Original subtitles

Mickey: This week on "The Core," Simon Barrett,

writer of "You're Next" and "The Guest"

is here to tell us how he turns the screws on his audience.

Then a criminologist tells us

why we should fear our own family.

And effects master Jim Ojala

spills the secrets of spilling acid on my face.

From "You're Next" to "The Guest" and "Blair Witch,"

there are few filmmakers that can capture the anxiety

of a Simon Barrett film.

They start off simple -- a dinner-party,

a heartwarming homecoming,

but something tastes off.

You feel it rotting in your stomach,

and just when you can't bear it any longer,

bam! Crossbow bolt to the head.

He fills his movies with ominous unease,

and he has a damn good time doing it.

Simon's here today to talk about tension

with a thrilling game of Russian Roulette

with blenders.

Sir, thank you so much for joining me today.

-I'm so sorry. I'm being rude. -Oh, not at all. Not at all.

Great to see you. Since you're the guest,

you go ahead and choose yours and choose one for me.

I'm going to go straight ahead, and why don't you

grab that one on the end there, 'cause I like

-a little bit of space. -So, here's how it works.

Seven questions, eight blender.

We stick our hand into our chosen blenders.

After each question, we pick a plug from the tangled cords

and plug her right in. The blender spins,

and if we both still have our digits by the end of it,

that blender's removed.

And on we go until one of us feels very sorry

that we ever agreed to this stupid game.

-All right. -All right.

So let's just talk about how you specifically,

as a writer, build tension into your scripts.

You know, there's, I guess, a few things that you can do

to create tension in a film.

Character investment is important.

You have to care about the character.

We don't have character likability.

That's partly my fault, and I'm sorry,

but we have other things contributing

to kind of the suspense of this scenario.

You have to establish fairly quickly

that either the film will surprise you

or that bad things are possible in this world.

You have to set up the stakes.

And then, you know, score,

obviously, that ominous kind of tones

and stuff that can cue the audience

into not feeling that they're in a safe space.

Blocking, you know, there's a lot of kind of cinematic tricks,

but also surprises. You know, any kind of escalation

in pacing. If the viewers feel

like the film is moving in a certain rhythm

and they can predict it, it's like,

"Oh, you know, like this amount of time happens,

and then there's a jump scare,"

they'll get used to that in a lot of subtle ways.

So any kind of unexpected ramping up of tension

or, you know, surprise in that regard.

Like how I'm going to plug this in right now.

Jesus Christ.

-Well, uh... -Okay.

We lucked out on that one, I guess.

Okay. So, next question that I've got for you

on this idea of misdirection,

the thing that comes to my mind first and foremost

is the dinner scene at "You're Next"

where, you know, you get to know all these characters

but they're fighting with one another.

Is that very intentional from the beginning?

Do you try to save the cat immediately,

or are you more interested in just kind of real visceral

kind of character natural human acts?

You know, that's a great question,

'cause there's tension between characters

and tension between relationships,

and then there's tension of, like,

a crossbow could kill you at any time,

or you have your hand in a blender.

I find a combination of the two

tends to be fairly interesting.

I can watch gore all day long,

but show me a scene in a movie

where a character's made socially uncomfortable

or embarrassed, and I'll be squirming and closing my eyes.

-Right. -I can't take it.

So with that scene in particular,

I was trying to get a combination of those two things.

It's like, let's show a family dynamic

that's engaging in these different ways.

Let's not waste the audience's time with them.

Let's try to get them across in a funny, quick way,

and then from that point on,

when the crossbows are flying through the windows,

we'll kind of know who's who and what they stand for.

I have a bit of comedic license, you know,

when you're trying to do something that's funny.

So I utilized it, and I was like,

"These characters are ridiculous,

and you'll know who they are in a few sentences."

Right. I want to expand on comedic license,

but I feel like we have to do one of these,

so get rocking and rolling.

-That's the game. -Okay.

Comedy and horror are interesting,

and they're both about timing.

And so what draws you to this idea

of making something really terrifying or violent

but also kind of funny and awkward at the same time?

I think if a film is relentlessly

just trying to be scary, it actually becomes,

-in a certain way, oppressive. -Mm-hmm.

And I, myself, am not a funny person.

I don't enjoy humor.

