Interviews
‘#AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead’ Gets Bloody with Seven Deadly Sins-Inspired Killer [Interview]
A group of friends and influencers staying at an Airbnb are picked off one by one in #AMFAD: All My Friends Are Dead, directed by Marcus Dunstan (The Collector) and starring Jade Pettyjohn.
The upcoming slasher film, written by Josh Sims and Jessica Sarah Flaum, releases in select theaters, Digital and On Demand August 2.
The plot sees “a group of college friends rent an Airbnb for the biggest music festival of the year. A weekend of partying quickly takes a turn, as the group is murdered one by one, according to their sin.” Bloody Disgusting spoke with Marcus Dunstan and Jade Pettyjohn during the production of the film about the vibrant, candy-colored slasher with a bloody streak.
Dunstan, having co-written Saw IV-3D, is no stranger to the realm of slashers and gory horror. #AMFAD presented the filmmaker with a chance to play with the slasher formula, especially through the prism of social media and influencer culture. For Dunstan, it was the idea of how social media offers a blank canvas for identity and reinvention.
He explains, “There’s a number of details about this one that made me lean in. It was a chance to do a murder mystery through the prism of a civilization that’s still forming in that ever-evolving youth culture and in the way that they can create these characters in their lives. There’s the person they were before they picked up their smartphone. Once they picked up the phone, they could be whoever they wanted. Then, there are ramifications to those actions that result in who they become. In this case, from a writing standpoint, there’s a great character arc; we begin a tale with who they were and catch up with who they are. Oh, and someone from somewhere may not be done with them yet.”
“I enjoyed putting Agatha Christie into something that has the nice torque of a murder mystery thriller engine,” Dunstan continues. We’ve had so much good fortune up here in Vancouver with production design, special effects, and mostly with cinematography and performance, raising all these components together. I find myself always reaching back to Mario Bava and Dario Argento to add a little bit of that style into it and bring that into the mix, which is great. So, the slasher mystery gets an upgrade with this.”
For star Jady Pettyjohn, #AMFAD kept her guessing, and that hooked her immediately. “I remember getting the script, and it was the first time in a really long time when I read the script and didn’t actually expect what ended up when it ended up happening,” she said with excitement. “I’m usually pretty good at predicting, like, ‘okay, the script’s gonna go here, gonna go there,’ and it just didn’t work out that way. I was so surprised. I love that feeling.”
She continues, “I felt like the script does a really great job of paying homage or an ode to the older ’80s horror films that we all love, but it puts a new twist on it that is unique and different. I loved that. Then also Sarah, specifically my character. She’s super interesting, and I’ve never played a character like her before. So, that combination of both was just sort of the perfect storm.” Sarah stands out immediately as the kind-hearted one of the group, but expect this bunch of friends to harbor a variety of dark secrets.
Dunstan is also no stranger to horror comedies, having recently helmed Unhuman, and details how #AMFAD will first lean into humor before pulling the rug out from under audiences.
He teases, “We want to introduce these characters at their most brash, their most loud; their false personas, if you will, the personas through the phone, the three by four window to their entire lives. In doing so, how are they entertainers to the populace of strangers watching them? It’s outrage humor like, ‘ooh, avarice,‘ everything to come to the fore. Then to bring that a little bit into the second act, when things are getting a little more creepy. Well, the humor then becomes the stakes of how they innocently wander in by the time we have to get bloody and nasty. Then, the shock value, I think, replaces some of the jokes because you should surely be jumping and laughing at the same time. Then we’ve hit our stride.”
The filmmaker also knows that #AMFAD isn’t the first horror movie set in and around an Airbnb, or influencers, for that matter.
“Well, the nice thing about this is I wanted to lean into some things we’ve heard of before in this,“ Dunstan says. “There has been Airbnb thrillers. This is a movie that takes place knowing there’s a movie called Bodies, Bodies, Bodies. This is a movie that takes place knowing there’s a movie called Seven. These people have been exposed to all that pop culture, and this is that little pocket that’s reacting to it, almost as if, like, ‘Wait, is this? Uh, is this someone trying to get attention for stuff that we already kind of know?’ Once we begin to card flip the twist, you see how that plays off.“
It’s also worth noting that the killer themes their kills around the seven deadly sins, and that played a crucial role in the film’s visual language.
