ComingSoon Senior Editor Brandon Schreur spoke to Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, and Shal Ngo about the new Hulu horror movie Control Freak. Tran and Robbins discussed what drew them to their respective characters, while Ngo talked about turning his Huluween short film into a feature and creating scary dream sequences.
“A motivational speaker is tormented by an unrelenting itch on the back of her head,” the synopsis for the movie reads.
Control Freak is streaming on Hulu starting today.
Brandon Schreur: Kelly, I want to start with you because I thought you gave an incredible performance in this movie. I’ve loved you in everything I’ve seen you in, and I can’t wait for The Wedding Banquet. This was such a complicated character with so many different sides to her, I was so fascinated by it. Can you tell me a little bit about what about this project stood out to you and what you were most excited to explore about Val when you were reading the script for the first time?
Kelly Marie Tran: First of all, thank you for saying that. That means a lot to me. I think the thing that was most interesting to me was this duality that existed within her identity, where she was presenting this part of herself — this very much polished, perfect-seeming part of her self — when, inside, she was really broken. I think that’s really true to life. I’ve met so many people who kind of share those tendencies. I was really excited to explore that.
Sure. And it’s so fascinating to watch and see how it all plays out. This one, I could never figure out where it was going. Shal, I know this movie, Control Freak, started as a short you made, Control, for Hulu a couple of years ago. Can you tell me a little bit about that process, going from a short to a feature film? Did you always have this idea in the back of your mind when you were working on the short back then?
Shal Ngo: Well, I knew — my manager, Trent, brought the project to me initially. It was like, ‘Hulu is doing these horror shorts, they’re really cool, they turn some of them into features, and you should make one.’ So that was always sort of the goal. Thank goodness it all worked out like that.
But when I made the short, I had sort of a vague idea of where the feature was going to go. But I hadn’t written it out. It wasn’t like a concept piece, either. It was a short in and of itself. Then, once I pitched the feature, it actually ended up going through a lot of different iterations. A lot of them didn’t quite hit the personal note. It was sort of when I found a more personal angle into the story that it really started to work as a feature. Before that, it was a little too, I guess, technical. It didn’t have as much of a part of me or my history in it as much. I think once that component was in it, it worked a lot better as a feature.
But it’s funny to see all the different directions the movie could have gone, you know what I mean? There were different scripts and different versions of it; it was very different before. My wife actually had a lot of great ideas. One of the most iconic scenes was actually me talking to her, and she was like, ‘What if she did this?’ And I was like, ‘Oh. That’s f—ek up. Let’s put that in.’ Shout out to the wife for being brilliant.
That’s so interesting, I love that. Miles, I’ve seen you operate in the space of psychological horror before with Daniel Isn’t Real. And I love that movie, I’ve seen it so many times, now. Daniel Isn’t Real and Control Freak are very different movies, you’re playing very different characters, but I’m curious about what the harder acting challenge is. Is it Daniel Isn’t Real where you’re the guy who is going through all the shit or is Control Freak where you’re the partner, you don’t totally understand what’s happening, and one day you wake up tied to a bed and have to react to that?
Miles Robbins: I think it’s definitely harder to be covered in the goo. I think that’s one of the hardest things you can do in acting, when you get the goo all over you. I was actually very specifically drawing on Daniel Isn’t Real for this in the sense that I knew what it was like to perform that kind of slow descent into madness. So, I had a perspective that I could offer to Kelly, I guess — I wanted to be a support system because I knew how hard that was.
It’s hard as an actor, but it’s also just hard physically. It’s rough to be covered in sticky blood and everything. It’s a fun part of making a movie, having this movie magic stuff happen, but, at a certain point, it is physically draining and it’s really difficult. It’s also really emotionally draining to have to go to that place all the time. So I just felt blessed to have some perspective to know how to then be supportive of Kelly as she went through that, which is, just, inarguably a more difficult job to do. I definitely was happy that I had that experience so I knew how I could be a helpful scene partner and co-worker as she went through a very difficult time, herself. Kudos again to Kelly; she did such a great job with this. I know how hard it is, and I’m so happy she did such a good job. And the result is in the film.
Tran: Dude, Miles is the best. Clearly you can tell from this interview. But I honestly could not have done this without his support, guidance, and his openness. It was such a joy to be in his atmosphere.
Robbins: I think you could have done it without me.
Tran: I don’t think so.
Robbins: I appreciate it, but you could have.
I just loved watching that relationship between your guys’ characters and how that changes over the movie. Again, I was just so interested and couldn’t figure any of it out. Shal, I wanted to ask about some of the nightmare sequences in this movie. Horror movies, there can be a lot of dream sequences; sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t. Here, they factor into the story and they’re scary as hell. The one with the ants coming out of her mouth — that was too much for me, that freaked me out. What do you think the key or the secret to making a really good dream or nightmare sequence in a horror movie like this is?
Ngo: Hm, I don’t know. You need an insanely good actor, first of all. We had that covered. That sequence — wasn’t that on the second day, Kelly? I think we shot that on the second day on set. Maybe it was the first day, even. Kelly just like falls on the floor and she was coughing. That was when I knew it was going to work, basically that take. I was like, ‘Holy shit, this is going to be f—ing sick.’
I don’t really know what makes a good dream sequence, to be honest with you. For me, I wanted there to be some sort of internal logic as to what’s happening. And I wanted there to be a rising sense of, I don’t know, a subconscious dread aspect that happens. For that one in particular, I was just thinking — I have a very vivid memory of when a beetle was just crawling inside of my pants, like up my thigh, when I was like 12 or something…I squished it, and there was a big bug inside of my pants. I just think there’s something so terrible about something crawling over you. And then I was like, ‘Well, where can that go from there.’ You sort of just unleash your imagination to make it a little bit strange, and then you hope you have a performer, the footage, and the VFX to pull it off.
That was another thing, too. That was one of the shots we didn’t see until very late in the process…We storyboarded everything out on this film, like, very specifically. So I knew what I wanted it to look like. But I’m really glad that the final result ended up looking that good.
Thanks to Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, and Shal Ngo for discussing Control Freak.
