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With the release of Under The Shadow in 2016 writer and director Babak Anvari announced himself as a formidable new talent in the horror genre. Dubbed by some to have been the best film of that year Under The Shadow has now finally been awarded a Blu-ray release, so we sat down with Babak to discuss drawing on his Iranian heritage, scaring audiences and his influences.

Starburst Magazine: One of the most noticeable elements in the film is that, given the relatively short running time, you really take your time to set up the characters and this world. Was that important to you?

Babak Anvari: Yes, from day one that was the plan. First of all, I always wanted to position the film as a social drama paying homage to Iranian cinema. Then bit by bit it twisted into this expressionist horror film. And I missed the fact that, back in the 80s and 90s, films took their time to set up the world and especially in horror films. In Alien you don’t see any aliens for ages. Jurassic Park is the same. These days everyone seems to be in such a rush. And I was making this film knowing that a lot of international audiences don’t know what Iran was really like in the 80s, so I was keen to take my time.

Did you feel a responsibility then, telling not just this story but any story set in this time period?

I guess the sense of responsibility was in getting everything as authentic as I could. I was born in Iran; I grew up there. Hollywood makes films about Iran but they’re not accurate representations. It was important for me to take the time and I talked to lot of family and friends, did a lot of research as I was roughly the same age as this child during the war. I felt it was my duty to set it up as authentically as I could.

You mention there about being the same age as the child, and you’ve talked a little about this in the past. You’ve drawn on your experiences, but did you also have a little fun going back to that time, like with the VCR and so on?

Oh, I had a lot of fun. I was constantly feeling the nostalgia when I was writing it. Little nuggets like the VCR, Jane Fonda and the Yazoo video. That was great fun.

And the phone; little things that take you back and put you right there.

Yes, the orange phone!

The development process of a film is always interesting. As both the writer and director did the film change or mutate from when you finished the screenplay to when you finished the film? Was the end result what you thought it was going to be?

Not very different. When you’re writing you have a version in your head, and what the characters look like. So, there are little changes, and also due to logistics and budget. It’s such a collaborative medium, though, that when you’re working with your team, they can suggest things that make it even better. But it wasn’t drastically different. The location we found to shoot in in Jordan was much better than I had in mind though.

It’s a very lean film, starved of clutter. Was it difficult at times to remain disciplined and strip it back, like you said, to remain authentic?

It was, and it was a great exercise. It was very low budget and we only had 20 days to shoot so we had to be efficient. It can be a good thing because it forces you to make the correct decisions. It could never be about getting footage and figuring it out in the edit, you know. We knew we could only shoot what we needed.

There’s a little of Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water in there, Poltergeist as well. Now with a little distance and time, looking back was there something, a film or an influence that was most prominent in guiding you to what you wanted?

 One of the huge influences was Roman Polanski’s apartment series, especially Rosemary’s Baby and The Tenant. And I am obsessed with Poltergeist and I was listening to the score when I wrote Under The Shadow. Another film that was really influential was Jack Clayton’s The Innocents because I felt what I was writing was a classic gothic ghost story, just set in Tehran rather than England.

One of the things you play with is that the central character is so insistent that none of this is really happening, and you’re going with her as, at that time, you don’t know if this is going to be psychological or horror.

We had an arc for Shideh as she’s a doctor at heart and she doesn’t believe in Djinn or evil spirits. And then it ends up just her and her daughter and she’s under immense pressure, and that’s when people give in. We enjoyed exploring her being so resistant and then beginning to believe.

One of the most intense scenes is when Shideh flees from her apartment building and she’s arrested. You have all this supernatural horror going on and then suddenly you ground it in reality.

That was on my favourite moments. It’s one of the first times she’s alone in the apartment and my thought was that’s when you’d run away. The problem is that she runs she’s forgotten to cover her hair and there’s still a dress code at this time. It was an interesting way of saying that even if you want to escape you can’t. That scene kind of happened organically.

It’s an oppressive scene. Throughout though, you have women to the fore. Men are secondary and such background characters.

It happened a little organically. We knew we had a lot of strong female characters and the story was essentially about a mother and her daughter. Actually, a friend of mine mentioned that all the men are in the background and I hadn’t really noticed, but I’m so glad it happened.

You really do seem to be playing with your audience. It’s a slow set up and then about two thirds of the way through there is an incredible jump scare that changes the tone. Many films seem to avoid what they see as a cheap trick but you embraced it.

