Interviews
Leigh Whannell Describes How He’d Hypothetically Reboot ‘Dracula’ [Interview]
After years of writing and acting in some of the best and most successful horror movies in the industry, Leigh Whannell is now in the director’s chair, making some of the most interesting genre films in the last few years. His last film was the impressive low-budget sci-fi action spectacular Upgrade, and now he’s moved on to the Universal Horror stable, where his new reboot of The Invisible Man is earning rave reviews for taking the iconic monster back to basics.
Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man removes most of the familiar images and tropes we’ve come to associate with the well-known character and, instead, focuses on what makes the basic concept of a madman we can’t see frightening. It’s an intimate horror film based on real psychology, and that got us thinking… how would Leigh Whannell reboot some of the OTHER Universal Monsters?
Fortunately, Whannell was game. So in a recent interview with Bloody-Disgusting, we got the director talking about how he’d bring Dracula back to his terrifying roots!
“Here’s what I think,” Leigh Whannell says, brainstorming. “I think the best thing you can do for, say, Dracula, is just strip it down. Strip away all the iconography, a lot of which was added later. Think about it. The cape and everything, a lot of that stuff is not part of Bram Stoker’s novel. It comes from the play that originally happened, and the Bela Lugosi version.”
“This is the same thing that happened with Sherlock Holmes!” Whannell says, excitedly. “The deerstalker hat is not a product of Conan Doyle. Nowhere in those novels does he mention a deerstalker cap. But yet if you ask someone to draw a picture of Sherlock Holmes they’ll draw you that cap. It’s funny how these whales of pop culture, they collect plankton as they go through, and oftentimes where they end up [looking very different].”
“The bolts in the neck of Frankenstein, that’s a cartoon that was drawn. If you watch an original, if you look at an original cover, it’s horrific. A body, a person stitched together made out of bodies,” Whannell recalls.
“So what I would do is try to forget all the iconography – capes, bolts, fangs – strip it right back and pretend this character has never been done before.
“No Dracula novel was written. How would I present that character today if I was Bram Stoker in 2020 and I just thought of it? How would it be presented?” Whannell wonders aloud. “You know it wouldn’t be presented the same way. I don’t know that I would do a castle in Transylvania.”
“I think I would try to get at the essence of what makes Dracula scary, which is, to me, what makes Dracula scary is his lack of mercy. The fact that he might pretend,” Whannell considers aloud. “Like, he’s not a romantic. He needs to drink blood. What parallels in life can you think of that equate to someone without mercy. It’s a psychopath, right? A psychopath.”
“I watched a true crime documentary last night that chilled my blood about a bunch of people murdering a child. The lack of empathy for the suffering of a child. Everyone in life flinches when a puppy gets hurt except a small subgroup of people who have no empathy. In fact, they might be the ones doing the hurting. And for me, that’s Dracula,” Whannell says.
“So to have this conversation with you, I’m spitballing here, I would take the character right back to that and be like, I’m going to make the psychopath version of this,” Leigh Whannell pitches. “The person who just doesn’t give a fuck. Maybe he drinks blood but beyond that, there’s no capes, there’s no lightning, there’s no fog, no wolves. It’s just a psychopath who drinks blood.”
Would that chill us to our bones the way The Invisible Man does? We may never know… unless Universal gives Whannell even more keys to their vast horror kingdom!
As the inaugural season of Apple TV+’s stellar new series “Widow’s Bay” barrels toward its finale in two weeks, the latest episode gives Kate O’Flynn the spotlight as her character revisits her trauma with the Boogeyman.
“Your Baggage“, directed by Andrew DeYoung (Friendship), sees O’Flynn’s scene-stealing Patricia once again renew her fight with the Michael Myers-like stalker that slaughtered her peers during her adolescence. Thrillingly, it makes for one extended chase sequence that sees Patricia trying to warn others, while evading the undead killer.
In short, this episode’s incredible riff on Halloween and the slasher subgenre transformed Patricia into a fierce Final Girl.
“Well, that felt like a bucket list that I didn’t know was on my bucket list until I did it, but when I did it, I just lapped up every minute,” O’Flynn tells Bloody Disgusting of her triumphant turn this episode. “It felt fantastic for her to get that moment where she is becoming a badass. That was amazing.”
The actress turned to a few notable references for her performance. “Horror-wise, I go back to my youth, which was referenced in some of the episodes: Wicker Man, Carrie, and Rosemary’s Baby, that sort of thing is my kind of vibe.”
O’Flynn also notes how the series’ unique tone allows for so much creative freedom to make bold swings. “There’s something very freeing about it. Every moment is up for grabs, so it’s like we don’t have to totally land in one direction or another. It keeps it alive.“
Patricia is the eccentric assistant to Matthew Rhys‘ Mayor Tom Loftis, who’s at the forefront of trying to solve the island’s pesky curse predicament. Rhys felt the same about “Widow’s Bay” and its rare ability to make you laugh and scream in equal measure, stemming from series creator Katie Dippold.
“The mandate was, ‘It’s a real world with real people. You play for real.’ There’s no playing for comedy or horror,” Rhys echoes O’Flynn’s sentiments on how freeing the series’ tone has been.
New episodes will release every Wednesday through June 17 only on Apple TV+.
Kate O’Flynn in “Widow’s Bay,” now streaming on Apple TV.
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