Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 134 - Demons and "The Sacrifice Game" with Jenn Wexler and Sean Redlitz
This week we are thrilled to sit down with Jenn Wexler and Sean Redlitz, the filmmakers behind "The Sacrifice Game," and "The Ranger" to discus the intersection of demons and horror filmmaking. We chat through all things horror, the paranormal and how Jenn and Sean were inspired by The Lesser Key of Solomon while writing "The Sacrifice Game."
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
This week we are thrilled to sit down with Jenn Wexler and Sean Redlitz, the filmmakers behind "The Sacrifice Game," and "The Ranger" to discus the intersection of demons and horror filmmaking. We chat through all things horror, the paranormal and how Jenn and Sean were inspired by The Lesser Key of Solomon while writing "The Sacrifice Game."
lunaticsproject.com
Get Lunatics Merch here. Join the discussion on Discord. Listen to the paranormal playlist I curate for Vurbl, updated weekly! Check out Abby's book Horror Stories. Available in eBook and paperback. Music by Michaela Papa, Alan Kudan & Jordan Moser. Poster Art by Pilar Keprta @pilar.kep.
What's it like to be a Cattle Rancher? FBI Special Agent? Professional Santa? Find out!
Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify
Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of the lunatics radio hour podcast. I'm Abby Branker sitting here with Alan Kudan.
Speaker 2:Hello.
Speaker 1:And we are so thrilled to be joined by Jen Wexler and Sean Redlitz. Welcome.
Speaker 3:Hello, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much for being here. I'm sure people are aware of who you are, but just in case anyone isn't, jen Wexler is an incredible filmmaker, writer, director, sean, also very much in the horror world, writer, marketer, worked at Shutter for many years and we're thrilled to be able to talk to them today about horror and about how their most recent film ties into demonic summoning. So, jen, let's start with your credits a little bit here. So you were the writer and director of the Ranger in the sacrifice game, which you co-wrote with Sean, and these are two incredibly and I'm not saying this to gas you up but really influential horror films, I feel like in the indie horror world community. So it's very exciting to be able to talk to you.
Speaker 3:Wow. Well, thank you so much and I'm excited to be here to chat.
Speaker 1:So we do something a little bit cringy for most of our guests on the podcast, which is kind of ask a few icebreaker questions just to kind of get everybody acclimated with who you guys are. So the first thing that I always ask is if you guys have ever had any sort of paranormal or unexplained experience in your life.
Speaker 3:I feel like I've always been on the search for them. When I was young, around 10 years old, which was the time that I was seeing the crafts for the first time my friends and I would like hang out in the local graveyard after school and we'd have slumber parties and do like ledges of feathers to fizzle board and I feel like it worked. But at the same time it was like eight of us all carrying the girl, so maybe it didn't actually work, but in our like 10 year old minds we were like, oh my gosh, she's so light. Obviously this is working. And we'd also do like, say, ounces and play with a Ouija board, and I contacted George Washington once, obviously as you do when you're 10.
Speaker 2:Can you tell that story?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I said hey, george Washington, if you're here, turn on the TV. But the TV was already on, so obviously I had to go turn it off first, so I walked over, turn it off and then a couple moments later turn back on by itself. It's possible that I had accidentally pressed it twice really quick, but I don't think I did that. I think that it just turned on by itself.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah, I'm glad we probed because that feels a little spooky.
Speaker 2:This is our first George Washington horror story.
Speaker 3:Oh, yes, well, also, the night before it was my 10 year old birthday party and I had all these girls over my house, and the night before we spoke to Hitler.
Speaker 1:And from one extreme to the other, really all the historic figures.
Speaker 3:And half the girls got scared and went home.
Speaker 4:You know, history class would have been so much more interesting if there were just say ounces, yeah, interest first with the history lessons.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, why not talk to who you're learning about directly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, An excellent lesson on primary versus secondary history sources. There you go, there you go.
Speaker 1:Sean what about you.
Speaker 4:I also have never had a true paranormal experience. We live in a building that's over 100 years old, so I have to assume, if there's a good chance maybe somebody died there there could be ghosts. So I allow the things that lurk in my peripheral vision to possibly be ghosts. You know, was that a lamp over there or was that a ghost girl sitting on the mantle? I don't know, it could have been. But if she's a ghost girl sitting on the mantle, she's welcome. It's her place as much as mine. So, you know, I try to give the ghosts their space if they're real, or give them space in my imagination if they're not.
Speaker 1:Fair enough, I will open minded to it, but nothing sort of concrete has ever happened.
Speaker 3:In the sacrifice game set. We shot in this old abbey and Some of the crew said that they were experiencing some ghostly things, like the producers were in a room in the middle of the night and suddenly all these candles were just knocked down by themselves. And other people said there was weird lighting going on in the basement, like lights turning on and off by themselves. But I was very much and I think this is like just kind of who I am as a person in terms of paranormal stuff. I totally believe in it, but I'm also like don't fucking get in my headspace, ghosts especially. Then I was like I'm trying to direct, don't get in my headspace. But just in general I'm like yo, if you're out there, I'm cool with you, but let's just like keep our distance from each other.
Speaker 1:Fair enough. Fair enough so in terms of horror, because you guys, I will say Sean, you and I met many years ago now. I can't quite 2018, 2018. And what really brought us together, besides working on a project at work, was our love of horror. So I know that you have a love of horror. Obviously, jen, you do. So, first of all, what drew you both to the genre? Because I think you guys both, specifically, are quite invested in horror when it comes to filmmaking.
Speaker 4:In my particular case, as a kid, it was always those movies that were on TV after school that I watched. It was the Universal Monster movies, it was the Vincent Price movies, it was the Hammer Horror movies. Very often I would find those things Even Planet of the Apes, I would say was kind of scary to me as a kid. So I fell in love with that. I had monster posters. I was really invested in Dracula. I had a whole Dracula get up for Halloween as a 12-year-old 11-year-old. So that was really a big influence on me at the time.
