Writer Simon Barrett has been the scribe behind such genre faves as home-invasion thriller You’re Next, action-slasher The Guest, and the reboot/sequel Blair Witch, frequently collaborating with director Adam Wingard. However, Barrett’s latest script is also one he’s directed. Seance marks the writer’s feature-length directorial debut, and sees Camille Meadows (Suki Waterhouse), the new girl at the prestigious Edelvine Academy for Girls, dealing with some terrible things when, soon after her arrival, six girls invite her to join them in a late-night ritual, calling forth the spirit of a dead former student who reportedly haunts their halls. But before morning, one of the girls is dead, leaving the others wondering what they may have awakened.
It’s a blast and a half, and Seance balances haunted house scares with moments of tenderness and introspection. We spoke with writer-director Barrett about his new film and the process of putting it all together…
STARBURST: One of the things we love about what you’ve done with this movie, in terms of promotion, is the Twitter thread where you go through all of the various influences behind it. Smack dab there in the middle is The House On Sorority Row. That made us really excited to watch Seance.
Simon Barrett: The House On Sorority Row – there’s a reason I put that in the first ten of that list. I mean, the reason I started posting that list on Twitter is because I feel like, in all these interviews, a fairly common go-to question’s the direct inspirations. I think it’s especially because with films like You’re Next and The Guest, Adam [Wingard] and I – clearly we’re referencing films in ways that maybe weren’t totally obvious. Like, I’m not sure if people realize that the arc of the butterfly knife in The Guest is exactly the same as the arc of the butterfly knife in Face-Off until Adam and I were announced doing a Face-Off sequel. Then I think people went back to The Guest, like, “Oh, they just completely have a story arc from Face-Off just lifted into the film.” And it’s not an easy story to lift, ’cause it’s a pretty strange series of events, but they’re in there in both movies, ’cause I love Face-Off so much.
With Seance, people watch it and it’s so clearly working in this genre between murder-mystery and slasher that we would traditionally think of as the Giallo space that I wanted to be clear that I’m not just influenced by “good” movies – you know, the acknowledged classics or whatever. Suspiria is not going to appear on that list because the truth is I wasn’t very influenced by Suspiria ’cause it’s an impossible film to imitate. Either version of Suspiria is an impossible film to imitate, especially on a low budget. However, House On Sorority Row was itself a fairly low budget film that has a wonderful narrative and approach to its character and is an extraordinarily clever, well-made movie with great setups and payoffs that made a huge impression on me as a kid and, as an adult, I revisited on Blu-ray and was just like, “I love this movie. I want to do something like this.”
Among other things, Seance is what I guess you’d call a “prank-based slasher film” where the inciting incident is a juvenile prank gone wrong, to a certain extent. Nobody really understands how it went wrong or what happened and it’s about figuring that out. A lot of those are kind of lousy, but then you have your Terror Train, which is amazing. There’s a lot in that genre that I love, but I think House On Sorority Row – and, to a slightly lesser extent, its 2009 remake – both do an excellent job of putting you in this reality where everyone is just kind of lying to each other all the time, and then it just gets more kind of crazy from there. I just think those scripts for The House On Sorority Row and even its remake are both really underrated murder mysteries that hold up under a microscope, way better than most acknowledged murder mysteries. If you actually look at what those narratives are doing, they work better than a lot of what’s out there.
A couple of years ago, we got to talk to Cal Everett, who’s the frontman for the band 4 Out of 5 Doctors, who are the party band in The House On Sorority Row, and it turns out he’s a huge horror fan.
Their music really helps that film. The fact that the band in that movie is actually pretty fun – Bloody New Year‘s another film that actually has a pretty good band incongruously in a slasher film – and the movie’s aged really well because of that. Hopefully, it’s the same for Sicker Man’s music for Seance – it’s the kind of thing that people still enjoy 20 years from now.
The way that Sicker Man’s score goes from being score to being diegetic music coming out of people’s headphones and stuff is seamless and works so well. Watching the movie and reading all the credits, we were full-on just like sitting at the computer, head-nodding as that last song plays out because it is such a banger. How did you come to know the music of Tobias Vethake, but also end up using it in such an interesting and novel way within the film itself?
You know, the funny thing about being a first-time feature director making an independent movie that’s financed by sales companies: no-one’s really looking over your shoulder, telling you creatively what to do, so you can make these weird, impulsive decisions that, in some cases, turn out disastrous and in some cases, turn out just utterly perfect. I was just, with Sicker Man, a fan. I really discovered him through my filmmaker pal E.L. Katz, who did the last season of Channel Zero and Cheap Thrills and stuff. He had an album by the hip hop artist Serengeti that Sicker Man did the beats for called Doctor My Own Patience that we were listening to one night and I went out and bought the vinyl. I mean, I love Serengeti. I had all his early stuff, but this was such an interesting, sad album. It’s one of the saddest hip hop albums I’ve probably ever heard. It’s just about being depressed and relationships not working. And I was like, “Who did this music? It’s so strange,” and I looked up Sicker Man and I started getting into more of his music and I realized that his big thing was he did a lot of theatre scores. It was just a lot of weird experimental compositions for German theatre productions, and I was just like, “Well, that’s perfect. If he’s doing German theatre productions, he’ll be interested in working with me,” so I sent him a Facebook message and I just said, “Hey, you know, I’m a big fan of Sicker Man and I’m doing this movie and I kind of want a Brian Eno soundtrack.” I sent him a track from The Jacket that Brian and Roger Eno did and he was just like, “Okay, here’s some tracks. I’m interested in this project. Here’s some sample tracks,” and literally just sent me the Seance score, about seven tracks. And I was like, “Yeah, this is amazing. We’re going to hire you. We don’t really have any money,” but he was like, “Oh, it’s fine. I’m happy to be involved.” He was just so good-natured throughout the whole thing, but what he gave me was the ability to play those tracks to the cast and actually have them in my ears when I was going to set in the morning and stuff.
