Interviews
‘Wake Up’ – ‘Turbo Kid’ Filmmakers Find Inventive Ways to Get Vicious in Mean Slasher [Interview]
The filmmaking trio collectively known as RKSS (François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell) put their stamp on the slasher subgenre with the brutal Wake Up, which made its World Premiere last week at Fantastic Fest (our review) before heading to Sitges this week.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with RKSS after the debut about their slasher with a severe mean streak.
Wake Up is written by Alberto Marini (SLEEP TIGHT), based on an original idea by Martin Soudan, and stars Benny O.Arthur (Sky and Canal + Django series), Jacqueline Moré (THE ANARCHIST’S DREAM), Charlotte Stoiber (DOWNFALL), Kyle Scudder (Netflix’s upcoming In Love All Over Again), and newcomers Alessia Yoko Fontana and Tom Gould along with celebrated Irish film and television actors Turlough Convery (Black Mirror, Killing Eve) and Aidan O’Hare (MY SAILOR, MY LOVE).
The setup is simple: Gen Z activists sneak into a big box furniture store after hours and find themselves instead fighting for their lives against a deranged security guard.
With RKSS at the helm, a simple slasher setup transforms into a lean, mean horror feature filled with gnarly kills. Yet, the deaths are gnarly in a different way; the brutality comes from the dark, serious tone and an attention to grim details. Of course, that’s by design.
Yoann-Karl Whissell tells Bloody Disgusting that the slasher, like its title, draws from the current social climate fueled by rage. “Yeah, it’s mean-spirited,” the filmmaker tells us. “And it reflects something about our world right now, the bleakness of it, and where we’re going as a species and how much we need to change. We need to change now. We need to change yesterday. But we keep advancing and not changing any of our habits. Just full steam ahead to Doomville.”
While Wake Up may take its cues from the current socio-political landscape, don’t expect the trio to get didactic with it. With this trio, horror is the priority.
Anouk Whissell explains, “While there’s a message, we found that it was also entertaining. There was also all that concept of the empty store, which meant a really weird atmosphere because it’s big, but still, in the darkness, it becomes claustrophobic. Also, all the visuals of the masks. I know that when we read the script, we could all envision it right away as well. So, it’s this whole package that got us very passionate about this project.”
“We love slashers, we love horror movies, and the concept was very original, very refreshing,” Yoann-Karl Whissell adds, then details how they updated the formula. “The fact that you have the concept of the animals being hunted by the psychopath hunter, the fact that the kids are not just there to party, drink booze, and get laid. They are on a mission, so they’re very active, which I liked a lot. As well as other details, like those who wear masks are the victims and not the killer. The jock is not the leader; he’s actually a coward. Stuff like that that plays with the genre.”
Wake Up surprises in how mean it gets because that mean streak doesn’t equate with bloodletting. RKSS found inventive ways to induce sympathy pain without resorting to gore, a request that came from the top.
“Funny fact, if I can add,” François Simard shares, “Our producers know how much we like gory stuff, and they were like, ‘It needs to be closer to a PG-13, so please don’t go too hard on the gore.’ So that’s why it’s not very gory, but it’s so brutal. It needed to be mean. It needed to be angry and mean. And again, it comes back to what we’re doing to ourselves. It needed to be angry, needed to be mean, needed to be uncomfortable.”
They succeeded in making the pain inflicted in the movie uncomfortable, and that extended to the editing process.
“Oh my God. I had to take breaks, oof. That’s heavy stuff,” Yoann-Karl Whissell described of his time in the editing booth with editor Joris Laquittant.
Wake Up continues its festival run later this week at Sitges. Stay tuned for additional news on this slasher, as well as more from RKSS’ other festival feature, We Are Zombies, soon.
Only one episode remains in Season 3 of “Chucky,” and what a bloody road it’s been so far, especially for actor Devon Sawa. The actor has now officially died twice on screen this season, pulling double duty as President James Collins and body double Randall Jenkins.