Speaker 4:And then, professionally, I've had opportunities to work. Maybe it was drawn to them or maybe I just got lucky, but I have had opportunities to work in science fiction and fantasy and horror and television and film. I worked at Sci-Fi back in the day. I worked at another streamer slash network called Furnet. That unfortunately is no longer with us but was a fun place to be. That's where Jen and I originally met and I got to spend four great years at Shutter. So it's been really a privilege to both be a horror fan and in the horror industry.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's awesome. I fell in love with horror when I was five years old. I watched Are you Afraid of the Dark. I became obsessed with that TV show and I know I have friends who have been introduced to horror through people, through parents, through friends. But for me it was always such a solo experience and I think that's why I gravitated towards it, because it was like this special thing that belonged to me, like watching Are you Afraid of the Dark by myself when I was a kid and then later watching like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and like all the late 90s teen slashers. Sometimes I would watch them with friends, but really it was this spiritual experience that aligned with my going into adolescence. That was like I was discovering this world by myself, and so it became this really special thing to me. It's interesting to hear like of Sean's solo experience as well with horror. I think there's just something about it where you can connect to the genre on your own. You don't necessarily need a community when you have that initial gateway experience.
Speaker 3:But then later on, when I was in college, I started doing an internship for Fearnet which, once I graduated, later became my first official real job. I worked in the marketing department as a marketing coordinator and honestly I've never had like since graduation, since that became my first real job. I've never had a normal job. I've always worked in horror in one way or another Like. First I was at Fearnet for a couple of years, then I worked at Larry Thessenden's production company Glass Eye Picks for several years and now I'm making horror movies. So I know what it is to have a. You know, before all that I had normal jobs. I worked in restaurants and stores and all the things. But since then I haven't had a normal job and I don't want to go back to normal jobs.
Speaker 1:Fair enough.
Speaker 4:And while we're talking about the Fearnet days, shout out to our friend Drew Daywalt, who is now a very successful children's book author but has also made some amazing horror shorts, including some. You've definitely seen the one about the woman who thinks she's in bed with somebody but turns out there's a very creepy. Anyway, I won't spoil all of it, but while we were both at Fearnet, drew was making these shorts with his friends, very kind of guerrilla style, and inspired, I think, jen to take a whack at it because it was something we'd talked about for a long time. But you often wait for somebody to like unlock the keys to the kingdom for you like okay, now you can be a filmmaker. But really to be a filmmaker you just have to go out and make films, whether with whatever you can, whatever you have. And it was really exciting to see Jen kind of get that first tone in the water and then learn so much more with Glass Eye Picks and now, kind of, you know, doing her own thing and also helping others along the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, and you know it's really interesting to me actually. So my experience with horror and why I'm drawn to it, I think is a little bit different from what you guys both said, which is that I have this like very intense fear growing up and I was very afraid all the time and despite that, my family was really into horror, like abnormally. So so it's kind of this weird juxtaposition, but like when you were talking about your like solo experience with horror, I was just thinking you were the bravest kid. Like I was upstairs like having a mental breakdown because I could hear the X-Files theme song, like that my parents were watching downstairs, like. So you guys are both, I feel, like very brave. I don't know that everybody has that experience with their like solo discovery of horror. It feels very adventurous to me.
Speaker 3:How about you, Ellen?
Speaker 2:I always liked horror. I didn't fall in love with horror until I met Abby and that just opened the whole whole realm of possibilities, kind of. Similarly, it was always like a very personal thing because I didn't have anybody like. Unless you have someone who's like gung-ho about horror, it's kind of tough to be like yeah guys, let's sit down and watch this like awful gory slasher. You know, most people, most people don't like that, but I did so. It was like just something that every so often I would dabble on my own. But then, like, once you have a partner that is gung-ho about it, it's like super fun.
Speaker 2:And in terms of being able to like crack into making horror, I've really I've always felt that horror lends itself very well to shorts, whereas not a lot of genres do that Like. I feel like short films, like the biggest categories, are either just like horror or drama, and a drama usually serves a purpose. It's like it's telling a bigger story, it's trying to tell a bigger story, it's leading up to the feature version of it. Well, like a horror short can be like a super self-contained things like cool on to the next, let's do it. And that's just always felt like a very accessible way to break in.
Speaker 4:And when you're watching horror as a kid, it serves a particular purpose. Usually it's either because you have fears and anxieties in your life that it's helping you kind of cope with, because it gives you a safe outlet for them, or because you're, you know, lonely and interested in mysterious, weird stuff or supernatural stuff, and it gives you an avenue into that. It kind of lets you test yourself in a really safe way. As a kid, some people like roller coasters, some people you know jump off the roof on, you know, off the garage roof. Horror was something that I could tap into and push myself but also feel safe doing so. And then when you get to be an adult especially if you're an adult who makes films or is interested in watching a lot of films you realize how open the genre is for just about any kind of storytelling you want to do. You want to tell a comedy, you want to tell a romantic story, you want to tell a really deep psychological story.
Speaker 4:Horror can go to places that traditional dramas, traditional comedies can't. Now, it's not everybody's cup of tea and sometimes they go to places some audiences don't want to go to. But if you watch a lot of horror or if you're friends with somebody who really knows the genre and can guide you to the things that really resonate with the kinds of horror you're interested in. You know that takes you far. I'm not somebody who is super deep into slashers, so that was never my thing. But give me, you know, a folk horror or a world in which the characters are doomed from the start, and you know it like Blair Witch, you know, like I just eat that stuff up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. Also, as you get older, you start to realize there's a whole community of people just like you. People gravitated towards this stuff Like I didn't feel like I had. I felt like I was the person in my friend group when I was a kid that was like let's watch a horror movie. But then, obviously, as I got older and the internet became a thing and I started coming in chat rooms and all the things I, like you know, I started to meet other people who were into horror and then, certainly now I mean it's so easy to find the horror community I feel like yeah, the other interesting thing that I thought about when you were talking, sean, is that there's studies that they do, and probably most people know this, but I find it really interesting.
