At first glance, Play House joins the wave of horror movies that transform kids’ shows and their mascots into nightmare fuel. But the feature debut by director Nicolas Curcio instead uses childhood terror as the foundation of an unsettling home invasion.
Also setting Play House apart, at least at Fantastic Fest, is that Curcio’s debut, which he co-writes with Kirby Gladstein, is also the inaugural Fantastic Fest pitch contest winner; Curcio and Gladstein’s pitch at last year’s event earned them $100,000 to make this movie.
In Play House, Will Harrison stars as Elliot, a young man renovating his newly purchased, crumbling home who discovers VHS tapes of an unaired TV show in the basement. Those tapes uncover a dark history, one that threatens to destroy his life.
Inspiration came close to home for the writing pair. Gladstein tells Bloody Disgusting of the film’s origins, “We lived in South Pasadena in LA, and we were constantly walking and driving past this stretch of dozens of homes that were all abandoned and had security guys outside, and they were just falling into disrepair. We looked into it, and it was this freeway expansion project that started back in the ’50s and ’60s, where they bought close to 400-500 houses, and then they never built the freeway. So they just held onto these houses, and we started to wonder what could have happened in these houses for this many decades that they’ve sat, and started to think about somebody buying one of those houses because they’re starting to sell the actual Caltrans houses now. That was really the impetus of it.”
The house is an important character in the film, of course, but just as important are the tapes and the creepy show on them. The more Elliot watches, the more the show’s host, Mr. Morton (James Urbaniak), disturbs.
Curcio keeps the show and its unforgettable puppet characters, of which the cast and filmmakers unanimously cite Grinner as their favorite, to a minimum to build tension. The director walks us through the design process in creating Mr. Morton’s show: “We made a proof of concept video, sort of a short film that we also showed when we applied for the competition. So we had the design a little bit. We had a temporary kind of Sesame Street-y backdrop, but our production designer did a much cooler backdrop. But yeah, since we had the proof of concept, we kind of knew the aesthetic.”
As for casting his Mr. Morton, Curcio tells us, “I’m so familiar with [Urbaniak’s] work, but I think the person needed to be a great actor. It needed to be specific. I just wanted somebody who would take it seriously. I think in the beginning we were like, ‘What if it gets too comedic? Or what if an actor who’s comedic decides to play it a certain way?’ It just ended up being the right choice because James took it so seriously in the best way possible. That’s why it works so well in the film.”
For Urbaniak, whose character gets limited screen time, there’s a lot more bubbling behind the surface of Mr. Morton: “There already was a backstory suggested in the script and based on how you conceived of it where the character has a connection to these old houses. Then it’s just about making everything he does on screen personal. A villain doesn’t think that he’s a villain. A villain is just trying to accomplish something. Maybe a villain even thinks they’re doing something good. So it’s just kind of coming at it from that angle. He’s serious about what he’s doing, and maybe he has a moral imperative, even though it’s completely twisted.”
Mr. Morton unsettles as much as his tortured puppets do in Play House, which also pays tribute to Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round, a move acknowledging the shared crew between films rather than a nod to a similar film in a niche but growing subgenre.
As for Gladstein and Curcio, the pair have already lined up erotic thriller Sweet Spot for Paramount Primal.