That’s exactly why we did it. People always say they’re cheap and that it’s all about the atmosphere. But then I thought I’m just going to do it and I’m pleased people responded to it. Before that moment audiences seemed to be on edge of their seats because of the atmosphere and then we have this scare, and then people are expecting more of them.

And you use a lot of other horror tropes…

I always said to my producers that I was going to use a lot of horror tropes to lure people in, those who perhaps were less familiar with them.

There are lot of wide shots, where the character is to the left or right, but what you’re really looking at is what might be going on in the background. And you think you see things. A curtain moves or something. Is there anything like that in there or is it just the atmosphere of the film playing tricks?

Ha-ha, I’m not going to spoil it! A friend of mine did say that they saw a shadow in the background of one scene but there’s really nothing there. I’m glad it’s working!

It’s fashionable for films to be labelled as something these days; psychological thrillers and so on. It’s almost like films are embarrassed to be called horror films. But that’s what Under The Shadow is isn’t it?

One hundred percent this is a horror film and I’ve very proud that it is. I think the perspective is changing though. People can see it as whatever they want but for me it’s horror.

UNDER THE SHADOW is out now on Blu-ray in a feature packed Limited Edition box set, courtesy of Second Sight.

Composer and musician Steve Moore would be an icon in the world of synth-driven music, were it only for his work as part of the stellar duo, Zombi, with drummer Anthony Paterra. That group released five full-length LPs between 2004 and 2015, and the prog-rock scope of those albums are insanely stellar. However, in recent years, Moore has turned to scoring films, working on films like Joe Lynch’s 2017 madness-in-an-office-building Mayhem, and the 2014 Adam Wingard/Simon Barrett slasher action film The Guest. The end of last year saw the release of director Joe Begos’ Bliss, and the director’s VFW is due out on home video at the end of March. All of the scores for these films are unique, but still very much identifiable as Moore’s work. Bliss‘ score was just released via Relapse Records, and Moore was kind enough to talk to us about that.

STARBURST: Given that Joe Begos was making Bliss so close to VFW, how did that affect your composition work?

Steve Moore: If anything the quick turnover made it easy for me to give the scores their own identity. Because Bliss was so fresh in my mind while working on VFW, I could be sure I was making different choices. I had a very busy few months between gigs and felt completely fresh going into VFW.

Having worked with the director on The Mind’s Eye – which was early on in your film scoring career – what was the difference, coming back with five years of features under your belt?

I think Joe and I have grown a lot as artists since The Mind’s Eye, and so one thing that’s changed is our expectations of ourselves. I expect more from myself now than I did five years ago, Joe is the same. Another major difference is that we’re more experienced now, and our communication and workflow is really smooth, so we have more time to fine-tune each cue and give the score lots of personality.

Your early composition work was under the name Gianni Rossi. Why did you go with a pseudonym for Plotdigger Films’ Gutterballs and Star Vehicle? Was it because those films are just so over-the-top?

I honestly can’t remember whether it was me or Ryan Nicholson who came up with the idea to use an alias, but at the time we thought it was really funny and decided to go with it. I originally intended to keep the alias a total secret, but I’m just too proud of that funny stuff.

When did you decide to start leaning more into scoring films than working on Zombi, and what was the impetus?

Tony and I haven’t lived in the same city for close to 10 years now, so that’s the main reason we were sort of off and on during the 2010’s. I can score films from home, but Tony and I live eight hours from each other so we can only get together every once in a while. However, Zombi is working on a new record so hopefully you’ll be hearing more from us soon.

The score for Bliss is akin to a decayed, hazy take on Vangelis’ Blade Runner, run through with brilliant flashes of guitar, a comparison I think I made because both films are about a desperate search for identity while trying to survive. How do you begin your work on a score for a film: is there an overall aesthetic you’re after?

I like that observation. For me, working on a score starts with talking to the director, getting his or her thoughts. I like to find out if there are any specific films or scores that have influenced them so I can do any necessary research before I start. I also like to do an in-person spotting session if possible. If the filmmakers have made a temp score I like to give it a listen on its own first, without watching the film, just to get an idea of the sonic territory the filmmakers want to cover – if I do it this way I don’t get too influenced by the way the temp score itself, just the way it works with the film. Once I’ve listened to the temp score and watched the film I start to consider what my angle will be and how I can give the score my own voice.

The guitar work is subtle, but much more prevalent than on your previous scores. What made you want to bring it in for pieces like Diablo or You Don’t Give It Up?