Speaker 1:There's studies that they do around like spikes in horror, like when the general public is interested, and it's always like the Great Depression, world War II, right, like when there's like really tragic, terrible things happening in the world, which I know is steady state for a lot of the time recently. But it's because there's people find like an escape, like a safe escape in horror, when they need that kind of release right, and like going to a theater or on a roller coaster, like you said, is even for us adults sometimes is a way to kind of cope with what's happening in the world, you know, in a safe, confined space.
Speaker 2:I just can't get over the fact that you're able to watch Are you Fair the Dark on your own? Really, it's terrifying.
Speaker 3:Oh my, it was really scary but it was like some of the most exciting emotional adventures I went on as a kid were just like watching. Are you Fair the Dark?
Speaker 2:I've recently tried to dive back into Goosebumps and that's too much.
Speaker 3:Goosebumps is also.
Speaker 2:It's a lot scarier than I remember it.
Speaker 1:Well, the before our amusement park episode a few months ago, what was the name of?
Speaker 2:it One Day in Horrorland.
Speaker 1:One Day in Horrorland he was actually legitimately like struggling to get through it. It's terrifying, oh my gosh. Okay, I know this is like the most obnoxious question, but can you give us just like a handful of your like Desert Island horror films?
Speaker 3:The Shining definitely Suspiria.
Speaker 4:Desert Island is a really good way to phrase it, because I get asked a lot like what are some of your favorite horror films and those? You know I have a lot to pull from recent classic, but the kinds of that you want to watch and rewatch and kind of live and relive over and over again. Return of the Living Dead would probably be on that, because it's so entertaining to me. You know it gave us the zombies, the deep brains, which people don't always realize was not always part of the mythology. Send more cops. Yeah, exactly. So that's when I think I can watch endlessly. I have others that are like you know, they leave me a little more shaken or I might want to set them aside for a few weeks or months or years before I revisit them.
Speaker 4:But that's when I can watch over and over again. And I really love Dead and Buried, which has Dan O'Bannon in common. Oh, he didn't really write Dead and Buried, he's a credited writer on that. I think that was just to help them get the financing. I mean, he acknowledges that he was not the major force behind that. But Dead and Buried you know people have talked about the Sacrifice game is having some good twists in it. Dead and Buried, to me, has the quintessential twist and great ending of all time and horror, if it's not one. You see, and I'm not gonna spoil it for you here today. But essentially the premise is that a sheriff who used to be a cop in the big city returns back to his small I wanna say New England, but basically coastal, foggy town and where weird murders are taking place, in which mobs of people are descending upon the victim and filming, photographing, otherwise documenting the murders as they happen.
Speaker 2:But you don't know why?
Speaker 1:Wow, okay, well, we'll have to watch it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I haven't even heard of this movie Directed by Gary Sherman, who also did Poltergeist 3 and a lot of other great stuff. He did us Raw Meat, which is a London-based subway underground horror. So he's a good guy.
Speaker 3:I also just going back. I'm also, you know, usually I'm asked what are your favorite horror movies. So I just have this list that. I just go to, but I agree, phrasing it as like Desert Island you don't make anything else, so you're gonna be watching these movies over and over Again makes me think about this question a little differently, and so I would answer with movies I have literally watched over and over again, which include Heathers I've watched that movie probably more than any other movie I've ever watched in my life and also Halloween.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we're similar, jen. Halloween is my ultimate horror film. Like just every year since I was born, I've watched that movie on Halloween. Like it's just like my family's. Everything you need to know about my family is that.
Speaker 2:This says a lot about Abby. She's like two years old and they're making her watch Halloween.
Speaker 3:And I'm like this is a lot better family. It's pretty cool family.
Speaker 1:Yeah they are. My mom is like into the universal, like it's just it's. Yeah, it was obvious that I would end up a big fanatic of horror.
Speaker 4:I'm gonna throw out one more please. Alien. It's got your sci-fi. It's got your sort of monster and haunted house, except it's a spaceship. It's got phenomenal cast, great acting, Can't beat that one. It checks a lot of boxes, it does.
Speaker 1:We were overdue for a deep dive. We've been trying to do it for a few years now in the podcast and like because every once in a while we'll do, we'll pick a franchise and we'll watch every film and we'll do like this big deep dive into the history of it. Usually around Halloween and Alien has been kind of floating around, so it's one of Alan's favorite franchises. I'm less familiar with it beyond the first one, so hopefully, hopefully soon, we'll get to it.
Speaker 2:I hope so.
Speaker 1:The other thing I wanted to say about Heather's too is that I have a very specific love for academic horror and it's very prevalent, I feel like, in a lot of novels. But Heather's is one of those rare films where it kind of evokes that academic world of being on a specific campus and having things devolve in a way in this teen drama type way that always happens in these academic horror novels and stories, and I love it so much.
Speaker 3:I love academic horror. I don't know how much that term is used.
Speaker 2:I've never heard that term before.
Speaker 3:But I love it and I'm going to start sharing it.
Speaker 1:I wrote a little blog post about some of my favorite academic horror novels. I'll send them. I'll send it to you because I'm curious if you have additional ones. I'm missing.
Speaker 3:I feel like usually one would say like teen horror, like slashers or whatever, but or we've been saying with Sarcophase Game boarding school horror. Yeah, yeah but academic horror is just a great term that I think we should use more often, yes, yeah, and it's like.
Speaker 1:it's almost like you want to watch it in the fall, like when you would be returning to school and the leaves are turning and you're on a campus, you're away from home, you know, and it's all of that that's happening. It's like a contained universe.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Halloween H2O is academic horror.
Speaker 4:You talk about Halloween, h2o all the time. The faculty I know is on your short list of favorite movies.
Speaker 3:I love the faculty. We also love the faculty here. Yeah, yeah, also disturbing behavior. Oh, so good, katie Holmes, ok.
