of my favorite Canadian actors, Molly Parker, who I’ve been a fan of for many, many years. Had you seen her work before?
AA: I think she is spectacular, and also there were so many ways to play that part, and Max and I when we were developing the script, we really wanted to stay away from the obvious cliche of the investigation cop. We wanted someone who was a little bit more smart and provocative, and Molly got it right away. When you compare her more recently in “House of Cards” to this one, she’s so different. She’s very, very intimidating when you see her.
Capone: The fact that Anthony Minghella was thinking about at some point taking on this film, did that sway you one direction or another? Did it make you hesitant to take this on, or were you eager to take this on because this was sort of —
AA: Of course I tried, and Max encouraged me, not to consider how his father would have made the movie, but of course, it was something that never really left my mind when I was making it. I have a huge admiration for Anthony Minghella. I thought he was really one of the best directors of his generation.
When we were doing HIGH TENSION, we were shooting in Bucharest, and it was a very tiny crew. I think we were maybe 10 in the hotel, and Anthony was there at the same time in the same hotel, and he had, I don’t know, 200 or 300 crew. He was with an army, and they were shooting COLD MOUNTAIN. I was so intimidated and I should have went to him and introduced myself and talked to him. At the time, I felt like it was my tiny movie HIGH TENSION on the side. It’s interesting in a way that somehow our paths crossed, and a long time after, I end up doing something. But I really understand what attracted him in the book. There were so many layers, and it’s so complex and all about the deep and the psychological character-driven story.
Capone: Let me ask you about the opening, establishing montage at the beginning when you set up the fact that this boy has all this bad luck. It’s actually quite funny, and there are moments of humor throughout the film, which I was really surprised by. Although there was humor in HORNS, too. Are you now looking for places to plug dark humor into these stories?
AA: I love dark humor; that’s what really attracted me to HORNS, my favorite moments in PIRANHA, and also some of my favorite movies like THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Even if they’re not funny for everyone, I think there is a really dark humor in there. I really like that kind of irony. That opening scene and the way the voice is with it and the visuals, everything was in Max’s script. I really regret that they did not use that aspect of the movie for the trailer. I think it’s part of the movie.
What really attracted me in the script was the idea of being like this little boy and falling from the cliff, not knowing where I was going to land. It was a very light, almost Tim Burton/BIG FISH look at life and all the drama, and then realize as the story goes along and I’m going deeper into the subconscious coma world of the little boy that there’s darkness, and it’s the kind of darkness that is taboo and about things that you can not really talk about, and that the only way to get back to the light is to actually face that awful truth. That’s really what grabbed me in the script. I really like the contrast between the very light tone of the movie and the very dark theme that we deal with in the story.
Capone: You said before, this is not a traditional horror film, but did you find yourself looking for moments where you could ramp up the suspense elements, just because you’re you and you can’t help it.
AA: [laughs] Kind of. There are always moments where I feel that, with just a few lines on the script page, things can become a few minutes of suspense and tension. I think it’s always interesting to bring the audience through that journey.
Capone: With Alden [Longworth, who plays Louis Drax], did you find him through a traditional casting call, or did you see him in some other work?
AA: Traditional casting. We saw a lot of kids, and he came to one of the first ones, and he was playing the scene with the sea monster, and by the end of the scene, we were all very teary eyed, and I was thinking if this little boy managed to get in such an emotional state just being in that bare-walled room with no actor to play with, he’s going to be amazing. Then we saw a lot, and at the end, we came back to him because he was the best one.
Capone: What is your evaluation of the state of horror today, because it seems like it’s slipping further and further into the mainstream and becoming very popular. What do you make of that?
AA: When you go see THE CONJURING 2 in a movie theater and you see the excitement…I went to see it and it was a really young audience, but it was spectacular, and I was in Paris, and French audiences are usually not as reactive as the U.S. audiences. You could feel the temperature of the room go up, you could feel the tension in the air, and that kind of experience is amazing. I’m very happy that more and more people are finally enjoying the ride of a good horror movie. Of course, there are still a lot of really bad ones. They’re very, very lucrative. They seem to be moneymakers, but a lot of people that are actually doing them don’t really know them, don’t really understand them.
I think the big difference between a good horror movie and a bad one is the good one is usually made by people who really want to see the movie, as opposed to people that just are here because it’s a good deal to make a horror movie. I think it’s very important when you make a horror movie, when you make a genre movie, that you actually always stay an audience member. I’ve been making horror movies for quite a long time now, more than 15 years, and I still have the same pleasure watching something new and fresh and scary, and I still hide my face when it’s too scary. Even if I know all the tricks, when the story is good and I feel it’s the right experience, I just go for the ride and I really enjoy it.
Capone: You said before you’re looking at another horror movie to make. Do you know what you’re doing next?
AA: I have a few projects ready to go. One of them is very different, but also very similar to my past movies. It’s a 17th century French—it’s in English, but it’s set up in France—but it’s crazy, punk…based on a French book, and it’s the type of movie that you’ve never seen this way before. Very strange in many aspects. So I’m quite excited for this one. A lot of dark humor.
Capone: Are you producing anything new?
AA: Producing, yeah. We have a few ones. We’re still getting set up. And on the directing side, this one and a few others that are still in the script phase. I mean, I never really stop working, so you keep writing and writing, and you end up having a few scenarios that you really want to see on the screen, and it’s up to the casting. It’s up to the financier. So I’m ready to go. Hopefully, I’ll be shooting in a few months.
Capone: Whenever I speak to horror directors and they always say that they’re looking at something outside of horror to make, and I’m all for artists expanding their horizons, but I always want them to keep making the horror stuff, especially if you’re good at it.
AA: I will always come back. There is too much fun when you do this type of movie, and if you have the right story. That’s why I always keep producing a horror movie at the same time, and just looking for the right project to direct to come back to something that’s really scary.
Capone: Alexandre, thank you so much, and best of luck with this.
