Now streaming on Shudder, The Dead Thing is the first horror feature directed by Elric Kane, co-host of Fango’s Colors of the Dark podcast, and an exceedingly grim look at modern relationships. Its central character is Alex (Blu Hunt), a 20-something woman whose life encompasses a series of meaningless hookups with men she meets on a dating app. Her romantic life seems to change thanks to Kyle (Ben Smith-Petersen), who seems like the perfect guy—but after a blissful night together, he disappears and won’t respond to her messages. Little does she know that Kyle is not exactly what he seems, and the title is only a hint at the dark revelations and developments that follow.
The Dead Thing, scripted by Kane and Webb Wilcoxen, uses the methods and risks of the current dating scene as the basis for a chronicle of a relationship that goes wrong in horrifying ways. Stylish, sexy and scary, it boasts a pair of strong leads in Hunt and Smith-Peterson, and an unwavering commitment to its unsettling vision. FANGORIA’s interview with Kane and Wilcoxen (more of which can be read in issue #26, now on sale) took place following The Dead Thing’s world premiere at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival. Note: Some mild SPOILERS follow…
What led you to examine this particular social subject matter through a horror lens?
Elric Kane: Well, a big inspiration was, we were trying to make an independent film, and we had written something previously that would have been harder to achieve. So we tried to come up with something a little more stripped down, something we thought was doable, really hyper-focused on one character. Then the most fun part was, how do we make a modern horror film? And I don’t just mean a movie made right now, because you know, a movie like MaXXXine has kind of a modern point of view but is set in the past. So what is something that is happening in our lives today?
That was a fun challenge, and then as we continued it became, are we creating some kind of urban legend? What is the tale we’re trying to tell? It was pretty organic, but it was a long road, with a first draft that was pretty skeletal. There were times when we didn’t know the characters as well as we knew the story, and Alex was kind of thin. Sometimes, I would say, “I kind of want that until we cast her, and then let that person bring their thing.”
Blu Hunt certainly brings a lot to the character.
EK: Blu gave us 110 percent, more than we could have ever expected. She did not hold any of herself back; I believe she was throwing in what was going on in her life. It’s a beautiful thing when you get to work with an actor like that, because then you’re directing by not directing; you’re not getting in the way of what she’s doing.
There were actually a couple of times when she would ask for something, and I felt like, I love what you’re doing, and if I say something, I’m going to get in the way, and you’re going to change something and it’s going to be wrong. That to me, was the number-one lesson of the entire film: When you don’t need to give someone something, it’s so vital.
Webb Wilcoxen: She was so invested in the project, and obviously found a personal connection to the material—so much that she decorated the set of Alex’s room. When she came in, the art director had set up some things, and she was like, “Hmm, that’s not the character. I’m going to go home and grab my drawings, and I’m going to decorate it.”
EK: Costuming, too. We had a costume designer, but Blu wanted to bring her own stuff, and eventually, it was basically all stuff Blu brought in. She wasn’t Alex the character, exactly, but she knew Alex by then.
Can you talk about the development of Kyle’s character?
EK: In a lot of ways, he’s a reaction, and we were trying to work out his inner life, what he knows and doesn’t know, because there’s a certain recurring amnesia quality to Kyle.
WW: That was the key to unlocking the character, because we knew that something has happened to this guy, and as she’s getting involved with him. We knew Kyle was no longer among the living, but—
EK: He’s not aware of that.
WW: That’s what helped us unlock that character: He’s unaware of the state he’s in. He’s almost in a Groundhog Day-style loop, where each day is kind of renewed for him, and he has no sense of what has happened to him. His story then became someone going from ignorance of that to learning that, and then this existential dread that overcomes him, and then he becomes obsessed with Alex.
EK: There’s a sad quality to his story, too, because he’s actually somewhat fragile. He reveals something at one point in the film, and he diminishes as the film goes on. He’s slowly losing himself, and realizing the only tether he has left is this other person. It becomes very toxic. Looking at the state of toxic masculinity and toxic relationships was a huge part of making this movie, because of the way the world is, just reacting to that. And to make it in an organic way where it’s just part of the story that feels natural.
I think it’s fun when you have characters like the men in this film, where you could say, “Oh, I kind of like them, but then they’re often doing the wrong thing, or making the wrong move at the wrong time.” I think that seeing how Alex reacts to that is very interesting.
The Dead Thing has a great look, too. Can you talk about achieving that?
EK: I knew I wanted to make something super-focused and controlled, just because of the kind of story it Is. It just didn’t feel like a handheld movie. The office scenes, in particular, started to shape the look at a certain point because there’s a coldness and a slowness and perfection to them. Some people have pointed out Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and that wasn’t intentional, but weirdly enough, I happened to have watched a couple of his films just before we started shooting, just kind of revisiting them, because of how he photographs things.
Working with our DP, Ioana Vasile, was excellent. I’m comfortable with framing because I’ve shot a lot of my own prior films as the DP, but what she did with light brought everything to a whole new level. So it was exciting to work with someone where I could give her a still from a horror film or a Wong Kar-Wai film, and she would get what I was trying to do and help us pull it off. It was about being super-focused and close to the character.
I knew I wanted to make something that had a kind of repetition, and a loop-like feel to Alex’s life before the horror element kicks in. Things like Ingmar Bergman’s use of close-ups; obviously I’m a cineaste and love many different types of films, and I was not aiming to copy anything in particular, just trying to shoot what was right.
Without going into specifics, The Dead Thing becomes more of an explicit horror film in the second half, so can you talk generally about the movie’s place in the genre?
EK: I believe you can only talk about your tastes, in a way. I have always been drawn to adult-oriented films. I was a kid in the ’80s, and I love all ’80s horror, but especially movies that are a little more grounded and real. The sudden boom of things like A24 and Hereditary and films like that is exciting to me.
Those are the kinds of movies that, when a director who wasn’t necessarily a horror filmmaker but would enter the horror lane and make the best movie before they left—whether it was William Friedkin or others—once they were in that lane, whether they stayed there or not, they were often very exciting. That was often because they were grounding it in something real, so it felt genuinely emotional on top of being just a great horror film.
That was always super-important to me; I don’t think I could do something if it wasn’t somehow based in reality, so the tradition of ’70s horror may weigh on me much more than ’80s horror. To me, the ’70s were a rich, exciting period, so I was trying to make a film that feels like that, but a modern version.
I love the idea that after you watch this, if you recounted the plot, it would sound like you were telling someone an urban legend, a modern version like, “There was a girl who went on a date—did you hear about this? She met this guy, and then…” That to me is movies like Candyman; there’s an element of things like that in The Dead Thing, and those movies really stay with me. So I don’t know if it’s my place to say it’s part of any canon; we’re just hopeful that anyone discovers it and connects with it.