Speaker 1:I'll have to watch that one.
Speaker 2:Speaking about. Just you know, horror being a very personal thing. Every so often, like you'll meet people that you know, you've known them for a while, but like you've never discussed horror. But when they find out that, like you're into it, it just like the floodgates open and they're like oh my god, do you? Like I've never had someone to talk to you about this? And this happened a little while back, when there was someone that I worked with, I've been working with for years. Then, when it came up, the fact that we have like a horror podcast is like, oh my god, have you seen the faculty? Like yeah, it's great. And then we just bonded over the faculty for a while. It's like these little things that just like connect people.
Speaker 3:It's so good. Yeah, it's just such a well made, well written movie. It's really smart. Good job, robert.
Speaker 1:Rodriguez. While there's so many endless great horror films in the world, I want to talk a little bit more about the sacrifice game, which came out in December of 2023. Is that right, correct? It's a little bit Christmassy, but don't let that stop you from watching it now, if you were not going to spoil anything, because, you know, probably not everybody listening has watched it. But if you haven't watched it, please go watch it. It's on Shutter currently. Is it anywhere else?
Speaker 4:It's now on VOD, so. Amazon most of the places you rent a movie. Amazing.
Speaker 1:OK, and I'm just going to read the log line here to kind of illustrate in a contained way. It's bad enough that boarding school students Samantha and Clara can't go home for the holidays, but things take a deadly turn when a murderous gang arrives on their doorstep. So, sean and Jen, you both wrote this film together. Could you describe for us a little bit about the essence of the movie?
Speaker 3:I like to talk about the movie like Last House on the Left by way of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Speaker 1:We love that, and one of the reasons why we're talking about the Sacrifice game this month as opposed to every other month is that we're just coming off of a big series on the podcast about demonic summoning. So one thing I want to talk about a little bit is kind of the lore and the rules of the world, because you do have entities and demons to some extent. Again, I don't want to give too much away, but one thing that Alan and I talk about a lot because Alan specifically loves films with rules and so it doesn't seem arbitrary when things are happening, and I think the Sacrifice game does that really well. But can you tell us a little bit about how you came up with, like, the parameters of the world, the rules of the world, the lore of this kind of legend and how it all came to be?
Speaker 3:We're very influenced by a lot of these kinds of movies and we love horror. We watch horror movies together all the time. We're very aware of all the tropes, and something that's really exciting to me as a writer and a horror fan is when you can find ways to take the tropes that everybody knows and then twist them in new ways that we haven't quite seen before. So when we were writing, that was something that Sean and I were really excited about doing playing with the Sacrifice trope, the trope of demonic sacrifice, virgin sacrifice.
Speaker 3:We've seen this in horror so many times and some of the movies we were influenced by include, like Rosemary's Baby and the Exorcist, and so just kind of gathering everything that we know about this trope and playing with it, and not to give too much away, but just to say that you have this gang of Manson-esque cultists who come to this boarding school and they're there because they believe they can raise a demon in this space. So it was really fun to think about everything that goes into that from you know, that's why I mentioned Last House. On the Left you have this home invasion and this gang of bad guys who think that they have all the power in the world and they can do whatever they want, and they're going to get more power when they raise this demon. And then things take wild turns once they actually get to the place.
Speaker 4:And in terms of the writing of it and the creation of the mythology and the lore behind it, I'm with Alan. I love when there's a good, a good, solid concept, a cool concept that I haven't seen before, ideally in a movie. We, like Jen said, we watch a lot of horror, so we've seen a lot of things, so we wanted to do something that was different. But I also love it when they don't over explain it. I don't need to have my hand held, I don't need to have the movie stop and have, you know, a long expository passage where we talk through all of the nitty-gritty.
Speaker 4:But I think that as an audience you can sense when a filmmaker knows the lore and gives you enough tidbits so that then they hang together and it feels consistent but is not over, you know, slowing the movie down or weighing it down with too much of that. So we tried to keep that balance and there are a lot of clues in terms of what the origins of this entity might be and what happened along the way and what's happening now. What is. We catch up with them in the movie, but a lot of that might not be apparent on first viewing because it's sort of teased and sprinkled in different places. So our hope is that if you don't necessarily come up with exactly the idea that we had, you at least come up with an idea of your own that fits those breadcrumbs and makes sense to you and makes the world feel like it's bigger than what you're seeing in the movie.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And did you guys do any research into demonic legend or mythology in general? Or do you feel like you have seen enough horror that you were able to kind of do that without diving into textbooks on mythology?
Speaker 3:I read up on the Lesser Key of Solomon Demons and I didn't want to base our demon on one of those because, going back to earlier in our conversation, I actually do believe in this stuff and I didn't want to piss off a real demon and I didn't want to accidentally summon a real demon.
Speaker 4:Or their publicist.
Speaker 3:So we made our own invention but stole traits of some of those demons and that was really fun creating our demon. His name is Seraalq. It was really fun, and when we were making the movie, I make look books for all the different departments and it was really fun putting all that together for our makeup effects and prosthetics department and being like this is what their sigil looks like. And this is the history. This is what you can expect if you summon a demon.
Speaker 3:I've also spent way too many hours on the internet just going through weird forums and reading creepypastas and just seeing other people's experiences of trying to summon demons, and I've also been really interested in the idea of first of all to summon a demon. Usually these rituals are really complicated and I would say our ritual is also complicated, Like it's really hard to do our ritual. You need the exact right circumstances for our ritual that we've created to work. It's really complicated to summon demons and I'm also interested in the idea that you could summon a demon and not even know if it worked or not, and suddenly there's this force in your life. That's not. Things are different than how they used to be, so that was really attractive to me when we were developing this.
Speaker 2:It's a very interesting concept, thank you, you know, from like classical film, I guess, when this demon summoning happens, the portal opens and like the big thing comes out. But I guess, yeah, through, like you know, like specifically Go like which trial text and everything like when the demon comes, you, you don't know. It's just because, yeah, things are now different.
