If you caught my recent review of writer/director Erlingur Thoroddsen‘s slow-burn chiller Rift out of Fantastic Fest, you can probably tell pretty immediately how blown away I was by this rather modest, but deeply affecting film. Rift is not your typical mainstream genre fare, marrying horror, drama, and mystery creatively amidst a markedly paced story about the aftermath of a breakup between two men in Iceland. Bolstered by killer performances from its two leads (Björn Stefánsson and Sigurður Þór Óskarsson), gorgeous cinematography, and an emotionally layered script, Thoroddsen’s film is an effective amalgamation of all I tend to gravitate towards in indie horror fare.
As you may very well be aware, while reporting from the festival circuit, many of us journalists are contacted quite often to conduct interviews with talent following film screenings, and many times have to turn down such opportunities due to schedule conflicts and time constraints. With this film, however, the circumstances that led to my interview with Thoroddsen were quite different. Following my viewing of Rift–a low-budget, sophomore effort from a relatively fresh-faced director from Iceland–I was actually moved to contact the director immediately; I was dying to talk about the film with the talent behind the camera, to process what I had just seen, and to dig into the inspirations for this particular story, which I felt was especially important for the subset of gay-identified horror fans out there who rarely have an opportunity to see representation from our community so delicately handled in the horror genre. Luckily for me, Thoroddsen was more than willing to correspond with me and answer a few questions–even despite the fact that I emailed him like a crazed new fan well after midnight.
You can find our correspondence below as we discuss the film’s concept, representation of LGBTQ characters in horror, the Icelandic backdrop, and what’s next for this promising new director!
Ari Drew: Where did the idea for this particular story about the end of a relationship between these two men come from?
Erlingur Thoroddsen: The idea for Rift came from two different directions. The first was that I was thinking of what I could do in Iceland with a limited budget and with a small cast and crew. I was trying to come up with stories that had two characters in one location that could sustain a feature-length running time.
The second thing was that I had just gone through a breakup of my own, and was having a lot of conflicting thoughts on that whole situation. Then I just started thinking, what if the story is about two guys who have broken up and are now in this isolated place together and are forced to talk about their relationship? That idea really clicked and the script started to take shape really quickly. Writing it was basically like a long therapy session for me!
AD: In a number of ways, Rift is a bit of a departure from your debut film Child Eater, which was a fairly straightforward, albeit atmospheric monster movie. What made you want to tackle a film that is more tonally and narratively ambiguous?
ET: After Child Eater, I knew I wanted to try out something very different, and because Rift was a very small movie, that gave me a lot of freedom to experiment during the writing process. I really wanted to push myself further and into a new direction. Even though I love the idea of a straightforward horror movie, I’m also a big fan of stranger and challenging, ambiguous cinema. Since Rift was pretty much my own baby with no one to tell me what I could or couldn’t do, I just went with my instincts every step of the way. I also liked the challenge of doing something that was scary, but in a less traditional way. I really wanted to create a mood that was full of tension and discomfort — basically how it feels when you have to face someone you had a bad break up with.
AD: I loved the genre-bending nature of Rift. What inspired you to make a film that crosses so many genre boundaries?
ET: It was less a conscious choice to cross all those genres, and more just a result of letting the story go where it wanted and needed to go. When I was writing it, I always thought of it as a horror movie. The finished film definitely has horror elements in it, but it kind of refuses to stay in one category. Which I personally love. I was also watching a lot of European and independent cinema while I was working on Rift, where genre lines were being blurred all the time and it just felt refreshing. A movie like Stranger by the Lake, for example — on paper it sounds like a traditional thriller, but the execution takes it to a whole different place. Same with something like Don’t Look Now, which was a big inspiration for Rift.
AD: For gay horror fans like myself, it is a treat when we have an opportunity to see protagonists like us represented in the genre. Given that these are few and far between though, a movie like Rift is a breath of fresh air for me. I felt it very easy to empathize with Einar and Gunnar, even at their worst, and appreciated that they were presented as very humanized and complex individuals, as opposed to simply embodying gay stereotypes. Can you tell me a bit more about what went into writing these characters? Did you feel a particular duty to represent them and their relationship in a specific way?
ET: In terms of the characters, I think the only duty I felt, or that I put on myself, was to represent them in a truthful way. Or at least in a way that felt truthful to me. I didn’t want to write them as generalizations or representations for all gay men, but it’s that old golden rule of writing: the more specific you get, the more universal it reads. On the other hand, I do feel it’s important as a gay filmmaker to create stories about LGBTQ characters — because if I don’t do it, who else will? That doesn’t mean every story I do is going to be centered on LGBTQ characters, but I also don’t want to shy away from it. Representation in film and TV is still very lacking, and I actually think it’s gotten worse in a lot of respects, especially in studio films. And horror is such a great place for queer characters from a purely thematic standpoint. Horror is basically the queerest genre, anyway.
