Editorials
[Set Visit] The Gore and Ghosts of Nicolas Pesce’s Practical Effects-Heavy ‘The Grudge’
On set of the police precinct where some of supernatural happenings of The Grudge plague the unlucky detectives who stepped foot in the cursed home, we observed a scene featuring actress Andrea Riseborough’s encounter with a male ghost. Only, he doesn’t look like a typical ghost, and nothing like the kabuki style ghosts of Shimizu’s original films. Sickly, pale, with purple veins spidering out throughout his face and skull, the man stands there in the doorway, shaking as he pulls his finger up to his lips and hoarsely whispers, “Shhhhh.” If it wasn’t clear before that this reimagining would be a very different beast, this seals it.
Between takes, we sit down with the ghost himself, actor Dave Brown, who reveals his character’s name is Sam. Of his character’s background, he shares, “So Sam is the original owner of a house that has a Grudge. But what happened to here, to get him to this point, is he died. And we’re not quite sure how yet. Or at least he disappeared. He seems to be haunting anybody that comes in contact with the house.” Of his internal conflict he adds, “For me, the emotional bit is trying to play this ghost as if he’s fighting it. So for Sam, the two emotions are extreme rage and extreme sadness.” In other words, Sam is a ghost of barely contained rage, threatening to spill over any moment.
From there, it means that the iconic croaking sound that Kayako made in Shimizu’s original films will be replaced by something entirely new and different. Brown adds, “I’m trying to play it a little bit differently, almost like it comes from a sense of asphyxiation. And so it’s more of a breathing in, versus an exhale. And a struggle, and I think that’s what happens with the character of Sam, is he’s constantly struggling to breathe in this new thing. And at the same time, trying to suppress everything else. So you’ll see what that sound is in the film.”
The actor is in full makeup for his scenes, and when asked how long he spent in the makeup chair he reveals an intriguing detail, “This is stage two. Stage two takes somewhere between two and three hours.” That’s correct. As the effect of the Grudge wears on, the ghosts’ appearances will become more grotesque. Specific stages that initially start out as calm yet eerie before increasing. Brown explains, “There’s three different stages that play within each stage. Well especially stage two and three. There’s playing around a little bit with the progression of it. So, stage three is a very different beast.” As for stage three? That involves an impressive, fully articulated animatronic mask.
The special makeup effects design and puppeteering for The Grudge was created by artist Toby Lindala (Final Destination 5, Death Note, Seventh Son) and his company Lindala Schminken LSFX. Lindala and his team are having a blast working on The Grudge, showing off the various lifelike prosthetics, masks, and blood that will be used in the film. Lindala and his team have essentially been let loose to create shockingly horrific gore and ghost effects, and that excitement isn’t just contained within the special effects team.
Executive producer Schuyler Weiss elaborates on the decision to go practical, “We’ve tried to do a lot of practical work in this movie, and that’s something we’ve been really excited about, connecting it not just with Grudge and that world but connecting it with the whole legacy of horror movies and genre movies. Tony Lindala is our key effects designer, and he’s created all the ghosts, all of the gore. We’ve done it all in-camera, and it’s been ambitious in a totally different way than a big effects movie. It’s almost a much more delicate ambition to try and get all those things to work on the day. It’s exciting, we think, for the process and for the audience but it’s also great for the scene, too. Instead of the actor running around green screen chasing a pink X on a stick, we have really hideous, shocking, gruesome things happening in the scene with the other actors on the screen, everybody from the cast members to the production, also maybe the audience, are going to get why we made that such a priority.”