“Oh, in terms of the visuals, it was instantly collaborating with our production designer Trevor Johnston to come up with the benchmarks,“ Dunstan explains. “We wanted to build up and around the biblical interpretations of the deadly sin, going into the psychology of them and how some of each sin has been assigned a color spectrum throughout time. Some are kind of flip-flopped here and there. So then simply saying, ‘Okay, if this character is courting towards this particular sin, what is the color pattern of that sin?‘ In doing so, there’ll be a flourish in the clothing and the act and whatnot. By the time you get to a potential demise or threat level, well, what if the lighting was also accompanying that? So it begins as a hint and graduates into a fever dream. You can turn the sound off and see the colors are also telling the story, and the set is also telling the story as something innocent, tiny, and offered through social media or whatnot, come back and it charges in as a reality and then all-encompassing, kind of like real punch of color, sound, and violence.“
But how bloody will #AMFAD get, you might be wondering?
Pettyjohn laughs, “There are so many dead bodies behind this camera. But oh my god, it is so much fun. You know, obviously, the piece is really dark, and there’s lots of murder and blood and guts and stuff. But making a horror film is, in a weird way, incredibly joyful. We have such talented people that are doing just absolutely incredible work. It was so funny. I was having this conversation with the makeup artist, and she pulled out a chest full of different kinds of blood. Like, okay, where are we going to do it? Here, here, this, this consistency is perfect for this and all of that. And it’s an absolute joy, honestly, to play with so much blood and guts and special effects.”
Interviews
George A. Romero’s ‘Day of the Dead’ Gets New Life After Search for Long-Lost Film Elements
“I was told that this couldn’t be found by some people that I worked with, and that just set a fire in me,” Scream Factory producer Jeff Roland says of the newly restored Day of the Dead in 4K from the seemingly long-lost original interpositive.
The four-disc release, loaded with special features and new interviews in addition to the restoration, arrives almost exactly three years after Roland began his long pursuit of the missing elements that he was warned were lost to time.
It’s a fitting journey for Day of the Dead, the third film in horror master George A. Romero‘s zombie series, considering the film’s long road to reappraisal after its initial failure at the box office in 1985. A huge departure from the popular Dawn of the Dead, the third film set its battle for humanity’s survival in an underground bunker, waged between a small group of scientists and ruthless soldiers.
It was underground where Roland began his pursuit of the missing interpositive elements, starting with the old-fashioned paper trail in Scream Factory’s basement, sorting through records from their 2013 Blu-ray release.
Scream Factory’s Years-Long Quest to Restore a Horror Classic
“So, there I was, going through boxes and boxes and boxes, trying to find this one specific invoice for a delivery company amongst thousands of pieces of paper,” Roland tells Bloody Disgusting. “That was the start. I was able to figure out the delivery service, and from there, it just went into a whirlwind of… drama? Yeah, there was some drama in there at one point; I thought it had been stolen by someone.”
The lengthy restoration process that also details Roland’s Indiana Jones-like journey, but he notes that “the short and sweet of it is, it took forever, I was trying to find leads. anything. I was seeing ridiculous things online, you know, like it was in a diamond mine in South Africa. I even followed up on that. I thought it would be hilarious if it were actually being kept in the Wampum mine. So I called them, and this poor woman who answered the phone sounded like she got this call every other day.”
Roland notes, “The records, for film vaults and such, aren’t the greatest. I’ll just say that. So, I think that’s, over time, that’s something that we definitely need to improve upon in this business.”
John Harrison Reflects on Day of the Dead‘s Surprising Legacy and Original Vision
While now considered another Romero zombie classic, critics and audiences rejected Day of the Dead at first, especially the Caribbean-style theme music from composer and first assistant director John Harrison.
Few are as surprised by the massive shift in the film’s reception as Harrison. The filmmaker and longtime Romero collaborator reflects, “Now, if you had asked any of us, and George included, that, ‘hey man, you know, in 45 years, this movie’s gonna be considered like a cinema classic.’ We all probably would have said, ‘Oh, we’re making a movie, man. We’re just having fun making a movie, and God, can you believe it, that people are paying us to do this?’ I don’t want to minimize it. I don’t want to say that we were just goofing around.”
Harrison continues, “All of us were really serious about our craft and about what we were trying to do. But I don’t think that any of us, maybe George, hopefully, had some feeling that his films would last for a while. I was a kid, you know? I just wanted to have fun, make movies, and be part of that whole scene. So, it was really disappointing when Day came out, because it was a bomb. I mean, let’s be truthful about it. It was a bomb. And people hated the score. So, 40-some years later, it’s become, for some people, the apogee of that first dead trilogy. The best of the three in its own way.”
Harrison also points out that Romero’s Land of the Dead would later face a similar reception and reappraisal, which was all the more fascinating considering early budget cuts caused Romero to drastically scale back Day of the Dead‘s story. A lot of what was excised was later revisited in Land of the Dead. “That was actually part of the original Day of the Dead concept,” Harrison explains of the 2005 film.
