Interviews
[Interview] Director Michael S. Ojeda Talks ‘Avenged’
Writer-director Michael S. Ojeda’s Avenged (formerly known as Savaged) is a feast of vengeance and he likes it that way. It takes the tried-and-true rape/revenge film and mixes it with the white-man scalping genre of Redsploitation (Native American revenge). The combination makes for one kinetically brutal thriller filled with heaps of graphic violence and sincere heart. Literally, a heart gets eaten in this movie. If you hate racist rednecks as much as I do, then Savaged is one helluva cathartic experience.
After a long wait, Avenged is finally being released in the U.S. this week. We first reviewed it two years ago (here) and we first talked to Ojeda a year before that (here). So this release has been a long time coming. We recently spoke with Ojeda again to discuss that long road to release, the film’s inception, learning a sacred Apache ritual, and all the bloody details in between.
Avenged hits select theaters and VOD March 6!
We first interviewed you back in 2012 when you were editing the film. Could you talk about what the past three years have been like as far as the movie and its journey?
It’s been a roller coaster from the very beginning. It took a long time to get it edited and I handled most of the post-production myself. Finally when it was done and we had premieres around the world. The European premiere was at Stiges and the Asian premiere was in South Korea. So we started off with a bang and then basically for a little over a year it’s been doing festivals just everywhere. Japan, Germany, the UK, Australia. So the official release has been a long time coming and it’s honestly been a little frustrating, almost like working in reverse.
I know you did a lot of TV work before this. Can you talk about the inception of the film and how you managed that transition?
I did a feature actually 10 years ago, it came out in 2004. It was called Lana’s Rain and it did okay but it didn’t propel my career in the direction I wanted it to go. So after that I sort of fell into the television documentary recreation world. The highlight of that was doing Deadliest Warrior in 2009 and 2010. When I moved to LA it was a little bit of a struggle because I’d done a feature but it wasn’t really a big breakthrough so I was struggling to get that next film going.
Years after Deadliest Warrior I had met a lot of different people and I became stronger as a director on a number of different levels. So when I started to think about my next film I wanted to make sure it wouldn’t miss its target audience like my first one did. I love action movies so I was just toying around with this idea of something that could be shot out in the desert. And I like spirit possession movies, I like revenge movies, I like female-driven films, so I put all that together and thought of the idea for Avenged. At the time the I Spit on Your Grave remake hadn’t been done yet, so it was still fresh.
I don’t know if you read my review from two years ago…
Of course, those are the things that keep me going.
Yeah I adored it because it’s a Native American revenge theme, which I love, wrapped around a rape-revenge plot, wrapped around a forbidden love. Can you talk about your approach to the story?
I wanted to do something that I hadn’t seen before. If I’ve seen it, i don’t want to do it, you know? Like when someone like Guy Ritchie got big, everyone wanted to copy his style. I wanted to do something fresh. You put so much work into a movie, so much time and so much effort to just do a movie to appease a wide audience or for the sake of shock value, to make people cringe or to make people squirm in their seats, that wasn’t really my goal. I wanted to do a movie that would touch on a number of emotions. I wanted to make a movie to scare people, of course, but I also wanted them to feel the highs of victory. I wanted them to feel a whole rainbow of emotions from this one movie. So I made this movie with heart. Unfortunately when you do that you get people who want to go see just the horror and they want to keep the romantic elements separate. So I’m glad the audience has been embracing this film that’s trying to accomplish a number of different things.
Your first film, Lana’s Rain, dealt with the immigrant experience. And Avenged deals with inherent racism in the U.S. Is there an explicit statement you’re trying to make?
No but I’m using these issues as a springboard. I like stories about character struggles and underdogs who have to overcome great odds to prevail. Whether it’s the issue of prostitution, which at the time of Lana’s Rain was prevalent, and the fall of Communism, I used those to tell a character-driven story. With Avenged, we’re dealing with the Native American turmoil and the things they’ve gone through in America. I used that as the backdrop.
And I love that you cast actual Native Americans. It shows a lot of respect.
The Native American acting community is actually quite small, which is surprising when you consider the number of movies concerning them. But there isn’t really a big pool of actors, so once you reach out to one group, they sort of tell all their friends. We did a normal casting process and once we started they would tell people and we’d get more recommendations. I was really blessed to have found Joseph Runningfox. If you look at some of his credits he’s done a lot of big movies, including Ravenous. He really brings the character to the surface, I was very fortunate.