Speaker 3:That's such an interesting concept and there's a lot of like trickster demons yeah, there's a lot of them who like to fuck with you. So if you happen to summon one of those, then you could be in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 4:And, as Jen mentioned, we have a somewhat complicated ceremony that we feel like carries the weight of what these sort of lesser key of Solomon kind of classical demon stuff does, but really like, like they're, they go way beyond it's it's it's weeks of preparation and there's a movie that I'm sure you've covered or are covering as part of the series, a dark song that is all about how to summon a demon and and why, and it's, it's, it's Beyond esoteric, it's so much work, but it's such a great movie and it is is maybe the best one On the list of even demon movies that I've seen in terms of really getting it. What the sort of medieval scholars who thought they knew how to do this were up to. Ours is a sort of light version of that by that standard, but still a lot more involved than maybe your typical, your typical movie where they just say a few magic words and a demon you know the drop pentagram say a few words and a demon pops up.
Speaker 2:I, because I one of the reason why I really like specific rules and lore is because you can have a Seemingly omnipotent being of some, you know some supernatural force that breaks all these conventions about like how do you defeat this thing? But once you Put it in some kind of box, you've now given it some kind of critical flaw and then like that's, that's how you get your you know overarching story when the protagonist can now rise to the occasion and, you know, fight back against this seemingly unbeatable thing. And one thing that always Like kills sequels for me is when they establish the rules of this, of something, and then they just say, and then you have some new Director coming in for, like I'm thinking of, like Nightmare on Elm Street, like five or something, but that's a bad example because they still adhere to rules pretty well, that's, it's a great franchise for rules. But you know they throw that away and like actually this thing is can just Break, break the rules. Now you're kind of starting from scratch, because now it's you know, quote-unquote scarier.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm trying to think of like Hellraiser, you know, but I think those are the kinds of things we love, and I think that's true of anything like if you put any Thing in a box, like even when you're working on a creative project, having any kind of limitation.
Speaker 4:Always like breeds more creativity, I feel like yeah, and having having an antagonist or a monster that's not all powerful, that has constraints, and set sets around what they can do, is helpful and Not every horror franchise has to do this, but, but when you can, when you, when you can create a monster that also has an agenda, that has a point of view, that has Feelings and opinions, and those could be even changed over time. They're not just set. You know, I Freddy is by far my favorite slasher, but you know, I feel like he's got one thing on his mind which is killing teens and that's all he's really there for and he doesn't really care too much and that doesn't change too much. In our particular movie we wanted to play around with an idea of like is the monster necessarily evil? Is the monster just out for themselves? Is that? Are there other things governing what's going on? So that's some of the fun we had.
Speaker 2:I love when the monster becomes a little bit of an antihero. Anytime you can root for the monster, and not simply because the characters are just so unlikeable. When you have likeable characters and a likeable monster, but still there, everyone's like at odds and it's scary, it's, it's difficult to pull off and I felt like the sacrifice game really, really did it and thank you.
Speaker 2:I when I was because we watched it separately because Abby was able to go to the screening and when I was like watching it by myself, Abby was in the other room and I'm just like kept calling out like they're doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I Came home and the first thing I said to Alan was you're going to love the sacrifice game. There are so many rules. And the next day he watched it and he loved it and it was great because we watched it in December and it was Christmas themed and it was perfect.
Speaker 4:We do a lot of like holiday horror stuff, lunatic, so it was, it was ideal and we set it in 71 because we felt like, hey, that was the right time to tell the story. But so many of our influences and Jen has already mentioned Rose Marie's baby, the exorcist you can absolutely put black Christmas on that list War from that era, so it just really clicked for us is to to set it as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's an interesting thing to talk about, to a little bit, just as filmmakers and writers how you guys think about Influences, because I think for for me, right, it's hard to separate that out because we love horror, we watch so much horror and so much film in general and as we work on our own films, you know it's just there, it's in your brain, right. But I know other filmmakers who, like specifically, won't watch Films that are really close to what they're working on, because you know they feel like it's too close.
Speaker 3:I wonder how you guys think about that most of the time I embrace the influences and I like having like the library of films in my head and Even if the movie comes out, like right now while I'm writing something, yeah, by the time the thing I'm writing is Done and then actually gets financed and then actually goes into production, like we're talking like four years from now, if we're lucky it's actually coming out. Yeah, so by then that thing that came out right now is again part of the genre that you're working in. Sometimes I do feel like, okay, that's too close for me to be watching right now, but Ultimately, like I don't wait that long. I wait maybe a couple months and then I I check it out. I like having those influences and it was really cool.
Speaker 3:Is like when I'm writing, if I'm writing in a certain genre, first of all I'll be like, okay, this is this meets this. So that's like top of mind. And then, as I'm writing, I'm like, oh my god, in this scene it's like if I take a little bit of this and then I mash it with this, but it's its own thing here. That's what this scene is. So I think it's like a really fun part of the process.
Speaker 4:Yeah, pulling from various places, yeah, yeah and it may seem Horetical to say this on a horror podcast, but I think that you know, if you're a horror fan and you want to make horror entertainment Watching steel from non horror movies too yeah, and you know, make them your own, don't just copy stuff. But you know, there there's been some great examples recently obviously a happy death day franchise and, and was it freaky or great examples of pulling from body switch movies or time loop movies. But saying, what if we make them horror? Whatever your favorite movie is, it can be fast and furious, all right.
