The upcoming killer clone thriller
Everyone has wished at one point to have a clone of them to do some of the work when they get busy or to take the kids for just a few hours or anything they can imagine.
Recreator (trailer) takes this idea and skews it: What if your clone was a far superior version of you? Would kill the clone? Would you let it replace you? Would you change? The writer and director of Recreator, Gregory Orr, sat down with Shock to give us the background behind the film, the morality and values that can be learned from being replaced and why teenage girls seem to love cloning.
Shock Till You Drop: I could really use another one of me. Do you think you can help me out?
Gregory Orr: I think that might be possible.
Shock: The idea of the better, stronger, faster you has been around for a while, so what’s different about Recreator?
Orr: I wanted to make a film that didn’t have just Final Destination kids in it, in terms of caring about them. I didn’t want to have three kids that you just didn’t care about. Where you can’t wait for them to get Paris Hilton’d. I wanted to do a film about someone really going through something. And the psychology of the horror that we are our own worst enemies. So, how can I make that much more of a threat? Well, a version of yourself that is superior could really mess up your life and ultimately want to kill you and replace you. How do you tap into the anxieties of the world and taking it and twisting it? This is more of an unsettling creepiness to it than anything else.
Shock: Have you found that people are latching onto that idea that you’ve established?
Orr: We’ve been finding that a lot of teenage girls really like it. There’s a lot about relationships in it. There’s boyfriend/girlfriend issues going on with a clone involved and the clone has qualities you wish the original had. Is the clone better than the original? Will they start going out with the clone? It is like high school but worse in terms of the social pressure. And the clones know how to undermine your self confidence. They are totally on your case about who you are and make you feel like an idiot. Cause they know all your memories and everything about you up to the point of their birth. They can really mess with your head.
Shock: In the film, do you go into any of the technical aspects about how they get cloned?
Orr: We spend a little bit of time. There is a new comic book out that tells the back story entitled “Recreator: Genesis”. And that tells the back story 50 years previously when the scientist that came up with this whole thing and what happened to him. And our characters in this film stumble upon his laboratory. Yes, there is a bit of science in and we had a science advisor checking out how potentially this could be done.
Shock: Can you talk about the three main characters involved in the film and what’s driving them?
Orr: Alexander [Nifong] plays Craig Carlson that works for his father’s hardware store in a small town in upstate New York. He and his buddy, Derek [Jamal Mallory-McCree] are going on one last camping trip because Derek is going off in the National Guard to Afghanistan. So it is supposed to be these two having a guy’s weekend. But Craig brings his girlfriend, Tracy [Stella Maeve]. Big mistake. There’s a big thunderstorm and she has found a house and breaks in to use the toilet and when the storm picks up they go into the house to take refuge.
Shock: Setting up not only the conflict coming but conflict within the three already.
Orr: Right. So you start off with a friendship where they are sort of annoyed with each other. Derek and Craig work together at the hardware store and Craig is almost Derek’s boss. So there is tension there. There is also tension between Craig and Tracy because she went away for the summer and came back. And they are having their problems. All this tension and stuff going and things happen.
Shock: And John de Lancie is in it…
Orr: Yes, who plays a doctor who owns this big house, he and his wife own this house on this island. And he is not who he appears to be when it starts off but we learn who he is. He was a lot of fun.
Shock: Tell me more about working with de Lancie, how was it?
Orr: He came in for a week and he likes to tell stories and be a little Shakespearian in some ways. Be a bit grand. But he had plenty of ideas and he pushed back in the right way sometimes. It was good to work with him. He brings some levity as well to the film. There are some jokes in the film but I take these teenage problems serious, I am not laughing at them. He comes along and he’s more of an amusing, swarmy kind of guy. So he brings some comic relief in the time that he is in.
Shock: You said that teenage girls like Recreator, but will others?
Orr: Guys that are 18 to 22 need just more blood in your face and more saws. They just need it. If they go with their girlfriend, they will get something out of it because at the end of it they will say “Would you treat me that way?” So there will be that discussion going on.
Shock: For better or worse…
Orr: Yes, but I think the general audience in that way too [will like the film]. We showed it at a screening and there were 12-year-old kids there. We had parents come up and say “I really appreciate the moral values that were put in there.” So there are some issues that are being discussed about how you treat other people and the choices you make.
Shock: Now you mentioned this may be just the start of a whole series of films.
Orr: It will be a series of films about the threat of replacement by cloning in a changing world where people do feel that things change quickly. Is my job going to be outsourced? Something else could happen. Trying to do something with that anxiety. I may skew a little older as time goes on and the other films may have other characters. But you can do other kinds of stories around this stuff.
Shock: Like what did you have in mind?
Orr: Under the Recreator banner, I want to do movies where people have to come up with versions of themselves that’s threatening. And how do you fight against a superior version of yourself? And sometimes the clones may be the better choice in the family or the community. The parents may like the clone better. So what do you with the original? Or the wife might the clone husband better. So the original is under pressure to change perhaps or kill the clone or whatever it is. It is putting people, difference characters at different ages as time moves on in this unique spot of; you better change or you will be replaced. Or you better kill the person or be replaced. Or you better do something.
Shock: When is the first film coming out?
Orr: We are having a very limited release in the late fall. And we are seeing if it can go larger in a theatrical. And then DVD and VOD early next year.
Source: Peter Brown