The guitar was mostly Joe’s idea, but I was super into it – once we started adding it we both wanted to use it in every cue. Also it was kind of like a dream come true to have a director tell me, “I think you need to do a bass solo in this cue“.

 

The score for BLISS is out now from Relapse Records.

Director and writer Adam Egypt Mortimer’s debut feature, the 2015 slasher Some Kind of Hate, co-written with Brian DeLeeuw, was a breath of fresh air into a genre many thought had been done to death, and brought a unique vision of horror to the screen. It’s been a long wait, but the director’s sophomore feature, Daniel Isn’t Real (also co-written with DeLeeuw), finally released recently, and proved to be worth the wait. Not only does Daniel brim with amazing performances from its leads Miles Robbins and Patrick Schwarzenegger, as Luke and his frightening imaginary friend Daniel, but the story is filled with disturbing visuals and a story which will have viewers questioning their own perceptions of reality.

We spoke with Mortimer about the new film, and the thematic ideas to which he’s drawn.

STARBURST: I’ve been a fan of your work since I saw Some Kind of Hate when it came out almost five years ago and I was very excited when Daniel Isn’t Real was announced because I had really been waiting to see what you did for a follow-up for that movie, and it it did not disappoint.

Adam Egypt Mortimer: You know, Some Kind of Hate was the movie that I made basically so that we could make Daniel. Brian [DeLeeuw] and I had written Daniel first, and then realized, “How the hell am I gonna get this crazy movie made as my first movie?” So, then we said, “Well, let’s write what our version of a slasher movie would be like.” That was supposed to be very fast and easy to come together, and then even that was a nightmare to try to make, but all of that was a good thing, because it meant that, by the time I by the time I was finally able to make Daniel, I knew a lot more about making movies than I had when we first sat down to write it.

I think it really came at the at the right time and if you’re somebody who’s a fan of Some Kind of Hate, I’m sure you can see that there’s a lot of dramatic similarities and some similar kind of ideas. It wasn’t conscious at the time. It was a product, probably, of us writing them back-to-back and sharing the sensibility, but looking back on it, you sort of start to see all these things that are themes that are emerging, because they’re really important to me. Maybe I hadn’t even realized that at the time.

They just showed a double feature of those movies in Wales at a theater in Cardiff, and I thought that was so fun. It’s such a cool idea to be able to watch them back-to-back and see not only how have I improved as a filmmaker, but also how I returned to or developed the same sorts of ideas or feelings.

I was going to ask about what I see as the thematic elements that are similar in both of the movies: how things that happen in childhood / youth can have a very long tail in terms of how they affect you growing up.

Yeah, and I think that the idea of trauma on every level is such a crucial part of the human condition. It’s an important part of what we should be exploring in art. You can experience childhood trauma in so many different ways. Everything that you experience when you’re a child is so loud, and and that’s what it’s sort of getting at in that opening scene in Daniel, where we see his parents fighting.

You see these two adults throwing plates at each other, and then you see this tiny, tiny child with his cat puppet. Sometimes, I talk to my dad and I’ll be like, “I remember that totally insane fight you guys had,” or that horrible experience I had and he’ll be like, “Well, I think that we were just mildly annoyed.” Things are so loud, and affect you so deeply, and stain your DNA forever when you’re a child, and I think that was a big part of what I was trying to get at in Daniel.

To go from the dissolution of his family and what that feels like, to a literal bloody massacre within the same moment: it’s this idea that those things are both metaphors and the actual trauma at the same time. I think that, in trying to make Daniel go from a story that’s got a tiny, intimate childhood trauma story to something that becomes vast cosmic horror, I really sort of started to see the idea that the human race is itself sort of as a product of some kind of traumatic cosmic events, or that our whole thing — our whole society — is based on trauma. It’s something I’ve been coming towards more and more as my way of thinking about how the world works.

Both of your features like have — as you have very ably pointed out — this grounding in trauma. In Some Kind of Hate, it’s very much a more visceral sort of thing, where trauma is literally inflicted and can be then inflicted back upon the person giving it, like a vicious cycle. What I find really interesting about both of the movies is the world-building that you set up very early on, that then have this payoff a solid 90 minutes later. Everything that happens within the those first 15 or 20 minutes of Daniel Isn’t Real are so important to the end of the film.

