Having a star name on which to hang your slasher movie is a time-honored tradition — Janet Leigh in Psycho, Drew Barrymore in Scream, etc. But filmmaker Brandon Christensen had no such luxury when he made his upcoming Night of the Reaper… until fate handed him one after production wrapped.
Once finishing Christensen’s modestly-budgeted slasher film, actress Summer H. Howell was cast in the title role of Mike Flanagan’s upcoming Carrie update for Amazon, and just like that, Night of the Reaper is part of a slasher film continuum, and Howell’s rising star is no doubt going to send extra eyeballs to Christensen’s sixth feature.
“It helps our movie,” Christensen agrees of Howell’s next gig. “I'm not surprised at all though. With Summer, we got a total home run. And you cast someone great and then they turn around and book something great and it's just like, ‘Oh yeah, that makes sense.’ It was not a surprise to me that she cast that.”
After films like Z, Superhost and The Puppetman, Christensen was excited to create a back-to-basics slasher film in the midst of the subgenre’s current boom. “When Blumhouse rebooted Halloween, it just sort of opened a door that allowed for a lot of slashers to happen. For so long, supernatural horror was just dominating the marketplace.”
As for Howell, who’s been appearing in horror movies since her first film role in 2013’s Curse of Chucky, she confesses that slasher films aren’t necessarily her go-to, but she was excited for the Reaper gig after meeting with Christensen.
“I knew I wanted to do the role because of my call with Brandon,” Hall says. “I felt like I manifested it, I drew him towards me, because I love working with genuine people and people who want to make cool things. And I feel like I really got that here. It was short and sweet, but we had a lot of fun.”
As you can see in our exclusive clip, Reaper’s got some slasher homages up its sleeve, but is unafraid to dance to its own Pet Benatar-supplied beat. “The Scream/Drew Barrymore thing was always the opening,” Christensen shares. “House of the Devil was kind of the big touchstone because, aesthetically, we're very much leaning on to things that people are familiar with,” he says, adding “we want the audience to feel comfortable so that when we make things uncomfortable, they're like, ‘Oh, I wasn't expecting this,” and it catches them a little bit off-guard.”
After nearly a dozen horror gigs, including that aforementioned Carrie reboot and its inevitable blood-soaked prom-set climax, Howell is no stranger to blood and gore, and fears no FX-related mayhem.
“I've been acting since I was eight and my first role was Alice in Curse of Chucky. I have been covered head-to-toe in substances. I've had a full head cast done where they wrap your whole head. I've done some prosthetics and stuff and I like it for the most part. Everyone's really chill on set trying to make it fun and lighthearted when we're making some awful stuff for the film.”
As for how blood-drenched Howell gets in Christensen’s film, that would be telling, but in this exclusive scene, her character Emily (a babysitter in the ’80s, natch) certainly navigates the proceedings like a slasher veteran. Check out the clip below and see how Emily fares when Night of the Reaper opens on September 19th.