My main claim to fame is, I've never laughed or smiled.

But I do find that there's a certain degree of absurdism

inherent in a lot of horror scenarios,

where if the characters don't take a moment and acknowledge

that it almost feels unreal.

Like, I'm not saying if I was being chased through a house

by a maniac with an ax, I'd stop and just be like,

-"This is just so weird." -Right.

But I would probably have that micro-thought

at a certain moment of just like,

"Oh, this is, just, like, so perfect that I would die

in this, like, absurd horror movie way."

Showing the audience that element,

even if it's not totally real to the real-life experience

of being terrorized,

gives the audience their reality on screen,

and it makes them like and root for the characters more.

Right.

Liquidated, all right.

That was a little close.

I don't want to fan-boy out too much

about the way that you write,

but I think that you have this incredible ability

of your movies really ratchet up,

and they don't blow their loads too early.

A lot of big movies you're sitting there watching,

the best scene happens 45 minutes into the film.

You know, and so what's your kind of, like, process

of finding that new way to just keep on

ratcheting everything up?

If your biggest scare is a half hour in,

people are going to leave the movie feeling deflated.

So one of the things I do

is I always write my last scene first.

I don't tend to outline or do treatments,

but I know what I'm building to,

and I can think about kind of

what that escalation is throughout every scene.

And if a scene isn't kind of getting me closer to that,

then I know I should cut it out of the movie.

Are there any particular techniques that you would use

to build to something like the big fun house finale

-at the end of "The Guest"? -For "The Guest,"

it's a tricky thing. People are very into the family dynamic,

and then once he actually starts killing people,

we lose some viewers, 'cause they want Dan

-to kind of be the hero. -Right.

But we knew that wasn't the trajectory of the film,

and so it's just about kind of earning that in a character way.

And then once I kind of realized

what the tone of those scenes was going to be,

I was able to kind of be like, "Okay.

This is going to be the tone of the final third of this film.

Some people might not like it, but I'm into it.

Let's figure out the right kind of 90 degree turn into this."

Mm-hmm.

You're up.

We should look at some clips or something that kind of

illustrate the stuff we've been talking about, right? Like --

But you were right there.

All right. Let's check it out.

You're sheltering enemies of the state, are you not?

Yes.

You're sheltering them underneath your floorboards,

aren't you?

Yes.

Why don't you tell me about the tension in this scene?

Tarantino is so remarkably good at these interminable scenes

that should not work and only do in his films.

Only he can pull off just this endless scene of dialogue

that's so inherently fascinating.

We know what the stakes are here.

He establishes them beautifully with this camera move.

It's like he's literally referencing that Truffaut,

Hitchcock conversation about suspense.

-Right. Yeah. -It's like he's literally

showing you the bomb under the table.

-The bomb under the table. -I just find this kind

of dialogue-driven suspense really fascinating.

I, myself, don't know that I have the talent

to to achieve it,

but that's why I like going to see Tarantino.

-May I approach? -No!

No. I'm going to throw it.

Careful. It was a gift.

-They're killing us. -Keep the gun!

-No! -All right.

So this next clip, obviously, is "Green Room."

And so tell me why you think that this one is, like,

a perfect sense of tension.

"Green Room" is probably the only film in years

that's made me yell out loud in a theater.

Once you've seen what's happened to Anton Yelchin's arm...

Yeah....and you've seen Imogen Poots,

like, slit a guy's belly open...Right.

...you just completely have no idea

what the movie's going to do next.

You know, it's not playing by normal horror movie

or thriller rules. And of course, he's a musician,

and so, you know, that's, like, extra awful.

He'll never play, I don't know, the bass

or whatever he plays again.

Catherine, I'm going to get you out of there,

but right now, you listen to me.

I've got to leave this room. I'll be right back.

Catherine: No! Don't you leave me here, you fucking bitch! No!

The classic "Silence of the Lambs."

Tell me about this one, why this one resonates.

So I imagine you probably share my affinity

for, like, A-list kind of high-art cinema,

and it's this shot right here that references low

or, you know, so-called B movie cinema.

You know, Jonathan Demme said that Roger Corman told him

at some point that the scariest shot in cinema

is a hand-held shot approaching a closed door.

-Right. -So when he set out

to make this thriller, he put that shot in there.