And for me personally, I was very upset that there were almost no movies in Iceland that dealt with gay characters in a serious way. So that was something I absolutely wanted to change when I was writing Rift. Iceland has almost no horror movies or LGBTQ movies, but now we have one that combines the two. I’m pretty proud of that!
AD: Stefánsson and Óskarsson are fantastic in the lead roles. They really have an amazing chemistry and embody two very distinct personality types that you really just want to see work out, but know probably aren’t meant for happiness with each other. How did these two actors get involved in this project?
ET: Thank you! They are amazing, and without them, the film wouldn’t work at all. They are both primarily theater actors, and I had known about them for a little bit before I started writing the movie. But I didn’t know them personally, and in my mind, the only way I could get the movie made was if I convinced friends to do it for almost no money at all. However, that plan didn’t really work out so I ended up reaching out to Bjössi [Stefánsson] and Siggi [Óskarsson] to see if they’d be interested in reading the script. Thankfully, they both really connected with the characters — I think they had never been offered roles like this before — and agreed to meet with me, and we all just hit it off. They were truly a pleasure to work with. Literally, every take we did with them was good!
AD: There are some very ambiguous turns in the film and the audience seems to be left with the task of figuring out what really happened during Gunnar and Einar’s stay at the cabin. I found myself questioning this myself—which made discussing the film afterward a lot of fun. Was it your intent to have some of the turns in the story be so up for interpretation?
ET: Yes, the intention was always to end the film that way. I liked the idea of writing the story from the perspective of a character who enters a situation that is already in medias res and has to catch up. But [Gunnar]’s also a character whose point of view is tainted — he has strange visions and dreams, so we can’t be 100% sure of what he sees is true or even correctly interpreted. He’s trying to figure out the mystery with the clues he’s been given, just like the audience is.
I do encourage people to watch the movie less focused on understanding the logic, and more focused on understanding the emotions. Breakups are illogical and messy things, and the film takes its cue from there. If you look at the film as being about a person’s journey to deal with the aftermath of a breakup, I think that will give some of the more “out there” context and make more sense.
AD: It’s impossible to chat about the film without making a mention of the gorgeous Icelandic backdrop in which it is set. The setting alone really elicits a chilling, isolated, and rather bleak sense in a story heavily shrouded in mystery and sadness. Can you tell me a little more about what went into finding this shooting locale and your experience in filming there?
ET: A part of what made the whole experience so personal and strange in a way, is that the location we shot in is actually the area my mom grew up in when she was very young. I had heard about this place before, but had never been there. So when I was writing the story, this area — Hellissandur, up on the Snæfellsnes peninsula in Iceland — came up in a conversation. I started asking my mom about the location, and all of a sudden I started to realize that everything I already had on the page could fit perfectly in that area. It’s remote, it’s creepy, and it’s beautiful.
When I did the first location scout up there, all the pieces just fell into place. It was just perfect. I ended up adjusting the script a bit to fit what we had there, and then we were off and running. My mom and grandparents actually lived in [the] scary dilapidated building [featured in the film] before it was abandoned. The cabin the two guys stay in is owned by friends of my grandparents.
On a story level, I thought that the barren fields and the empty, abandoned houses really worked for the idea of a relationship that’s gone cold. It was also important to film during the winter. The cabin is a summerhouse, so they are in the area at a time when they shouldn’t be. Basically, everything they had that was loving and warm has now grown bitter and cold, and I wanted the location to reflect that in every way possible.
Then there’s the actual “rift”, which is kind of an on the nose metaphor, but I think it works. Plus that specific location was too beautiful not to film in.
AD: You have now showcased your chops in crafting both a straightforward horror film and a more abstract and atmospheric story. What do you hope to take on next?
ET: I always have a few things brewing at the same time because you never really know what’s going to take off and what’s going to fall apart. I definitely want to stay within the horror/thriller wheelhouse, and I’ve got some really exciting things that will hopefully take off not before long.
I am also adapting a best-selling Icelandic novel called Kuldi (which means “cold”) by Yrsa Sigurðardóttir. I guess you could say it’s a Scandinavian crime thriller with some spooky elements. It’s a follow-up to an Icelandic film called I Remember You which was released earlier this year and was a huge success back home. So I’m super excited about that project, although I can’t say much more about it at the moment!
AD: How can our readers catch Rift?
ET: Right now the film is doing several festivals across the globe, but we have North American distribution through Breaking Glass Pictures, and they will be putting the film out a bit later this year, both on demand and as a limited theatrical release, which is extremely exciting. There’s a little Christmas connection in the film, so it feels like an appropriately dark alternative film for the holiday season! Hopefully, there will be more news on the rest of the world soon!
We’d like to once again thank Erlingur Thoroddsen for taking the time to chat about his impressive new genre effort. It was a pleasure to dive into the film a bit more, and I hope it resonates with many of you all out there as much as it did with me.
Rift will see its US VOD/DVD release on November 21st, 2017. It will be available on iTunes, Amazon, Google Play, Xbox, Playstation, Vudu, Fandango, and on-demand via local cable and satellite providers.