Practical effects were a big part of director Nicolas Pesce’s vision from the outset. A huge, long-time fan of the genre, Pesce elaborates on his excitement to go practical, “It’s not the ’80’s anymore with wax, bad prosthetics; we can do things that look incredibly realistic and I think that it is just a more guttural reaction for the audience. In terms of the ghosts, I think that so much of our conception of the ghosts and the designing of the ghosts went into thinking about how do we do something practically that’s just as frightening as something you would do that you would normally be like, ‘Okay, it’s just easier to do in the effects, but let’s go there practically and see how far we can push it.’ When we get into our full-on ghost modes, we’re dealing with really elaborate animatronic prosthetics that is something that people don’t really do anymore and to me, my taste in horror lies in the more vintage stuff. There are bits and pieces that pay homage to the bigger, slightly more campy stuff of the yesteryear of horror but also stuff that’s brutally realistic. Getting to play in that world is much more my taste and things that I want to do as a director. It’s fun for me to get to play with masks and like this stuff and figure out how to shoot it and make it look as scary as possible rather than, ‘Yeah, I’ll fix it in post, I’ll make it scary don’t worry.’ I think that the end result is hopefully going to be far scarier.”
This meant Lindala had a lot of creative freedom when designing the new ghosts. “We shot really wide and we tried out some wacky ideas. What’s that little movie, The Hidden. Right? And there was some stuff that was almost reminiscent of that, right? With these crazy creatures. So, it’s this thing embodying inside and kind of like, Alien, an addition to the person. It’s latched on and these things. Tentacles coming out and wrapping heads and crazy stuff,” Lindala shares of the more eccentric design ideas, though ultimately the designs drew inspiration from the classic drama masks more representative of the strong emotions these ghosts embody, “A really strong, super sorrowful, super angry … We just did these really extreme expressions almost like Renaissance art.”
Each of the ghosts represents a different emotion, and Lindala explains of the ghosts and Sam in particular, “But, I love the fact that it’s really about capturing the emotion, right? And the fact that they’re victims as well, right? They’re tortured. So, there’s a synthetic quality to it, which is more scary. He’s kind of rage and there’s a wonderful out of control, unpredictability about him that is so frightening.” With the actor who portrays Sam on set, his makeup and masks are the focus of today’s show and tell, but Lindala makes sure that we know that’s not even the crowning glory of his designs. He shares a sneak peek of two more, one of which is monstrous, “Her abdomen is ripped open. She’s got her fetus hanging there…”
It’s not just the ghosts that team is excited about, but the really gruesome deaths as well. These ghosts don’t just whisk their victims away from beneath the bedsheets; the victims suffer violent ends. Lindala discusses one of the character’s deaths, a gnarly fall down a stairwell, “[Redacted] goes down four flights of stairs, just gets bashed to hell. And then the amount of blood and gore, we just painted walls, man.” When asked just how much blood has been involved in the process so far, Lindala grins, “I think we’re probably looking at something around 30 gallons now.”
We’re now just as excited to see what Pesce, Lindala and the crew have created for The Grudge.
Expectations can run high whenever a buzzworthy filmmaker makes the leap from indie to mainstream. And Radio Silence — Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett, Chad Villella and former member Justin Martinez — certainly had a lot to live up to after V/H/S. This production collective’s rousing contribution to the 2012 anthology film not only impressed audiences and critics, the same segment also caught the attention of 20th Century. This led to the studio recruiting the rising talent for a hush-hush found-footage project later titled Devil’s Due.
However, as soon as Radio Silence’s anticipated first film was released into the wild, the reactions were mostly negative. Devil’s Due was dismissed as a Rosemary’s Baby rehash but dressed in different clothes; almost all initial reviews were sure to make — as well as dwell on — that comparison. Of course, significant changes were made to Lindsay Devlin’s pre-existing script; directors Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett offered up more energy and action than what was originally found in the source material, which they called a “creepy mood piece.” Nevertheless, too many folks focused on the surface similarities to the 1968 pregnancy-horror classic and ignored much of everything else.
Almost exactly two years before Devil’s Due hit theaters in January of 2014, The Devil Inside came out. The divisive POV technique was already in the early stages of disappearing from the big screen and William Brent Bell’s film essentially sped up the process. And although The Devil Inside was a massive hit at the box office, it ended up doing more harm than good for the entire found-footage genre. Perhaps worse for Radio Silence’s debut was the strange timing of Devil’s Due; the better-received Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones was released earlier that same month. Despite only a superficial resemblance, the newer film might have come across as redundant and negligible to wary audiences.