This entire sequence just has such a great dynamic.

It'll be a lot easier with that.

Simon: This is a somewhat different kind of suspense

from some of the previous stuff, where, like, in "Green Room"

you're legitimately very concerned for the characters.

Same in "Inglourious Basterds" and "Silence of the Lambs."

This, I'm not so much concerned.

-I'm just very interested. -Yeah.

It's almost the inverse of the "Inglourious Basterds"

in certain ways, where there's almost no dialogue.

Right.It's just them staring at each other

while this amazing Ennio Morricone score plays,

which is, of course, some of the best music of all time.

These three guys have been building up

to a confrontation now for 2 1/2 hours.

Right.Their characters are so iconic and interesting,

and the actors are doing such incredible,

career-defining performances

that you just end up being glued to the screen.

Fuck!

It's not even hot, you dumb bitch!

Mickey: So, yeah. Tell me a little bit about this and the tension.

Simon: When I was writing the script, you know, I --

This really bothered some people on the IMDb message boards,

as you can imagine, but it was a creative choice for them

to not ever have any guns.

But it was also trying to find, like, creative weapons.

Right.You know, stuff that people wouldn't necessarily think of,

do the kind of "Home Alone" thing.

I mean, obviously, this one was very influenced by "Home Alone."

I don't just want to see someone get chased with, like,

a gun or an ax or something that I've seen before.

I need to find, like, a creative thing to do with those things.Yeah.

And here's the blender gag,

that, you know, that when I wrote it in the script,

I was just like, this seems achievable on a budget.

In any scenario, it's like, "Okay. That could be goofy."

But it is actually pretty brutal and hard core of a blender gag.

Well, I mean, the movie has a tone

that allows you to accept something like this.

I think this would be a pretty inefficient way

to actually kill someone.

You guys pretty much nailed the originality.

It's so awesome.

All right. Well...

This game's getting close.

So, I want to ask about Simon Barrett pre-success.

How do you do that? How do you find ways to make movies

when no one will return your phone calls?

I feel like as person who graduated from film school,

it's very hypocritical for me to say what I want to say,

which is don'tgo to film school. Right. Don't.

It's a complete waste of time and money.

The first film I got made

was because a gentleman who had acted in my student films,

and I'd acted in a couple of his,

ended up working in some capacity

for the head of a company that was making movies for Sony.

And that's how I got "Dead Birds" made.

So if I hadn't gone to film school,

-none of that would've happened. -Sure. Totally.

Would I still be making movies?

Would I have an even awesomer career?

Would I, you know, be, like, wielding an Oscar in each hand

right now instead of a blender in one?

I don't know. But I suspect not.

Well, film school, unfortunately,

cannot save you now. So, you're up.

Four.

Those odds --

-That was another -- -Well,

you know what, let's just ratchet this up,

because there's nothing I love more than a big, juicy climax.

But why don't we talk about your philosophy

for the climax of a film?

Well, I mean, again, it really depends on the type of film

you're trying to make.

But I do feel like the good climax

to a movie both simultaneously delivers

on everything the audience would want from that type of film.

So if you're making a horror movie,

then it's, like, the scariest series

of sequences,

you know, the most perilous set pieces.

And if you're making comedy, it's the funniest.

But it also should subvert the viewers' expectations.

I think a good ending almost always contains

an element of surprise, 'cause what you want

is that ending that gives you what you want,

but in a way that you couldn't have ever expected.

Totally, and, you know, to be honest,

I did not expect it to get to this point,

so...why don't you just do it?

All right. This is it.

Aah! My writing hand!

Oh, why?!

I'm going to be honest with you. My face didn't actually melt,

all thanks to effects master Jim Ojala.

Why don't you tell us how you did these insane gore effects?

Well, for your effect,

we started out with simple antacid tablets.

-Mm-hmm. -You can actually crush

antacid tablets into a powder

and we went ahead did, like, sore makeup on you.

Mm-hmm.So you looked kind of, like, bruised and irritated.

And then we powder the antacid tablets into your face,

and then you spritz it with water,

and boom, your face starts bubbling.

-Right. -So that's stage one.

And then stage two, we go into gelatin, basically.

You tint it up with the cream makeup,

so it's like a skin tone,

and then you can put that on your face

and start doing a buildup so it looks like all bubbly and gross.