If you thought Chucky’s ruthless eye-gouging of the President was bloody, this week’s Episode 7 traps Randall Jenkins in an elevator that feels straight out of an iconic horror classic.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with series creator Don Mancini and actor Devon Sawa about that ultra-bloody death sequence and how the actor inspires Mancini’s writing on the series.
Mancini explains, “Devon’s a bit of a muse. Idle Hands and Final Destination is where my Devon Sawa fandom started, like a lot of people; although yours may have started with Casper. I was a bit too old for that. But it’s really just about how I love writing for actors that I respect and then know. So, it’s like having worked with Devon for three years now, I’m just always thinking, ‘Oh, what would be a fun thing to throw his way that would be unexpected and different that he hasn’t done?’ That’s really what motivates me.”
For Sawa, “Chucky“ is an actor’s dream in that the series gives him not one but multiple roles to sink his teeth into, often within the same season. But the actor is also a huge horror fan, and Season 3: Part 2 gives him the opportunity to pay homage to a classic: Kubrick’s The Shining.
CHUCKY — “There Will Be Blood” Episode 307 — Pictured in this screengrab: (l-r) Devon Sawa as President James Collins, K.C. Collins as Coop — (Photo by: SYFY)
“Collectively, it’s just amazing to put on the different outfits, to do the hair differently, to get different types of dialogue,“ Sawa says of working on the series. “The elevator scene, it’s like being a kid again. I was up to my eyeballs in blood, and it felt very Kubrick. Everybody there was having such a good time, and we were all doing this cool horror stuff, and it felt amazing. It really was a good day.”
Sawa elaborates on being submerged in so much blood, “It was uncomfortable, cold, and sticky, and it got in my ears and my nose. But it was well worth it. I didn’t complain once. I was like, ‘This is why I do what I do, to do scenes like this,‘ the scenes that I grew up watching on VHS cassette, and now we’re doing it in HD, and it’s all so cool.“
It’s always the characters and the actors behind them that matter most to Mancini, even when he delights in coming up with inventive kills and incorporating horror references. And he’s killed Devon Sawa’s characters often. Could future seasons top the record of on-screen Sawa deaths?
“Well, I guess we did it twice in season one and once in season two,“ Mancini counts. “So yeah, I guess I would have to up the ante next season. I’ll really be juggling a lot of falls. But I think it’s hopefully as much about quality as quantity. I want to give him a good role that he’s going to enjoy sinking his teeth into as an actor. It’s not just about the deaths.”
Sawa adds, “Don’s never really talked about how many times could we kill you. He’s always talking about, ‘How can I make this death better,’ and that’s what I think excites him is how he can top each death. The electricity, to me blowing up to, obviously in this season, the eyes and with the elevator, which was my favorite one to shoot. So if it goes on, we’ll see if he could top the deaths.”
CHUCKY — “Death Becomes Her” Episode 305 — Pictured in this screengrab: Devon Sawa as James Collins — (Photo by: SYFY)
The actor has played a handful of distinctly different characters since the series launch, each one meeting a grisly end thanks to Chucky. And Season 3 gave Sawa his favorite characters yet.
“I would say the second one was a lot of fun to shoot,“ the actor says of Randall Jenkins. “The President was great. I liked playing the President. He was the most grounded, I hope, of all the characters. I did like playing him a lot.” Mancini adds, “He’s grounded, but he’s also really traumatized, and I thought you did that really well, too.”
The series creator also reveals a surprise correlation between President James Collins’ character arc and a ’90s horror favorite.
“I saw Devon’s role as the president in Season 3; he’s very Kennedy-esque,“ Mancini explains. “But then given the supernatural plot turns that happen, to me, the analogy is Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, the character that is seeing these weird little things happening around the house that is starting to screw with his sanity and he starts to insist, ‘I’m seeing a ghost,‘ and his spouse thinks he’s nuts. So I always like that. That’s Michelle Pfeiffer in What Lies Beneath, which is a movie I love.”
The finale of “Chucky” Season 3: Part 2 airs Wednesday, May 1 on USA & SYFY.
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