And treating their culture with respect was important. We had consultants and Joseph is from a different tribe than the character, so we had to bring someone in from the Apache tribe to make sure what we were doing wasn’t too outlandish. I tried to keep it as authentic as possible, even though it’s a horror fantasy film. But the character’s actions are grounded in reality, to make it feel so much more real and vibrant. So we found a gentleman who specialized in Apache rituals and he met with me and Joseph and we sat together at my place and he showed me the rituals. He told us that you can’t use the actual rituals because it’s forbidden. So he showed us what the actual ritual would be like, but we weren’t allowed to use the wording or prayers. So it was interesting. We tried to be as real as possible without giving away secrets.
The rape in the film is done very tastefully, it’s more implied than anything. How did you prepare Amanda Adrienne for those scenes?
She prepared herself, basically. As far as preparation, we made sure that everyone was respectful and acted very professionally on the set. There wasn’t anyone on set that wasn’t supposed to be there. The actors for that scene, everyone around her, have been in a lot of stuff. There was Rodney Rowland and Ronnie Gene Blevins, who’ve been in a lot of stuff. So they definitely took a large degree of professionalism to the set to make Amanda feel comfortable.
A little aside about the whole rape-revenge thing. It’s funny, you know, because to me that was never what the movie was about. I know that the rape stands out in people’s minds when they see certain movies, like Last House on the Left. But to me as far as the category of rape-revenge film, it has slowed down the process of the U.S. release. It’s slowed down a lot of different things. If I had known that it was going to be such a taboo, I probably would’ve just had them kill her. Honestly, if I could go back and cut out even more I would.
Yeah you don’t see anything.
Because it’s not important and I don’t want to turn people off. It’s the critical action that these villains partake in that sets the story in motion, but there are so many other things too. But this whole rape-revenge category has held us back a bit in regards to getting our U.S. release. A lot of people are afraid of that topic. if I had just had them capture her, tie her up, and kill her, then the movie wouldn’t fall into that category. The movie isn’t about the rape. It’s not what makes this movie great. Besides all they’ve done to her, her body is starting to decay, you know? She’s actually a hero-zombie, is what she is.
The bow and arrow scene is so simple and amazing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a point blank bow and arrow scene before. How did you come up with that and what kind of training did Amanda have to prepare?
She did take kung-fu for about six months prior to making the film, but I’d say she learned the choreography more like a dance. She worked with the fight coordinators, getting the moves down. Action looks a lot trickier once it’s edited than it is doing it. It’s more of a dance. It’s funny you mentioned the point blank range arrow shooting, it was originally supposed to be something completely different. Originally the character Creed manages to get in his car as she shoots the first arrow. She starts running around the car and he’s shooting through the windows. Eventually what happens is he shoots the gas tank and it blows up. Of course since we were on a low budget we had to come up with a completely different idea. So I thought how I could make it powerful and I took the bow and arrow concept and gave it like this ballet effect. I thought it would be equally as powerful and certainly original.
And then with the chainsaw scene, it’s a common thing in horror and I wanted to do something different with it. I’d never really seen someone combat a chainsaw with a hand weapon. I thought it’d be cool. So Amanda trained a bit with a tomahawk and a hunting knife. She did an amazing job, it was all her, we didn’t use a stunt double in that scene. We shot that last fight over a period of two nights.
Do you know why the distributor changed the name from Savaged to Avenged?
The distributors have their reasons but I’m not quite sure what they are to be honest with you. They paid money for it so it’s up to them if they want to change the name. I don’t necessarily think it was a good idea, but they know what they’re doing. To me it’ll always be Savaged. To me it just makes things more confusing but it is what it is.
The intestine ripping scene in the bar has been featured in a lot of the promos for the film. It’s a great scene, but was there ever a point where you thought maybe you were going to far?
I don’t really have limits, to a point. I do when it comes to innocent people being tortured. Like the scene where we see Amanda being tortured, it’s the scene that sets everything in motion. So she needed to go through a certain level of hell. But I wanted to see the villains go through a much worse hell. When we were shooting it I didn’t think if it was too much because we can always cut it down if there’s a problem. I believe that you should take it to the extreme and then you could always cut it later.
That scene alone was shot a year prior to shooting the movie. That and a few more scenes we shot and then showed them to our associates. They saw those and said Oh my God we could film this in a heartbeat. So yeah the intestine scene may be extreme but it definitely worked.
I’m a fan of Ronnie Gene Blevins, I honestly think he’s one of the best character actor alive. What was it like working with him?
Ronnie’s intense. He was exactly what I envisioned in my mind. He didn’t even have to audition because he was this guy. Every time he came to the set he came prepared and every take he’d do something different. But he’s such a professional and I would work with him again anytime. You know, when you do a low budget film, you don’t have a lot of time to work with your actors. You have to move very quick. So when I bring actors on board, I want them to embody the characters . So thank God I had people like Ronnie on board. And he’s a very intense guy, but he’s really very sweet.