And then you create the dimension.

Then put in your sores and all that stuff.

And what is all this? Are these your tests?

Yeah. And then these are Pros-Aide Transfers.

These are basically, like, sculptures of boils

that we put on you, as well, to kind of give extra dimension,

and then we sculpted the gelatin on top of that,

just so you have different textures and stuff like that.

And then loose hair is always just really gross.

-Right. -So we figure if you're melting

from sulfuric acid, your hair's coming out, everything.

So we mat your hair down

so you've got, like, bald spots showing up,

and then this is, like, just is stringing down in the gelatin.

So that's why I'm going to find, like, loose hair in places

for the next month or so, right?Yeah. Exactly.

-Every nook and cranny. Yes. -Every nook and cranny.

And then for the final, to just really go extreme,

and to be able to do it fairly quickly,

we made a silicone burn mask.

And so is this a custom-made mask? You made it --

Yes. It's kind of like the same technique as gelatin...

-Cool. -...where you stretch, like,

a sock, over a head form

and then just start gooping on silicone,

and as it sets, you stretch it and make it look nasty.

And then you put on all the burn

and the teeth and all that stuff.

-Yeah. Yeah. -Okay. And three.

Two. One.

How about the hand in the blender,

which, you know, is both disgusting

and also very splattery?

For that, we had Simon put his hand in,

and you got all the great lead-up,

and then, so we can actually see, like, a close-up

of something physically happening

-to the skin... -Right.

...we made a nice gelatin hand

where from here all the way to here,

is filled with blood. And then it's sealed off

so it can't leak out until you puncture it.

So then you put that in, and then once those blades

start tearing at these fingers,

-it just rips everything apart. -Wow.

So you can get that quick second of something really badass

happening on camera.

Then you cut to the wide or medium of Simon,

which, he's got tubes,

one tube with a little bit of foam, connected to each finger.

And then we made this little, like, custom silicone piece

for the top of his knuckles.

And then once it's blended and painted to look like his skin,

it looks like -- Well, when it's spraying blood,

it looks like his damn fingers are cut off, you know?

And if you want the crazy amount of pressure

that we had coming out of your hand...

Yeah....you can get, like, fire extinguishers

that are specifically made for water,

and then you can pressurize them up to 100 psi.

-Right. -And, boom,

you go as hard as you want with it.

And so wherever you spray the blood, that's up to the actor.

-Exactly. -You really went for it.

-You had great direction. -Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. I regret it tremendously.

Eagle-eyed viewers will note the continuity error.

I lost my left hand. That's a right hand.

-Oh, that's an alternative. -Oh, yeah. Okay.

You know, the funny thing is, you know,

the whole blender gag in "You're Next"

that we're riffing on where that person gets a blender

shoved into their head,

you know, the only reason I even wrote that

is 'cause it was a special effect that I felt like no one

could tell me it was impossible to do,

because I knew a little bit about blood tubing...

-Right. -...and fake smoke and stuff.

And I was like, this is something we can achieve.

-Yeah. Totally. -That will work.

That will work, and it will look good,

and it won't ruin our shooting day.

-Right. Absolutely. -Yeah, and it was --

Blender stuff is, you know, it's horrifying...

-Yeah. -...but achievable.

It gives you a lot of room to wire stuff.

Well, it's smart, 'cause you're in a confined space,

so it's not just like it's all over the place.

Well, thank you, Simon, for giving us an awesome lesson

on tension. Thank you, Jim, for making us look so fucked up.

And come with me. I got something to show you.

Simon's movies are fun. They're suspenseful.

They're scary as hell partly because they're also not real,

but they play on real-world fears,

and that's why they hook us.

Who better to tell us exactly what we need to be afraid of

than a renowned criminologist, Dr. Bill Sanders?

-How are you, sir? -Very well, thank you.

So, I watch a lot of horror movies

which basically makes me afraid of pretty much everything.

And so what is the thing that I should be the most afraid of?

The person you should be most afraid of

is the one sitting right next to you watching that film.

Horror movies depict a deranged killer,

a lunatic, often.

It's much more mundane in real life.

It's someone you know, particularly if you're married

or have a boyfriend, girlfriend.

That's usually the number-one suspect in all homicides.