Image: Allison Miller in Devil’s Due.
The trailers for Devil’s Due spelled everything out quite clearly: a couple unknowingly conceives a diabolical child, and before that momentous birth, the mother experiences horrifying symptoms. There is an unshakable sense of been-there-done-that to the film’s basic pitch, however, Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett knew that from the beginning. To compensate for the lack of novelty, they focused on the execution. There was no point in hiding the obvious — in the original script, the revelation of a demonic pregnancy was delayed — and the film instead gives the game away early on. This proved to be a benefit, seeing as the directors could now play around with the characters’ unholy situation sooner and without being tied down by the act of surprise.
At the time, it made sense for Radio Silence’s first long feature to be shot in the same style that got them noticed in the first place, even if this kind of story does not require it. Still and all, the first-person slant makes Devil’s Due stand out. The urgency and terror of these expectant parents’ ordeal is more considerable now with a dose of verisimilitude in the presentation. The faux realism makes the wilder events of the film — namely those times the evil fetus fears its vessel is in danger — more effective as well. Obviously the set-pieces, such as Samantha pulling a Carrie White on three unlucky teens, are the work of movie magic, but these scenes hit harder after watching tedious but convincing stretches of ordinariness. Radio Silence found a solid balance between the normal and abnormal.
Another facet overlooked upon the film’s initial release was its performances. Booking legitimate actors is not always an option for found-footage auteurs, yet Devil’s Due was a big-studio production with resources. Putting trained actors in the roles of Samantha and Zach McCall, respectively Allison Miller and Zach Gilford, was desirable when needing the audience to care about these first-time parents. The leads managed to make their cursory characters both likable and vulnerable. Miller was particularly able to tap into Samantha’s distress and make it feel real, regardless of the supernatural origin. And with Gilford’s character stuck behind the camera for most of the time, the film often relied on Miller to deliver the story’s emotional element.
Image: Allison Miller in Devil’s Due.
Back then, Radio Silence went from making viral web clips to a full-length theatrical feature in a relatively short amount of time. The outcome very much reflected that tricky transition. Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett indeed knew how to create these attention-grabbing scenes — mainly using practical effects — but they were still learning their way around a continuous narrative. The technical limitations of found footage hindered the story from time to time, such as this routine need to keep the camera on the main characters (or see things from their perspective) as opposed to cutting away to a subplot. There is also no explanation of who exactly compiled all this random footage into a film. Then again, that is an example of how the filmmakers strove for entertainment as opposed to maintaining every tradition of found footage. In the end, the directors drew from a place of comfort and familiarity as they, more or less, used 10/31/98 as the blueprint for Devil’s Due’s chaotic conclusion. That is not to say the film’s ending does not supply a satisfying jolt or two, but surely there were hopes for something different and atypical.
Like other big film studios at that time, 20th Century wanted a piece of the found-footage pie. What distinguished their endeavor from those of their peers, though, was the surprising hiring of Radio Silence. Needless to say, the gamble did not totally pay off, yet putting the right guys in charge was a bold decision. Radio Silence’s wings were not completely clipped here, and in spite of how things turned out, there are flashes of creativity in Bettinelli-Olpin and Gillett’s unconventional approach to such a conventional concept.
Radio Silence has since bounced back after a shaky start; they participated in another anthology, Southbound, before making another go at commercial horror. The second time, as everyone knows, was far more fruitful. In hindsight, Devil’s Due is regarded as a hiccup in this collective’s body of work, and it is usually brought up to help emphasize their newfound success. Even so, this early film of theirs is not all bad or deserving of its unmentionable status. With some distance between then and now, plus a forgiving attitude, Devil’s Due can be seen as a fun, if not flawed first exposure to the abilities of Radio Silence. And, hopefully, somewhere down the line they can revisit the found-footage format.
Image: Allison Miller and Zach Gilford in Devil’s Due.
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