Do you have anything in the works that you can talk about now that Avenged is finally coming out?
Yeah, definitely. Right now we’re in the development phases, a script is done, and I don’t want to give too much away but it’s called Dominique. Basically it’s a female The Professional. A female Russian assassin is the primary lead and there’s a little girl who’s sold into human trafficking. She helps track her down and take down a whole organization in the process.
Thanks for talking to us and I’m wicked excited for people to finally see this movie.
Thanks so much.
Of all the places to find a coven of witches, the attic above a Christian youth camp is probably the last place you’d think to look. But that’s just what we find in Camp, a surrealist nightmare of feminist empowerment from Canadian filmmaker Avalon Fast.
Emily (Zola Grimmer) is still reckoning with her involvement in a horrific tragedy when she accidentally contributes to the death of her best friend, Charlie (Giselle Morison). Unable to move on, the traumatized teen takes a job at a rural summer camp, hoping to forget her own sorrows by looking after at-risk kids. She quickly connects with a counselor named Clara (Alice Wordsworth) and finds comfort in her close-knit group of female friends. But a mysterious whisper from deep in the woods warns that they may be leading her down a darker path.
Fast burst onto the scene in 2022 with Honeycomb, a psychological horror film that follows a burgeoning matriarchy. Known for their focus on “Girl Horror” stories, the talented young filmmaker tackles similar themes in Camp as Emily leaves the modern world behind to embrace a dark vision of self-discovery through magic.
Ahead of the film’s U.S. release on June 26, Bloody Disgusting sat down with Fast to chat about the nebulous nature of good vs. evil and the intoxicating power of female-driven horror.
Bloody Disgusting: What inspired this unique story? Did you go to religious summer camps when you were young?
Avalon Fast: I did. I went to lots of different summer camps, but all of them were primarily Bible camps. The memory I have of camp is kind of strange. I was very homesick as a kid, and I didn’t necessarily enjoy all my time there. I definitely remember meeting some interesting girls at camp and having that presence of religion hovering around the whole experience.
BD: I really love the film’s gorgeous natural setting. Camp is the kind of surrealist nightmare that you don’t just watch. You feel it too. How did you approach creating this world?
AF: Well, a huge part of it was working with my cinematographer Eily Sprungman, who’s a very close friend. We spent years prepping, shot listing, storyboarding, and mood boarding. She’d had a similar experience to mine. We grew up around the same place, and so we understood each other’s visions from the get-go. But there are so many other pieces that came together. The costuming, the art, and the animated sequences were done by Sofiya Iurkevych. One of our producers, Taylor Nodrick, was obsessed with shooting on Super 8 film. I’ve always wanted to as well, so all the memory sequences were shot on Super 8. It was just a lot of people with an understanding and a vision for what this project was. I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
To the extent that you’re comfortable sharing, what’s your relationship to witchcraft, and what does Camp have to say about modern witches?
Well, that’s the question of Camp. It’s not that I don’t resonate with any of these things, but I specifically wanted Camp to be a little bit ambiguous around what witchcraft looks like. Is this witchcraft? Are these girls witches? Emily explicitly asks if that’s what’s happening here, and the answer isn’t yes. The film isn’t going to answer that question for you. My relationship to magic and witchcraft? It’s tough. I feel like there’s so much magic, connection, and spirituality that comes from these friendships, the closeness of these women, and what’s happening around them. A lot of what Camp is trying to say or show is just that magic can come out of friendship.
I loved watching these female friendships develop. And you’re right. No one ever says the word “coven,” but you can feel that connection, and you can see a change in Emily as those relationships grow. I’m also really fascinated with the way Camp plays with the idea of good and evil. At one point, Clara says, “Maybe God drew us to the devil,” which stopped me in my tracks. How do you view witchcraft or the magic these girls are experiencing in regard to good and evil?
That was such a huge part of the script’s construction. The story is really trying to keep a balance between those two things. I like asking people if they think these girls are good or bad, because I feel like a lot of people come out of the film thinking one or the other. They’ll say things like “thank God Emily found her people” or “God, I really wish she’d gone home.” I just don’t think there’s ever an answer. I wanted to explore the idea of going down the wrong path, especially coming out of grief. What makes you a bad person, and does healing mean you’re looking to become a better person? I don’t have an answer, but I do feel like that’s a huge part of what Camp is asking. What is good? What is bad? Why did God bring me to the devil?
Yes, because this is all happening at “God camp” in Emily’s words. So how can both of those things exist at the same time? Along those lines, I’m also fascinated by the voice Emily hears in the woods. Without spoiling too much, what is this voice asking, and what is required in return?