Speaker 4:Well, what's a horror element that I could add to that that would make it exciting? You love musicals great, and the apocalypse is. So when you can bring everybody that is working in the horror space is also probably seen and loved the same horror movies you have. But they haven't necessarily watched the other genres that really fascinate you, whether it's westerns, boxing movies, whatever it is. If you can find something from those other spheres documentaries that inspire you when you think, hmm, what if I put a horror element in this? What does it give me? You could go to some really cool places.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and to your point earlier, sometimes it is purely just a horror film, but so often, especially now, I feel like it's a horror plus. Right, it's a horror drama, it's a horror comedy, it's a horror zombie film, it's a horror whatever it is. There's like endless combinations. That and as they should. Right, because why not? But horror can be layered with so many other things. And so, to your point, like pulling inspiration from anywhere and everywhere makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:I am just so excited to see a horror street racing movie or a horror boxing movie now. Well, you wanna work on it. That sounds amazing but after we're done recording we'll go brainstorm. Sorry, I'm so distracted thinking about this now. Demon Car is the car haunted? Alan?
Speaker 1:has a specific love of that Is it a Christine sort of scenario.
Speaker 2:Or oh, geez oh geez.
Speaker 4:Or are they competing with the devil to win somebody's soul back in a car situation?
Speaker 2:It has to start just like a perfectly normal street racing movie Establish all the stakes and halfway through the switch flips and becomes supernatural.
Speaker 4:Sure so, like from Dust Till Dawn. But street racing, yeah, all right, great Done Vampire street racing gang. Great, we'll put it on the books.
Speaker 2:I mean it's you know any other genre sets itself up for, like franchising and sequels and everything. Was that a consideration during the process of making it, or just yeah, what's the state?
Speaker 3:Well, certainly now. We just love being in this world. So we're like oh, how can we make sequels or prequels or TV spinoffs or whatever? But while making, while writing it and while making it, I wasn't thinking about any of that. I'm and I felt this way with the Ranger too I'm just focused on I want to make like a complete story. I'm hopeful that the story will feel like it expands beyond the beginning and the start, the start time and the end time of the movie and the first and the last page of the script to feel like a whole world. But I want the movie to feel totally complete. Yeah, so that was my goal with it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, at Q and A's we get asked a lot about could the story go on, where could it go from here, and we're entertaining some ideas, so we'll see what the future holds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I will say it's sort of a perfect ending in that way, because it lends itself very well to kind of what is the next chapter, but also I can assume what I think the next chapter is and I feel like I've seen the movie and I'm satisfied with that, you know, and it's kind of it works well both ways. Yeah, it's interesting you know interesting thing about sequels while you're working on it. So though the Ranger, your first film, is not super relevant to demonic summoning, I would be remiss to not corner you about it while I have you here. So the Ranger is an incredibly fun film and it was your first feature, is that right? It was my first feature as a director.
Speaker 1:As a director and again I'm gonna read the log line for anyone who hasn't seen it Teen punks on the run from the cops and hiding out in the woods come up against the local authority in unhinged park ranger with an axe to grind, which is a perfect description. And I will just say right off the bat that this film stars our friend Jeremy Holm, who is an incredible actor, an incredible human, and this it's just like such a surprising and beautiful and horrifying performance from Jeremy in this film, so I just wanna start with that. So okay again, how would you describe the essence of the Ranger?
Speaker 3:With the Ranger I was really. I wanted to bash together 80s punk movies and 80s slashers and then give the whole thing a Lisa Frank color palette.
Speaker 2:Yeah yeah, that's fun.
Speaker 1:That's exactly how. That feels, exactly right. What was the process for making the Ranger compared to the sacrifice game?
Speaker 3:The Ranger was much more handmade. It was a group of friends got together, all my buddies at Glass Eye Picks, we all we had been working together on a couple of movies. So I had made a movie called Like Me, james C, where it was the DP. On that he came over to the Ranger. There were a couple of other people that we'd just been making movies together and we went out into the woods and we made this movie together. The sacrifice game was a union crew in Canada, an amazing crew, but they were all people that I met for the first time when I went to Canada. The producers introduced me to people, so it was just a different kind of process.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. The Ranger is kind of like you got a punk band in a garage and you're all learning how to play your instruments and you're making killer sounds, whereas the sacrifice game it's like you've gotten together like a, like a roadies and a whole tour and now you're like putting on big arena concerts.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, not to give anything away again for anyone who hasn't seen it, but the Ranger, the role of the Ranger, again played by Jeremy, is such a specific role. How did you come to figure out like who the right person would be for that?
Speaker 3:So the Ranger I co-wrote it. It was originally written by my friend, jaco Farino. We were in college together, we were both majoring in screenwriting and this was his like senior thesis in 2008. And I was just a fan of the idea. I was like yo, that's awesome, I hope you get an A on your thesis. I wanna see that someday.
Speaker 3:Then, fast forward to 2014. I produced a couple of things and I wanted to figure out what I want to direct as my first feature and I remembered the Ranger and I was like yo, jaco, can you find that script? Can we work on it together? Fast forward to 2016, which is, the script's done and we're starting to put it together and talk to producers and financiers. And we're talking about casting. And Jaco had worked with Jeremy and he suggested him to me and I was like, of course, like I knew Jeremy from House of Cards and from Mr Robot I had watched both of those shows and we met with Jaco and I met with Jeremy and his manager, lori. I feel like Jeremy and Lori were trying to scope us out and are they real? Is this? But they were into it and Jeremy really liked the script and Jeremy.
Speaker 3:As soon as I met Jeremy in person. He gave me a big hug and that's just his essence for anybody who meets him. There's just so much love emanating from this man. He's so amazing to hang out with, to be in the same space with, he's just so much fun. And I remember that he was in preparation for the movie. He's just started watching horror movie after horror movie. He's like I'm gonna be the expert in horror by the time we shoot. I'm going to have seen. I think he watched maybe 200 horror movies in anticipation of shooting this. And also his background is like he grew up in the mountains, I believe in Colorado. He has a very mountainy background. He lives in Vermont now. He just totally understood the character and it was such a blast to get to dive into it with him. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I love that, I love the origin story of that and I also, speaking of actors, chloe Levine is in both of your films, which I always kind of look out for with filmmakers, because it's such a testament to the actor and the experience you had together. But you tell us a little bit about Chloe and your relationship there.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I met Chloe at South by Southwest in 2017, which was when we were casting for the Ranger and she was in a movie called the Transfiguration which was playing South by, and I saw it and I was like totally loved her vibe. And then we met there at South by and we just totally clicked and I knew, leaving South by, I was like I want her to play Chelsea and we were gonna be shooting like the next month, so it was a very quick turnaround, but she was really into the script, she was really into the role. We started bonding over music and I do this with every actor. I like to create playlists for them and we pass music back and forth and stuff and we had a great time on the Ranger and coming out of the Ranger, she became like one of my best friends.
