Talking from the set of the Del Toro-produced film
[Editor’s Note: This interview was first posted July 20th. We’re dragging it back out, in case you missed it, for the film’s release this Friday!]
When it was announced Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark – a remake of the 1973 telefilm – was in the works, the film community backlash was minimal. Perhaps it was because the recognition value wasn’t nearly as high as, say, Halloween or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Or perhaps it was because of one of the men involved in the remake’s development: Guillermo del Toro.
The man who gave us Cronos, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth co-penned Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark with his Mimic collaborator Matthew Robbins and serves as a producer on the film. At the helm is newcomer Troy Nixey, who is best known for his work in the comic book field (“Trout” and “Harley Quinn” for instance), but it was his short film, the wonderfully bizarre and visually stunning Latchkey’s Lament, that made him a fledgling director to bet on.
Nixey began principal photography on Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark in 2009 with a cast that included Guy Pearce, Katie Holmes and Bailee Madison. The latter plays Sally Hirst, a young girl newly residing in an East Coast mansion with her father, Alex, and his girlfriend Kim. There, Sally discovers they are not alone and there is a race of creatures living in the house – vicious little things that scurry about on four legs (or two), are adept at using sharp instruments and have a malevolent agenda.
The film makes its premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival on Sunday, July 26.
Shock Till You Drop was on the Australian set in â09 with a few other members of the press. You can read our full interview with Nixey below in which he talks about the tone and look of the film and delves a bit into the creature mayhem he is orchestrating.
Shock Till You Drop: Has there been any talk that this could feasibly be an English-language companion piece to The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth?
Troy Nixey: Yeah, absolutely. The things that inspire Guillermo, you can see in the original script, things that he carried on. There are parallels between Pan’s Labyrinth and this, a young girl finding her way through conflict. Definitely. He does that stuff really well, finding the heart of a child, where it is in an environment and then weaving her through that. That’s the stuff that resonates with me.
Shock: How has it been working with a producer like Guillermo del Toro?
Nixey: It’s amazing. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers going. Just to be able to tap into his vast knowledge and imagination is incredible. And he’s such a giving guy. You want more? He’s just an endless wealth of information. As a producer, he’s there to protect the vision of the movie and he does that very well. Creatively, he’s there, too. Have you thought of that or that? I’d be a dummy not to tap into that.
Question: How has the jump been from short film to feature?
Nixey: You come into it full-on. It’s a marathon to find the energy to keep going. As you get through and more and more [footage] comes in, you see it and it keeps you going. It’s sink or swim, really.
Question: How much of a fit was this story for you? What was it that made you want to devote yourself to it?
Nixey: Funnily enough, the story and monster stuff was there. That’s always attractive. But the movies I was always drawn to the most have that real human dynamic so you can believe those people, it just elevates the material. With this, it had that in spades. It has this great triangle. Alex, Kim and Sally. This conflict between a little girl and her father and the friction she causes between the girlfriend and the dad. Then the subsequent mending of that by the actions that happen are just great.
Shock: These sets your working in are incredible.
Nixey: It’s fun. We didn’t want to create a house where, as soon as you walk in, you knew something spooky and horrible is going to happen. Through the movie, the house actually starts to look nicer and nicer until the end and then, you know, all hell breaks loose.
It’s funny, I love that stuff, too. Old cogs and stuff, which we don’t have any in this movie. My aesthetic is I love anything in the late 1800s, early-1900s. You see that in this film. Lots of texture and earth tones, lots of grays and browns. I had a very specific color palette for the two worlds we see when we’re in modern times. Autumn colors for the house and cool colors for outside. You’ll see that in an airport scene where everyone is wearing blues and grays. So, Sally, is essentially an alien in this world and Kim fits in perfectly with this house. Coming from comics, you think in terms of that and how it adds a little bit extra. Sets tones and feelings. We wanted to move ahead with the lighting at different times and during the course of the attacks from the creatures, the lighting changes there as well. Of course, the first time they attack, you don’t see much at all, just shapes. As we get further into the film, we see more and more of them. Itâs been interesting lighting this. Pushing what we’re doing in here for the dark. I was referencing Rembrandt’s stuff before we started shooting. Those pools of light he’d create, they just pop out.
