With Magnet Releasing and Drafthouse Films’ ABCs of Death 2 now on various VOD platforms, Bloody Disgusting caught up with Dennison Ramalho, who directed one of my favorite of the 26 short films.

In his “J is for Jesus,” a man is kidnapped by his own father and given an exorcism to cleanse his soul only to learn he’s not the demon.

We talked to Ramalho about the genesis of his short, his hatred of religion, and whether or not he fears backlash for spiritual horror fans.

BD: You surprisingly share a very similar view on religion we me, I was wondering what promoted such, hatred?

Dennison Ramalho: “Most religions use fear as a prime tactic. I was raised in a churchgoing environment and saw how huge of a toll the maintenance of dogma made lives horrible for many people around me. So far, that’s ok. Some people choose that lifestyle, all difficulties included. But then things get hairy when extremists articulate themselves in whatever manner — from “politics-politics” to “sexual politics” to “home politics”, and so on… — to impose their beliefs and lifestyle on others using, guess what? Yes. FEAR TACTICS. And LIES. In comes the fear of Hell, the fear of being morally or mentally anomalous, the fear of not having acceptable moral good-standing… That’s where I tell (extreme) religion to fuck off, and make movies against it. To expose all that cruelty. It’s not about spirituality anymore. It’s about mind control, and it’s unacceptable. Brazil is a particularly cruel country when it comes to not being religious, or being gay, or being a humanist or a free-thinker. It’s a mostly-conservative society pretending to be cool and progressive. It’s not my first movie on the subject, btw.”

BD: Are you afraid of any sort of backlash from religious folk?

Dennison Ramalho: I’m damn hungry for it!

BD: Can you talk about the genesis of the short, and the affects of social commentary on film?

Dennison Ramalho: “I can talk about the genesis of the short. About the affects of social commentary on film, well… I don’t feel I know, historically that much about it. Suffice to say Romero is my great idol on this strategy, in all his zombie films. He uses Horror and Death as metaphors of ethical subjects going rotten in American Society. I try to do the same. In my previous short film (NINJAS, 2010) I unleashed a vicious attack against the Brazilian Military Police, showing them as the sadistic monsters they really are. As for the genesis of the short, I created a number of possible stories for the anthology. Some of them with my dear friend, Screenwriter Jeff Bühler (of INSANITARIUM and MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN fame). I was pretty outraged at a few evangelical politicians in Brazil at the time (basically media preachers who used their popularity to become congressmen). These fellas proposed a project of law that revoked a decision of the Superior Federal Council of Psychiatry, which banned the treatment of homosexuality in Brazil as a mental disease. In other words, if that law passed (which it didn’t!) gay people would be legally considered mentally-ill and, thus, eligible for psychiatric treatment — a human rights catastrophe!”

BD: Religion and horror always seem to hit the spot, it’s like peanut butter and jelly, can you speak more to this…

Dennison Ramalho: “As I said: it’s all about fear of a deep Evil lurking right around the corner, or inside your mind. Religion, with ethical and compassionate approaches, always zealed for the human soul. Then fanaticism took over, and turned this zeal into hysterical dictatorial lust — you see it from ISIS beheadings to my neighborhood’s chapter of the Assembly of God. But in movies the uses of the religion-horror combo are not that immoral. After all, the Devil — you beautiful! — was always there as a villain to inspire stories about possessions, the Occult, etc. But in movies there is pure evil — and I don’t believe in pure evil in real life. Even Satan was an angel once, after all… However, it’s one thing is to invent a black-metal demon named Baghuul for your movie, or come up with Satan, the absolute evil one, possessing little girls. The other thing is to use Fiction and the mass-media to demonize minorities, which is what these fuckers do. Well, this little movie is my personal answer to that.”

“ABCs of Death 2 is the follow-up to the most ambitious anthology film ever conceived with productions spanning from Nigeria to UK to Brazil and everywhere in between. It features segments directed by over two dozen of the world’s leading talents in contemporary genre film. The film is comprised of twenty-six individual chapters, each helmed by a different director assigned a letter of the alphabet. The directors were then given free rein in choosing a word to create a story involving death. Provocative, shocking, funny and at times confrontational, ABC’s of Death 2 is another global celebration of next generation genre filmmaking.”

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