“Because of budget and schedule and so forth and so on, and ratings,” he tells BD. “George couldn’t do it, and that’s why we ended up with the more condensed version of Day of the Dead, which everybody now knows and loves. In a way, I’m kind of glad, because it has a real identity being trapped in those caves, and the end of the world, the two sides of society. Going at it, headbutting, to try and survive. But the whole Fiddler’s Green idea and all of that stuff that ended up in Land of the Dead was part of the original Day.”
George Romero Predicted Social Media and Modern Culture
Suzanne Romero, founder & president of the George A. Romero Foundation and the late filmmaker’s wife, breaks down the film’s trajectory even further. “The original Day of the Dead script, I think, at one point, it was written for a $12 million budget, and it was basically cut in half. And it’s a great script. But that’s what happens with filmmakers, and you gotta make do.
She continues, “But I really think that this film is really for the fans and people who love physical media. And in terms of the foundation, well, anytime George Romero is mentioned is good, because what we are doing is to provide a healthy legacy. We’re uplifting his legacy, we’re supporting the archive, and we’re also supporting the Horror Study Center. So, all of these three things are what the Foundation is striving to do. As far as I’m concerned, the more we say George Romero’s name, the better it is.”
The mention of Land of the Dead brings up one recurring theme of Romero’s work: the filmmaker’s ability to keep his pulse so thoroughly on the current social climate in a way that feels prescient.
Roland agrees, “I think one of the most amazing things that doesn’t get talked about enough is in 2007, he came out with Diary of the Dead. That pretty much predicted YouTube culture. I mean, we’re going through it right now, the exact things that were happening in Diary of the Dead. It’s incredible.”
“Well, that was intentional,” Harrison says, “because I was part of that and worked with Peter [Grunwald] and George on developing that whole script and production. And that was definitely intentional. There was nothing accidental or, ‘Great timing, guys!’ It was not like that at all. It was intentional.”
Romero agrees, “[George] was very wary of social media, but very wary of the internet. He was always very suspicious and thought that we ought to beware; we ought to be walking very carefully into this space.“
“Which we haven’t done, of course,” Harrison adds.
“No, of course not,” Romero responds. “And AI. I mean, he would be writing about AI right now and thinking, danger! What the fuck are you doing, people? But not only that, but he also did it in a layman’s way. You know, he really brought it to very familiar language, and people that spoke to each other, it was in a very natural way, and it was the way he developed characters. The way he evolved with how his women were more powerful, because he kind of regretted that in Night of the Living Dead, [Barbra] was weak. He always thought the women ought to be much stronger, and I think it started with Season of the Witch.”
Everyone Wanted to Be a Zombie in a Romero Movie
George A. Romero’s legacy certainly looms large over Scream Factory’s impressive new release, offering a comprehensive look at Day of the Dead through a dizzying number of new audio commentaries, featurettes, and interviews detailing everything from the “mine fever” that spread among the cast and crew to Ernest Dickerson‘s high-pressure day on set running the second unit camera.
That’s also reflected in Romero’s zombies themselves, dating back to 1968’s Night of the Living Dead.
“In Pittsburgh, it was a badge of honor to be a zombie in a George Romero movie,” Harrison recounts. “Everybody from the Dean of Students at Carnegie Mellon to the presidents of corporations. I had a story that came out of Dawn. I was pitching a commercial for my own little company, and I’d done a bit for George as ‘Screwdriver Zombie’ on Dawn. I didn’t get cleaned up enough, and I went to this meeting at the first thing in the morning. The vice president of this bank is looking at me, going, ‘Is there something wrong with you?’ I said, ‘No, no, that’s what I know? I’m fine.’ He said, ‘Well, you’re bleeding out of your ear.’ Okay, so then I had to tell them the whole story. And he listened to it, and I thought, well, this is gonna be ridiculous. I’m coming in talking about being a zombie in a movie, and I want to sell him this, like, multi-thousand-dollar commercial that the bank is gonna pay for. He listened very carefully to me, and he said, ‘Well, listen, we’ll talk about the commercial, but do you think I could be a zombie in one?”
That hasn’t changed in the present, either.
Romero confirms, “We’re producing George’s film, Twilight of the Dead, and we get requests, ‘Can I be a zombie in this film?’ So, even today, people are very interested, and yet it’s terrible. I mean, it’s hours and hours of makeup.”
Scream Factory’s Day of the Dead four-disc 4K UHD + Blu-ray Collector’s Edition releases on June 16.
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