Speaker 3:She was a bridesmaid at my wedding Sean and my wedding and when we started writing the Sacrifice game, I was writing it with her in mind for the role of Rose. And it's really cool when you get to work with somebody who you've worked with before, but also somebody who's just become a really good friend, because you just know their nuances, you know the way their voice moves. You know their inflections, the kinds of looks that they give. You know it's just like it's. So I think it was just so lovely when we got on set for the sacrifice game. We just sank right back into our creative relationship super easily, super fast, which, on a movie with eight and ensemble piece with eight characters. It was nice that I was like okay, chloe, I'm good with, I can begin forming my relationships with the other actors, who were all people that I hadn't worked with before. So yeah, both the Ranger and sacrifice game, it was a total blast getting to work with Chloe.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great, and, alan, you've actually worked with Chloe before.
Speaker 2:I did, we did King Jack together.
Speaker 3:Oh, so cool.
Speaker 2:Is it fair to assume that it's better to be able to write a role with the actor in mind, or do you like the process of making the character, then shaping the actor to meet the role?
Speaker 3:I don't feel like I ever shape anyone to meet a role. First of all, I feel like it comes very naturally when I'm writing. I'm either thinking about the role as somebody that I know, an actor that I know, or an actor that I'm aware of Like there's some actor. That's usually how I write and it's very instinctive and I'm not really thinking too much about it like logically. I'm just like, oh, this is obviously this type of person and this is that type of person and I'm just kind of casting them in my mind, whether or not that actually turns into a reality ever.
Speaker 4:Or even could, I think we can say, in the Sacrifice game there's a character who's a Vietnam vet, who's fallen in with this gang, played by Derek Johns. The character name is Grant and in that particular case, when Jen and I were working on that script together, we talked a lot about the Vincent and Afrio character in Full Metal Jacket. That not to say that we copied that character, but that was sort of like a template for us to start with. Yeah, going back to looking outside the genre for influences, and we didn't know if we could find somebody who had Vincent and Afrio energy, those are big shoes to fill. But we were really thrilled when we saw Derek's audition and we're like, yes, this guy captures what it was we had in mind and bring so many other new things to the role.
Speaker 3:And same thing with Laurent, who plays Doug in the Sacrifice game we were thinking of like a Steve Buscemi type. So when we were writing, I had Steve Buscemi's voice in my head, like young Steve Buscemi, and I was like I don't know, are we ever going to find that guy? And then we found Laurent and it was very exciting with Laurent and Derek, just the feeling of like, oh my God, you guys exist. And then, of course, they took those roles and poured themselves into it and brought so much life, like our writing they were more like caricatures and then they breed the life into the roles. So, yeah, but with Chloe, specifically on Sacrifice game, yeah, knowing she was who I had in mind. So it was kind of like this world of like oh, what if you have young Vincent D'Onofrio and young Steve Buscemi and Chloe? Is this character, just this weird combination of people?
Speaker 2:Very cool.
Speaker 1:The interesting thing is to tease a little bit about a project we're working on. We're working on a feature and it won't be in the world, I'm sure, for a very long time. But the one character that, or the one actor we knew was sort of on board before everything was finalized, was Jeremy Holmes character. So he's the one character that I sort of wrote knowing that it would be him, and it's interesting, you know, it's, it's. They're both great ways to do it, you know, but it's, yeah, it's fun to hear how other people think about it.
Speaker 1:So we've hinted at this already, but I would I have to ask about this because I think it's such a fun mechanic. Both the Ranger and the Sacrifice game are period pieces and I think what you how you kind of handle making period pieces in an independent film way is also very brilliant and we've talked about this a lot. You guys have talked about this a lot like having contained worlds and you know setting something in the woods or in an abbey, and so it makes sense financially and other things. But what draws you to setting a story in a specific time period versus, like, in modern day?
Speaker 3:For both the Ranger and Sacrifice game. I felt that those time periods like made a lot of sense emotionally to the stories that we were telling. Like I don't feel like I have to forever only do these kinds of period pieces. I'm excited for someday getting to do something modern or futuristic or something really dating. You know, doing 1800s or 1600s would be cool, but it's kind of like I like to think about it like what is this? What world is the story you want to take place in? And then I always find that I'm enthusing my and that's what I think is actually really cool to look at a time period through a modern sensibility. That I find that really fun.
Speaker 4:And I think it helps projects stand out because you know it takes a little bit of effort and it takes a little bit of creativity and ingenuity to create a period. You know, maybe you don't have access to cars, maybe you don't have access to wardrobe Like it's. It can be challenging, but not insurmountably so. No-transcript now. And there's a handful of movies that came out that were set then.
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, it's also selfishly just like a fun experience to get to dive into a time period. And then, while you're making the movie, the whole process, literally from prep through the movies coming out, is like, well, what you know, would this card made sense in that time period? Oh no, it came out too late, so, no, we can't use that. Or like every single detail of the movie. You're constantly like asking yourself these questions. You're diving into the world of that time period, of that year. You're talking to each of your department heads about what makes sense, what is the right production design, what are the right set dressing, what's the right costumes. And it's not just like that year, but it's everything leading up to that year, because we, the clothes we wear, the things we keep around us is not just like the things that came out right this year, just things that we've accumulated over the course of our lives. So all of that is just very fun to think about.