Emily comes to camp with a shout into the void, asking can anyone hear me? Does anyone want to? And it’s answered so clearly by these girls, specifically responding only with love, care, support, and trust. It’s like her prayers were answered. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to be alright, but Emily is looking for peace. She’s looking for a moment where she feels pure good. And I think, even at its surface level, she does get that experience.
Personally, I don’t really think people are good or bad. I think we all exist somewhere in the middle. Camp centers traditionally villainized characters, but that’s where Emily seems to find her peace, however you choose to define it.
I also wanted to show the experience of having decided that you are a bad person, you’ve made mistakes, and you feel cursed. Then when you meet other people who have done things that you would consider worse, you can actually feel good in their presence. You feel like less of a bad person. I think that’s a huge part of the story as well. Emily’s finding her version of other fucked up people, and she feels less fucked up around them. I’ve found that in my own life. It’s a cool thing. I don’t think it’s bad.
I don’t think it’s bad either. It’s finding your home, your people. We meet Emily in the aftermath of unthinkable trauma. Is this a story about mental health and healing?
Witnessing it myself. witnessing other people experience tragedy and then move through grief, you hear a lot of talk about healing or coming out the other side. There’s so much conversation around what that looks like, with self-care and showing up for yourself. I always felt really averse to it. It annoyed me. I think the beginning of the film speaks to that. The therapeutic version of what getting help looks like is obviously very different from what Camp is showing. And again, I don’t have an answer for what you’re supposed to do. But I think that’s another question I was asking: how do you heal? Do you heal at all? Is that the end goal, or are we just trying to get better? It’s something I experienced in my own grief. And the answer, for me, at least now, is just that I’m not looking to get better. So I felt like I hadn’t. I found it hard to find people to have those conversations with. And I think that’s what I ultimately wanted to make a film about.
I love that unanswered question. In my own experience, I’ve had to reframe what healing actually looks like. There’s not really an endpoint. It’s just finding a way to keep going. There’s also an element of sacrifice in this story, particularly regarding another counselor named Jo (Sophie Bawks-Smith). What role does she play in Emily’s journey?
For me, Jo is this human embodiment of Charlie, Emily’s friend. As Jo, she had a life at this camp before meeting Emily, and then was kind of taken over by Charlie’s spirit. I think a lot of people view Emily’s final choice as horrendous and tragic. In a way it is, but for me, if Jo becomes her angel, it’s almost like a self-sacrifice. Jo knows that by sacrificing herself, she’ll be giving Emily power to move forward. In the original script, the girls were supposed to bring out another counselor, JB (Aidan Laudersmith), and burn his body. But I just thought, there’s no way sacrificing this guy could give the girls enough power. There’s just no way, right? Logically, that just didn’t line up for me.
I’m glad you mentioned JB, because he has his own tragic arc. How do men factor into the world of Camp?
The way men factor into my world is so bizarre. I have such little respect for them in my films, which is something I’ve been called on. I think I have to challenge myself in the future to make a movie about a boy because, these boys … It’s not that the men in my films aren’t redeemable, but there’s no depth to these characters. They’re just treated with such disrespect. I don’t know why I do that, actually. That’s something for me to look into. It was the same with Honeycomb. They’re just such peripheral characters. I’ve had people ask about Kayne (Henri Gillespi), the scary guy at the fire, what happens to him? I just think, I don’t know. I don’t care. That’s not the point of the story.
Well, I can say after a lifetime of watching women on the periphery of the story, the course correction feels nice. In a similar vein, I’m in love with your homepage, avalonfast.com. There’s an image of girls on a film set and then a still from Honeycomb in which a blood-covered girl is screaming at the sky. And in the middle, it just says Girl Horror. It’s a really powerful statement that gives me chills. How do you define Girl Horror, and what draws you to these types of stories?
I was obsessed with the term when I started making my movies. It was something I’d come up with to kind of brand myself and describe what I was doing. Then I went through a period where I felt like it was a bit gender exclusive and didn’t interest me as much. But now I’ve come full circle on the term. I think it’s a bit of a commentary on youth and the horror of growing up female. But I think everybody can relate to that experience. I don’t want it to feel like this exclusive thing, that I make movies exclusively for girls, because I don’t think I do. I’m interested in exploring what Girl Horror means. Originally, it was just a title, something I came up with, and now it’s become something that resonates with people. You said it gave you chills. That’s cool for me to hear because there’s obviously some depth there.
Are you working on anything new?
Yes. I am actually making a movie about a boy. That’s the next thing.
That’s exciting! The more I think about feminism, the more I end up coming back to men and boys, because they have a place in the world of Girl Horror too.
Absolutely. It’s all just part of being human.
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