How Adam and I always used to work – I mean, now we’re working in a more direct way on some of these bigger projects – but the way it used to work, back in the day, was Adam would have no idea what I was writing. When we were kind of coming up with our next projects, he’d be sending me music just being like, “I want to use this track, so make sure you’re writing something that can support that tone,” and Sicker Man gave me that straight out of the gate. I was like, “I want something beautiful that’s kind of the theme between these two characters and their connection.” I knew I was going to be doing the thing with the headphones where, when the audience is really with Suki’s character, we hear things the way she hears them but when we’re outside and she’s opening up a little, we hear things more from Helena – Ella-Rae’s perspective. I was working with the sound mixing team I had from You’re Next to The Guest to Blair Witch. Jeff Pitts is our sound editor. He’s won an Emmy. I just knew they’d be able to pull that off. It was just a weird thing where Sicker Man sent me these tracks and I was just like, “This is my favourite music. Let’s work together forever,” and he was just like, “Okay.” He’s already written, by the way, all the needle drop music that I’m using in my V/H/S ’94 segments. I literally just went to Tobias again and I was just like, “I’m doing another thing: here’s what I need,” and he sent me seven tracks and I was like, “Okay, this is perfect,” and then I was able to play them for my crew and cast on set and say, “This is what she’s going to be listening to,” and direct that way.
I hope to collaborate with him for the rest of my career. I feel like when we did The Guest, I feel like Survive, who ended up doing the Stranger Things score, was kind of a similar situation where an artist people maybe weren’t totally aware of just kind of blows up in a big way because they find kind of the right project that really allows people to understand their style, and I’m hoping that’s what happens here but, as far as I can tell, Tobias borderline doesn’t care. I mean, he’s happy and he likes work, but I don’t think he is really necessarily looking to do more film scores. I mean, maybe he is, but I think he’s just such a prolific talented artist that I can barely keep up with all his projects. He’s released three albums, like while we were finishing Seance and you know, he’s kind of unstoppable. Anyone reading this, just like look up Sicker Man on Bandcamp or some other ethical place.
Speaking of people on the rise, as the lead, Camille, you’ve got Suki Waterhouse, as well as Madisen Beaty, who was just stellar in The Clovehitch Killer.
That’s why I cast her. Madisen Beaty is a genius and, truly, one of the best things about Madisen is she’s kind of a director herself, so she really thinks about scenes in a story-based way. She’s not afraid to look ridiculous or appear foolish if it’s what the scene needs. She really is like one of those just true zero-ego actors and randomly, so is Suki Waterhouse who, as far as I can tell, is absolutely happy when she is just utterly covered in fake blood in the midst of a fight scene and completely exhausted.
It feels like that’s when she really gets in her zone. I was randomly at the world premiere of The Bad Batch because Adam and I were kind of friendly with Ana Lily [Amirpour], who directed that movie. I’m just kind of a fan of her. I really loved A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night. So, I was at the Toronto premiere of The Bad Batch and was there when Suki got up on stage with Jason Momoa and I was like, “Oh, this person’s really kind of cool and interesting.” Then, when she was proposed for Seance, I was just kinda like, “Well, I don’t know how that’s going to work. She’s this famous model and we’re going off and making this movie where her character just takes damage for 90 minutes straight.” Then I sat down with Suki and realized that she’s as introspective and strange a person as anyone I’d met. I know a lot of other people, ’cause I’m a paranormal investigator. I do martial arts. I make horror movies, but Suki and I just instantly got along. I was just like, “Oh, I totally get all the ways in which you have a dry sense of humour and stuff.”
I was just really confident that she could do this. I think, you know, for me, it was just I was just kind of amazed that she trusted me enough to let me kind of direct this sort of hard-boiled performance that I was trying to get, because I think it’s sometimes hard for an actor to be kind of told to do very little, to really play everything very small. I think Billy Bob Thornton in The Man Who Wasn’t There, it was a very interesting performance, just how little he’s doing and how little physical movement and expression he uses to get a feeling across. I was interested in working in that mode. I was thinking more like Gabriel Byrne in Miller’s Crossing you know, with Suki. She really trusted me and was willing to experiment with that, from take to take. I’m really thrilled. I have a cool cast.
With Madisen, I’d seen Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and I thought it was a masterpiece but you can’t judge someone on their performance in a hundred million dollar Tarantino film. But you can judge someone off something like The Clovehitch Killer, which doesn’t look like it cost that much more than Seance. The fact that she is doing such nuanced work in that role, in that film, let me know that this was a really serious performer who I could really trust and relate to. I feel like I directed Madisen the least. I changed a bunch of blocking and camera movement and stuff, and with Madisen, I was just like, “Just do what you’re doing!”
RLJE Films and Shudder will release SEANCE in US theatres, On Demand, and digital on May 21st.