Speaker 4:You have to think about it and work on it. But you also have to recognize that there's going to be limitations and not be a perfectionist about it. There are going to be somebody's going to spot oh, that style of coat didn't exist at that time. Or you know that light fixture is really from 10 years later than when you say it's from. And you know that's as long as it's not something egregious that takes you out of the movie. You show your script to people who are alive at that time. Talk to them about what it looked like. You know one of the things we learned along the way there's a phone call to the police in our movie. It's not a phone call to 911, because in 1971 there was no 911. You had to call the operator or call the police station. So, like you know, if we put 911 in there, a few people might have picked up on that not too many, but we're happy we caught that particular detail.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And you didn't know that, yeah, somebody had to invent 911 and it came around at a certain time. And then Jen's been really creative with music in terms of period appropriate music and then knowing when to break with that and being, you know, now, music to sort of make that connection between the era and contemporary because that's what feels right for the scene. So you can make a whole soundtrack of nothing but period songs if that's what your movie needs. But these, these movies are sort of fantasies as well as period pieces. So we can, we can, we can break with that a little bit and Jen, I think, does a really fun job of mixing it up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm very concerned about the emotional logic. Yeah, that's like the number one concern is like, okay, maybe this song wasn't exactly from this era. It's like it's finding that balance because sometimes you know, for instance, talking about music, maybe the song wasn't from, wasn't from that era, but it captures the era and it's, it sets the scene on the right emotional foot and it puts the viewer in the right place to go on this very specific emotional journey. So finding that balance between being period appropriate or period accurate, but emotionally like what's emotionally right for this journey is, is a fun thing to explore.
Speaker 1:Both films, too, just have such great soundtracks, and I think you do a great job with all of that. It's that's like was. The next thing I wanted to talk about was the music, because they're perfect, Like they're. It's just so much fun Like. I've left both of them being like okay, these are songs now that I need to like look up and listen to.
Speaker 3:Yay, well, we have great music supervisors. We worked with a great music supervisor, mita Goodwin, on the Ranger, and then a company, amg, on the sacrifice game, and in both situations, one of my favorite parts of the process is when, like, you have your whole cut and then you start working with your music supervisor and they just start feeding you music and and you get to start playing and and seeing well, what, what is this? What happens to the scene if you put a song like this?
Speaker 3:underneath it or how does the tone change if you put this other kind of song underneath it? And that's just always like when I get to that stage I'm always just having so much fun. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And Mita is such a great, you know, unsung hero of the Ranger because in it, you know, not always a music supervisor I don't actually don't know how many other music supervisor credits. Mita has maybe a ton, but what? Mita was a punk, a booker and promoter.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he was a promoter on the West Coast from the more or less the era where where the movie is set. So he knew all of these bands. He was able to reach out to them and said hey, do you have anything on released? We're making a punk rock horror movie. Unsurprisingly, a lot of punk rock musicians love horror, go figure, and they would you want your song to be in it. So many of them said yes. They sent over tons and tons of songs for Jen to listen to.
Speaker 2:And like the.
Speaker 4:Avengers, you know, like really Really iconic bands you've heard of, and it just it's such a terrific soundtrack because of Mita's personal relationships and able to facilitate getting getting those guys involved.
Speaker 1:That's so cool.
Speaker 2:Love lurking with professionals, just like when people really know their craft and just they're going to give you a good options of like good or better.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good or better, that's what we had. It was great.
Speaker 1:Do you ever scare yourselves when you are writing filming a scene? Like, do you does your work ever scare you editing a scene?
Speaker 3:For me. Sometimes the research scares me. Sometimes the like lonely experience of diving deep into the subject when you're doing the research to tell the story is is scary and haunting and stays with me.
Speaker 4:I would say heartstrings. You know, sometimes you'll see a scene where you thought like, oh, we're going to kill this character. And then you actually see the character Like hits you way harder than you thought it would because of the performance, because of the way the music and the sound design and all of its clicking, like that's you know, you kind of know where once you know where all the scares are. It's hard to have that that surprise element, but the emotion I think if you're, if you're doing your job right, still hits you, even if you see, you know it's coming.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:I'll I'll just share. Going back to my mention of how research scares me, I'm I'm developing a project about serial killers right now and I'm diving deep into who serial killer history. It's fucking scary as hell and haunting, and I feel like every day I'm carrying all this stuff with me.
Speaker 1:Totally can relate. I'm a big true crime person but I went through a year or two where I was like really a true crime person and I was reading, like Ted Bundy's biography and all these books which are that was a bad year it was a bad year and they're so fascinating and like in cold blood, right Like there's, but they're so scary and it's hard to like unlearn that stuff once you've learned it.
Speaker 1:And there's still scenes from like in cold blood that, like, I will always remember and vividly in my brain. You know it. Really, that stuff can really imprint on you.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Thank you guys so much for being here. This was a treat for us. It was beyond fun to be able to talk to you guys about your amazing films and and kind of how you think about it. You know, and for us to like, really the core of our podcast is like tracing back horror tropes and understanding the history behind them and like what they have been like in real life and how they evolved throughout the genre, and so to be able to talk to you guys about demonic summoning on your end of it right and kind of to illustrate how you think about it in the opposite way, has been really illuminating for us. So thank you guys so much, thank you.
Speaker 3:This is a lot of fun, thank you. Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:Yes, and tell us where we can follow you on Instagram, where we can follow your films on Instagram and where we can watch your movies.
Speaker 3:I am at bubble gum and blood on Instagram, the sacrifice game is at the sacrifice game on Instagram and the Ranger is at the Ranger movie on Instagram.
Speaker 4:Awesome, and I'm at the Redlets in most places, but I don't know why you'd follow me because I'm not that interesting on any of those places. But you're welcome to if you want to.
Speaker 1:And we will link everything in the description so you guys can find everything really easily, you can follow, follow them really easily. And both films currently are on Shutter, yes, and on VOD, yes, amazing. Thank you guys again for being here and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you, bye, bye.