If not that, a friend, a family member.

Bottom line, it's someone you know.

Jesus. Well, that's comforting.

From an experts' perspective,

what do most horror films get wrong?

The planning involved is not so extensive.

Murders just come,

happen in the spur of the moment out of anger.

The individual just lashes out and kills someone.

Another thing they get wrong is how clean the homicides are,

or as if they know exactly in the body where to hit.

You know, they're going to slice their neck,

and then they just bleed out peacefully.

Or they just get shot in the right place,

and shot only once or twice.

Real-life homicides are often characterized by overkill,

whereby they are stabbed well beyond the necessary --

necessity that would cause death,

and/or they are killed in various ways.

So they are shot, then they are stabbed,

and then they are burned.

So it is, again, within that emotional overdrive,

base, you know, fear, tension, righteousness,

the adrenaline the body produces,

the frenzied attack.

It's far from clean.

What are the major societal factors that would result

in someone committing a homicide or something like that?

One of the main predictors of being both a victim

and a perpetrator of homicide is being a male.

Another one is age. It is young people.

So, as we age, you know, get out of 20s and 30s,

we actually are less susceptible

at being both a victim and perpetrator.

But if you want to know the master variable, like,

this out of all the variables consistently indicate

to be the strongest, it would be poverty.

And even amongst poverty, so amongst poor areas, what's that?

It would be absolute depravation.

So who, in the poor areas, is most deprived

or concentrations of that deprivation,

that is where you'll have

the strongest correlations with homicide.

So, finally, how do you get away with murder?

I would like to know that

because of a script that I'm...writing.

Just go kill someone randomly you've never seen before

on the street.

And just run as fast as I can?

Well, as I have indicated earlier,

homicides are most likely to occur

amongst people who know one another.

So the number-one suspect in the homicide,

the detectives are thinking, "Someone this guy knows."

The detective is not going to be thinking,

"Oh, this is some random guy who just walked by

and happened to stab, or shoot,

or whatever, this individual right there."

So by engaging in that uncommon pattern of behavior,

you are less likely to get caught

and/or get away with murder.

Well, Dr. Sanders, I can't say that this helped alleviate

any of my preexisting anxieties, but it really was fascinating,

and thank you so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me.

Dude, we had Simon Barrett on today,

and it was intense.

I saw.

Already?

Here. Take this.

There are other weird video stores I can go to, you know?

Take it. Some on. This whole meta thing's

really fucking with my head.

I'm fucking with you.

All right. Tension.

Got some crazy tense movies for you.

You ever think about moving a little bit closer

-to civilization? -Nope.

-Want your spine tingled? -Every day.

First up, we've got "Willow Creek"

from director Bobcat Goldthwait.

He makes a movie about Bigfoot.

At one point, two characters in one tent and nowhere to look

but directly into their terrified eyes

wondering what's outside.

No!

Next up, we got "The Reef."

Not dissimilar, except you're not stuck inside a tent,

you're out in the open sea, a couple of people,

and sharks all around them.

-Do they get turned into chum? -I'm not going to tell you.

We got "Take Shelter" from Jeff Nichols,

starring Michael Shannon.

He's getting premonitions of the end of the world, right?

The whole time, he's paranoid.

He's wondering if he's going insane.

When he has to tell his entire community,

it's one of the most uncomfortable sequences

on Shudder.

Does the end of the world happen?

I'm not going to tell you.

Next up, we have a Shudder exclusive, "We Go On."

This is one of my favorite modern haunters.

I'd like to offer $30,000 to the first person

that can show me definitive proof of life after death.

A man terrified of death and dying to know

whether there's an afterlife.

When he finds out ghosts are real,

it'll upend your whole night.

That sounds very unsettling.

One of our favorite contemporary slashers, "Lake Bodom."

At one point, two of the characters realize

that the key they need to a car

is in the pocket of a dead body at the bottom of said lake.

Is she going to make it back up?Is she?

You're going to have to watch to find out.

Thank you so much, Sam. I got some watching to do.

Hey, don't drop those tapes.

They are on-air masters.

I will be very careful.

-Thank you. -Until next time.

That'll do it for "The Core."

Thank you so much again to titan of tension Simon Barrett.

And I don't know about you, but now,

I'm going to do something that always relaxes me.