When we had our LA premiere at Beyond Fest, a friend of mine came to see the movie, and he walked in with his popcorn and his soda 90 seconds after the movie had started — missing the opening. Without spoiling it, the opening 60 seconds of this movie is a shocking thing that is really crucial to the movie, and I have not stopped ragging my poor friend — who eventually came back and saw it a second time a couple weeks later.

There are a lot of movies in the horror genre, where a lot of times people offer this structure, where the first 15 minutes of the movie is like, “Everything is nice!” and it’s sunny with the families eating breakfast together, and then things go awry.

To me, I felt like that’s both sort of cinematically boring, and an inaccurate portrayal of the world. If I’m going to do something that’s a deliberately sort of a scary, bleak, shocking kind of story, the beginnings are so crucial. In those first few minutes that you have with an audience, you can really set a tone, and so I want you to feel like you’re kind of getting your ass kicked at the beginning, and then there is this sort of satisfaction from puzzling it out.

Trauma is a puzzle, and if it’s something that can be solved — or, I guess, resolved or compromised with — I think you need those pieces. Some Kind of Hate started the same way, right? The first eight seconds of that movie is a murder, and then you kind of come back around and, at the end, find out who the murderers were, and why, and all that.

I like that feeling of something clicking into place and having an understanding, even if the understanding is a horrific one. Daniel Isn’t Real escalates: it starts out terrifying, with a horrible event, and then I think it dips down, but then it just steadily starts climbing back up and beyond. When the cosmic horror aspect of it kicks in, it’s been built in such a way that you’re you’re there for it. It doesn’t come out of left field.

I love movies where, even like up to the very end, I’m not sure whether it actually happened or if it was all within the character’s head. There are parts of me that still wonder as to whether or not this actually all happened to Luke, or whether he imagined everything that Daniel did.

I think that’s a completely viable understanding of it. I mean, there’s a lot. It’s interesting: in designing the movie, I was obsessed by the idea of what is objective and what’s subjective, and how do you communicate that in a movie like this? How are we gonna live in a movie, where every scene of dialogue, there’s a character that nobody else can see? How is the audience gonna buy that? All these kind of things. It gets you to this really interesting place where, just because you can see something on the screen, what part of that is real and what part of it is not real? Even the title of the fucking movie potentially being, “Are we being honest with the audience or not?”

So, yeah — I’m completely open to the interpretation, but to interpret it the way you’re describing, you would have to look at things that appear to be objective and then sort of have a discussion about what really would be happening there. We don’t do the thing where you flashback and see everything differently, like, “Here’s what it really looked like!”

The way they do at the end of The Usual Suspects is an example of that: where suddenly, at the end, you rewind the whole movie and it’s like, “Oh, it was all a lie because there was actually this thing and there was this thing!” I don’t do that, here. I think I’m much more interested in [the idea that] reality itself is this kind of unstable field, and our unreality is made by our perceptions, and our perceptions are colored by our traumas and our emotions, so where do we stand? That’s the horror of it. The horrific aspect of the story? That’s about perception.

The reason this all works for me is because of the interaction between Patrick Schwarzenegger and Miles Robbins, because it is essentially a twisted buddy picture. I imagine the casting process for those two roles were very intense? These two have to be besties, for lack of a better term.

It is 100% a buddy movie, and the thing was that — no matter what the the metaphysics or the cosmic horror of it or whatever these two characters are in reality — I was very obsessed with making a movie that is accurately depicting the feelings of young male friendship, at that age and at that time, and sort of drawing on everything I could from my own experience of being in college. What is it like when you have these kind of friendships? When you’re 18 years old, with some other guy and it’s this incredibly intimate, energetic, strange kind of relationship that I don’t know that you have any time exactly before or after in your life?

It’s a really particular kind of friendship. There’s the moment where they’re making fun of the roommate, and trying to scare the roommate, and they’re flopping around on the floor laughing together, They’re so in their own world, and so comfortable with each other, and  it’s them against the world. Drawing on those very real experiences, and trying to depict that kind of friendship in a way that I haven’t seen in movie.

So, as far as the casting process? Yeah, I was super obsessed with getting the exact right people and Patrick was able to embody this otherworldly sort of beauty and intensity in the character. Miles was this kind of empathy machine. Then, we had the rehearsal process and put them in a room together for a week, week and a half, before we started shooting — finding that depiction of friendship. The ability for them to be close to each other was the whole crux of the movie.

DANIEL ISN’T REAL is playing in selected UK cinemas from February 7th and will hit Blu-ray and digital download February 10th.