Question: The attack sequence we’re seeing today, did this occur in the original?
Nixey: There’s some great nods to the original, but this was just creating something that was going to essentially attack and scare a little girl, so it’s all seeing it from her perspective. I have this slight little nod to Psycho in it. The whole heart of the Sally story is getting into her world and doing what you have to do to get the audience there. Remembering the shit that scared you when you were a little girl. The way the creatures attack, there’s a lot of animalistic movements en masse and adding a little bit of movement that you mind find in someone with [mental disabilities]. So when they come up on all fours, they’re full-on unnerving. There’s nothing humorous in their methods.
Shock: So, the creatures just come out of the basement malicious?
Nixey: They’re manipulative and teasing. The back story is, with children especially, they want to draw them in and are teasing and playful in a scary sort of way. When a child tells an adult on them, all bets are off. It gets more and more malicious. They’re antagonistic and horrible. It’s finding these moments of building that if they were not interrupted by whatever, that the attack would have been over, she would have been gone. At first they’re coy, mind-screwing here, until they realize it’s over and they go on the attack.
Question: They travel through the vents?
Nixey: Yeah, they come in and out of the vents. We’re going into the bathroom cabinets and stuff. It’s funny, I wasn’t familiar with the original movie. It came out when I was one year old. I found it in You Tube and watched it there and laughed. As a little kid, I could see how it would scare the crap out of you. Every guy I know who’s in his early 40s they were like that movie scared the shit out of me when I was a kid, you better not screw it up! [laughs] The movie works, but is dated in the sense that it came out in â73. Still, the idea that these things are small and can hide anywhere, they’re specific in their motivations, using that as a backbone for our film has been great. Seeing the original and what they did and the tools they used, there are nods to the original all over this thing. Guillermo has carried this thing forever, he loved this movie when he was younger and he fought and searched to get the rights to it. He’s been trying to get it going for 16 years.
Shock: Marco Beltrami, we’ve been told, already has an idea of what he’s doing with the score and the themes he wants to create. Can you talk about that?
Nixey: Itâs about finding a lullaby for Sally that she hums periodically throughout the movie. Of course, we got into her theme of the film. I’m huge on themes. Hitting on that, you can build scares and tension one way but you can build it another way. I’m trying to come at it with making the story really sad so the audience can engage with Sally and want to reach in, grab her and protect her. I don’t like those cheap jump thrills. So, building on the sadness and giving her encouragement through the film so it keeps building and she fights back against everything, not just the monsters but the fact that she has a dad who doesn’t care and she’s got a mom who is flakey. She has no one she can trust in her life. Weaving that in in terms of her theme, we’ll be building it up. It comes from isolation and sadness. That’s why we made all of the sets big, so when she moves through it, she’ll look smaller. The theme will help tremendously with the music.
Question: Who would you say your biggest influences are style-wise?
Nixey: I mentioned Rembrandt because that was a specific lighting style. My favorite movie is Charlie Chaplin’s The Kid, which doesn’t speak visually at all to this, but at the heart there’s so much emotion in that movie. I just have this sense of an antiquated world I like to draw when I’m doing my own things. Like the boiler you see in this film? That’s my boiler. [laughs]
Question: What are you shooting for in terms of rating?
Nixey: PG-13, but I’m doing what I think is right for the film. There are times when I get a tap on the shoulder, you got to pull that down a little, but in terms of that, I’m just doing what we need to do. The MPAA will take a look at it. I’m not that concerned. Going in, there were rules in terms of what we could do to Sally, specific guidelines with violence. We worked on that. We’re pushing the line in what I think we could get away with.
[Editor’s note: The film is ultimately being released with an R rating.]
Look for more Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark footage here on Shock very soon!
Source: Ryan Turek, Managing Editor
