John Carpenter returns to the directorial chair this week with the release of John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams, a series detailing a selection of real-life tales of terror. Real life accounts and documents are interspersed with theatrical recreations to amplify the disturbing stories that could easily begin in any neighborhood.
ComingSoon Senior Editor for Horror Neil Bolt spoke with producer Sandy King-Carpenter about the empathetic focus on the victims in the series, why husband John decided on The Phone Stalker for his episode, and if she has any Suburban Screams of her own.
Neil Bolt: How did the show come about? Was it something you’d previously thought about doing, or were you approached to be involved?
Sandy King-Carpenter: We were approached to be involved, the production company came up with the idea. We thought it was an interesting idea, we always like new challenges rather than doing the same things. It seemed an interesting idea to combine unscripted with scripted to heighten the story.
The show’s direction is described as a blend of the visual language of horror films with the tools and techniques of documentaries. would you say that’s what makes it stand out from most other factual unscripted shows about this sort of subject?
Yeah, I think two things make it stand out. One is that we’re making a hybrid; we are using the tools we use in fiction to heighten reality. The other thing is the perspective, we’re not focusing on the doers of crime, we’re focusing on the survivors. The people subjected to those acts. It’s the people who are left behind.
I bring up the case of Jeffrey Dahmer where everybody knows about him but how many people know about the woman under that, the witness? What happens to her afterwards. What happens to the people left behind who are forever affected by what went on? People like to say, ‘’ahh, the crime was solved! They have closure‘’ but do they really?
I could see how easily these kinds of stories could be treated as just content with little interest for the people involved. John, Jordan Roberts, Michelle Latimer, and Jan Pavlacky treat the stories with care and sincerity I wouldn’t normally expect from an unscripted show. Was there a collaborative effort between the directors to keep that feeling consistent in the series?
I think as soon as we started looking into the stories, and then particularly in the interviews, the thing we were struck by was these people were still hugely affected, especially in the one John directed, as this woman is still being stalked after six years and you see her physically affected. She has a palsy from it.
But everybody is still affected. This is the story, this what makes it different. Why focus on the murderer or the stalker or the person who held a town captive? We all just watched it recently in Pennsylvania, where a serial killer escaped and kept an area hostage for two weeks. Those people will never get over it, and everybody else will think it’s wrapped up and the guy’s caught but will those people ever feel safe in their own town again?
Exactly, yes. You mention John’s episode, what was it about the story that drew John to direct that particular one?
I think because it was an interesting story of suspense. I suppose if you relate it to fiction it’s a little more Hitchcockian or even Repulsion, but it’s in real life, and it’s about what’s around every corner, what’s down every hall, but then it gets to the fact that someone is watching you through your own devices everywhere. So it’s a modern version of what’s around every corner.
I was actually surprised by how much cinematic recreation there was, but I feel it’s done at the right times in the stories being told and not taking too much away from the actual people. Was it a challenge to balance the dramatic with the factual?
I think that the whole idea was that we wanted it to be immersive. We wanted it be as thrilling and immersive as a fictional piece and use the interviews and reality pieces as touchstones to remind you that this all really happened or is happening. So the challenge was reminding everyone, including the directors, not to stray from the facts and go ‘’what if this happened?’’. We were like ‘’no, we have to stick to what happened’’. So like this stalker, there’s this less than ten-second hallucination that just shows her state of mind where she was so paranoid, but that was it out of 45 minutes. So really, it’s all there; you just try and immerse them in the minds of the people who experienced this.
With the more supernatural story, there’s a seemingly deliberate choice to let the real-life accounts tell their story without sensationalism or judgment but present the facts of the situation to let the viewer make their own mind up. Was that a deliberate choice?
Yeah you know I read an interesting thing recently that said ‘’people’s truth becomes their fact’’ and you realized that these people are still living what they feel were the facts of their experience; you had to accept that and go with it. I think the point of view we had to take with, say, the Ouija board was that what I was hoping the viewer would take away from that was ‘’If you went to a party that was just a beer party and everybody’s drunk and playing with a Ouija board, and you felt or saw this experience of someone connecting with the other side. If you felt you’d looked beyond death, would that haunt you?’’
Would you feel that you had seen something that would change your life, and this man obviously felt he had. The other interesting component to that was that, in fact, somehow based on that experience, he led people to that lost woman’s body, and who the hell knows how that happened?
That’s the beautiful reality about that, it just leaves you wondering how.
Yeah, and you know he still is shaken over this connection to a dead woman who was the cousin of the other woman at the seance. You wind up looking into what was this person’s truth. I mean, do I think anything about Ouija boards? Not particularly, but you’re really affected when you meet these people and these stories were picked out by the network and the showrunner, and we were able to throw some out some that were supernatural, as we were looking for more reality-based, or what I consider everyday. You know something you or I would be creeped out by our own neighborhoods.
Yeah, even though the start the style at the start of the series is a little different to the rest, it does give you a taste of the tone of what’s to come. A soft way in before the more grounded stuff, the more harrowing things. With the idea behind the show that these incidents could happen where you live, do you have any Suburban Scream-like tales from your hometown?
Oh, you know there’s creepy stuff all over the place. All you have to do is watch the news at night. I remember an incident when we were shooting the movie Vampires in New Mexico, and I was sitting with the sheriff all night while we had our vampire on top of a train doing things and he was telling me about the week before that a man had shot his son because he thought he was a demon. Those things happen all around you, and you wonder ‘’What the hell are people thinking? What are they doing?’’ You’re seeing mothers murder their children because they think it will save them from being possessed.
In my own experience, you wind up meeting some strange people, particularly if they think you’re one of them, and they decide to confess, and I’m like, ‘’Whoah, I make stuff up. I don’t do this’’.
John Carpenter’s Suburban Screams streams on Peacock on October 13, 2023.
