In select cities – NYC, LA, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Philadelphia, Miami, Boston, Detroit, Houston & Baltimore – May 10th is Anchor Bay’s No One Lives, an insanely bloody slasher from Midnight Meat Train‘sRyuhei Kitamura.

Yesterday I hopped on the phone with the film’s star, Luke Evans (The Raven, Fast & Furious 6), and we talked about the preparation required to play a man so effective of killing he’s able to wipe out a gang of violent killers in gloriously messy fashion. We also discussed the most difficult kill of the movie (hint: it was yesterday’s clip) and the status of The Crow.

“A ruthless criminal gang takes a young couple hostage and goes to ground in an abandoned house in the middle of nowhere. When the captive girl is killed, the tables are unexpectedly turned. The gang finds themselves outsmarted by an urbane and seasoned killer determined to ensure that no one lives.” The film also stars Lee Tergesen, Adelaide Clemens, Laura Ramsey, Lindsey Shaw, America Olivo, Beau Knapp, Derek Magyar, and Brodus Clay.

Head inside for the interview! There are SPOILERS – but only for people who haven’t seen the clips or the red-band trailer.

The reversal in this movie, how the concept of a hero has been spun on its ear, had to attract you on some level.

Yeah, it intrigued me that you could have somebody doing horrific things but actually your moral compass slightly strays towards liking him rather than disliking him even though he’s a very bad man.

You’re against this huge ensemble of enemies, how do you maintain a dominating presence over them?

Yeah. You know, at the end of the day the character of Driver is head and shoulders above all of them when it comes to intelligence. He’s very precise. He gets the job done, he’s very methodical. He runs rings around all of them so that wasn’t too hard.

What was the most disgusting kill to pull off on the day?

Well, I think we all know the answer to that. It would be the one where I have to climb inside the body of the big guy [Brodus Clay]. That wasn’t such an enjoyable day. I quite like the outcome, but the blood was very sticky and you get it in your armpit hairs and as soon as it starts to dry, in the heat of Louisiana it dries very quickly… They were constantly pouring it over me and putting me in this skin that was very hot and smelly. It was vile.

Were you familiar with Ryuhei Kitamura’s work before this?

Yes, I was. I’ve seen all of his work and I think he’s a very interesting filmmaker. He pushes the boundaries, he likes to push everything to the extreme. He’s a very quiet guy but he gets very animated when he’s excited.

You’ve got a lot of horror projects on your dance card. Is this a genre you normally gravitate towards?

I think most genres attract me, I don’t think I have one that I like more than another. I just like the challenge of doing something different. I want to do something that’s going to be interesting for me. Weirdly, I don’t really watch horror films. I’m not a big horror fan, they stay in my mind too long… I don’t think I need to do another horror movie for a while [laughs].

But you’ve got Dracula and The Crow coming up, and those are sort of in that wheelhouse.

Sort of, yeah. Sort of.

Can you talk about your plans for The Crow? Are you signed on for any additional installments?

I can’t talk about any of it, really. The offer is with me and I’m in negotiations to play the role. That’s as far as we’ve gone. It’s not until next year so there’s a long time before it starts. But I have a huge amount of respect for Javier Gutierrez, the director, who I think is a brilliant, brilliant filmmaker. His work is fantastic and he’s got an amazing emotional content to his work. I think he and I will hopefully bring something fresh to the story. It’s a fantastic story and it was almost 20 years ago, and it deserves, I think, to be retold for a generation that might not have ever seen it.

Back to No One Lives, did you feel like you had lock parts of yourself away or suppress yourself to play a psychopath?

No, not really. I read a lot of books on psychopaths prior to doing the film. They’re probably the most interesting of all killers. With many of them if you show them a picture of someone who’s happy or someone who’s extremely sad they can’t tell which one is which. They don’t have that emotional ability, they’re often incredibly deadpan. But they often live very normal lives. They can live in society and carry jobs, but there’s something that makes them completely crazy. It was a character study that I thoroughly enjoyed. It was quite difficult to not allow yourself to scream at somebody you’re killing, but that’s not how he works.