Interviews
‘We Are Zombies’ – ‘Turbo Kid’ Filmmakers RKSS Discuss Their Gory Comic Book Adaptation [Interview]
The filmmaking trio collectively known as RKSS (François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell) have not one but two features making their rounds in the festival circuit: mean slasher Wake Up (our review) and charming horror-comedy We Are Zombies (our review).
We Are Zombies, an adaptation of Jerry Frissen and Guy Davis’ comic book series “The Zombies That Ate the World,” follows three slackers whose money schemes land them in trouble with an evil corporation that kidnaps their grandma. The catch? This particular world is overrun by zombies, though they’re not the insatiable brain-eaters you’d expect.
Alexander Nachi (“Clash”), Megan Peta Hill (“Riverdale”), and Derek Johns (“Moonfall”) star as Karl, Maggie, and Freddy, respectively, in We Are Zombies.
Bloody Disgusting spoke with RKSS after their Fantastic Fest screenings of both Wake Up and We Are Zombies, where they talked about the back-to-back productions.
Yoann-Karl Whissell tells Bloody Disgusting how they put themselves into their comic book adaptation, We Are Zombies.
“We wrote the adaptation from the comic book, but we did use a lot of the comic book in it. We infused a ton of ourselves into it. The three characters are a trio. I love pro wrestling, so I felt like this needed to have pro wrestling. Pro wrestling. I’m wearing a pro wrestling shirt right now,” Yoann-Karl Whissell points to his shirt, different from the Danhausen t-shirt he wore at the festival’s screening.”
“I think the first question we got at Fantasia at the world premiere was like, ‘Are they you? You’re them, right?'” Whissell says.
“Eh, kind of,” François Simard answers.
“Exactly,” Yoann-Karl Whissell continues. “There’s a lot of us. We’ve played D&D, we’re geeks. We play video games, and Maggie is the brains of the operation. Anouk is the brains of the operation. She’s by far the smartest of the three of us. I remember when we went to incorporate, so that we’d become a company and everything, the person behind the desk told us, ‘Okay, there can only be one president of the company. You need to make a decision; you need to talk about it.’ And we went, ‘No, it’s her.'”
Simmard candidly adds, “If I can, that’s a big difference from the comic book because the characters in the comic book are very, I don’t know, hard to like. They’re very bad people. So, one thing that we changed from the comic book, we wanted them to be much more likable, so that’s why we put a bit about ourselves.”
It’s not just the characters that RKSS needed to address with their adaptation, but the world itself.
Anouk Whissell tells Bloody Disgusting, “It’s a really ambitious universe, as well, to put onscreen. The one from the comic book, it’s in the future. We still kept that future, but we made it more grounded. So, it’s kind of a weird ’90s future.”
“Yeah, in the comic book, there’s flying cars. We don’t have a budget for flying cars,” Yoann-Karl Whissell cracks.
“Even having tons of extras painted with zombie faces. We wanted to bring these small gags in the background just to make the world work and make it real,” Anouk Whissell explains of bringing the world to life on screen. “But yeah, the comic book is really rich for the whole universe it builds. I recommend reading it. It’s really nice as a comic book, but it was nice to adapt it and bring it to something that would be more visible on screen.”
While RKSS had their work cut out for them in making two overlapping features, it allowed them to flex different creative muscles, especially when it came to their love of gore.
“Wake Up was the one where they were like, ‘Pull back on the gore,’ but in a zombie movie, you’re expected to do the gore. Where you like, ‘Let’s play with this, especially for comedy’s sake, but it’s a zombie movie, so let’s funnel a lot of the gore there,'” Anouk Whissell explains.
Yoann-Karl Whissell adds, “And we wanted a lot more gore at the end. But again, it’s a question of budget and time. Just like Turbo Kid, we cut half of the gore we wanted to do. It’s the same thing with the zombie one, but at least there are good kills.”
“Somebody one day should give us a Marvel-type check to make a horror movie,” Simmard says.
Just imagine the possibilities of a big budget gore fest in the hands of RKSS. Yes. Please.
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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