Director Demian Rugna talks to Fest Track about approach, perspective and mythology in regards to his new horror film: "When Evil Lurks", playing as an official selection at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:26 Hi, this is Tim Wastbrook from Festrack. I'm at the Alamo Draft House in Austin, Texas for Fantastic Fest.
00:32 [Music]
00:42 The times of faith
00:44 [Music]
00:46 end quickly.
00:48 [Music]
00:56 All in the movie has a secret.
01:00 And I always try to reveal that secret without being explicit with that.
01:12 I mean, Pedro has a lot of secrets in his past life.
01:17 His past life, no, in past.
01:22 He had troubles with family.
01:28 Even Jimmy had a past with the same family.
01:36 But I mean, I guess all are trying to fix the problem, the conflict that they had before the demons.
01:49 I mean, even the demon hunter, the lady at the end, is trying to fix what they did in the past.
02:04 And the idea for me is, okay, I try to tell a story that the problem is not only the spreading, the evil spreading.
02:21 The evil spreading, I mean, the infection of this evil is one of the problems for these characters.
02:30 And the way it happens, the element, the sequence, the situation is worse and worse and worse.
02:41 And they are taking all the time decisions.
02:44 We must do this, but probably they are wrong.
02:50 Or probably they did that, but it was a wrong decision.
02:58 I guess this kind of element over element gives some kind of trip for our character.
03:12 And the audience, I guess, and I feel, I hope, and I don't know if they're going to enjoy the trip,
03:20 but they will be with the character, suffering with him till the end.
03:24 [MUSIC]
03:52 I feel in that way, you can go back after taking the decision that they take.
04:06 But it's weird. I used to work to write without knowing what is going to happen next.
04:14 I always had only the first half in my mind and I start to write.
04:22 And I never know what is going to happen because I never write a synopsis of an entire movie.
04:30 No, I sit in my desk and start to write it with dialogues.
04:38 And I discover what happened and I try to give the story some surprise and find the surprise in the process.
04:52 I never thought the entire movie first.
04:56 And I guess it was happening when you see the movie.
05:00 You don't realize what is next, what is going to happen in a couple of minutes.
05:08 In short point, I guess it's not predictable.
05:16 It's helpful for the audience to think the story before me but not anticipate it.
05:24 [MUSIC]
05:50 You talk about those themes of the possessed.
05:54 I'm not sure if that has to do with local mythology or if that has to do with the bigger theme you were talking about.
06:02 Well, yes. All the time when I've been shooting movies or in the process of pre-production,
06:18 why is this the end? Why did this happen with the demon at the end?
06:28 I don't want to spoil the movie.
06:32 But probably the demon is not a horrible monster painted in red.
06:40 It's simply a guy who's going to push the button in the next 20 years to drop the bomb.
06:50 This is the demon, probably, this kind of demon born 100 years ago or 1,000 years ago.
06:58 And now in my new mythology, it's used to born frequently.
07:08 But yeah, for me the idea of why the kids is simple because I always think all of us has a demon in our head.
07:32 We're thinking probably bad thing about some person or simple bad ideas.
07:42 Too much or not, but we have a demon in our head all the time.
07:46 [MUSIC]
07:59 [SPEAKING SPANISH]
08:14 And that's the idea I say, OK, what about if the demon speak us easily when we are kids because they are easy to influence.
08:31 And the idea to the demon to possess the kids and use for help him is for that.
08:40 Because it's more easy to convince a kid or convince an animal to do something than an adult that question the ideas of the demon.
08:54 And obviously in the movie there's social struggle in the middle with the rotten guy when--
09:09 And people losing their land and--
09:11 And in Argentina we used to have a long, far field, a lot of land with plantations.
09:27 And on those plantation we have the-- I'm trying to find the word in English.
09:41 Well, they are contaminated by pesticides.
09:47 It provoke cancer in our citizens and specifically in the workers who lives in the poverty, who lives in those fields and work for the rich people.
10:01 [MUSIC]
10:29 [MACHINERY]
10:32 We are not all good and we are not all bad.
10:37 The problem, the typical problem with the horror movie is that all the time trying to sell us the father of the family, the hero.
10:49 Now it's not real. They have a lot of problems in our life and our life is more dangerous than a demon.
10:59 It's more hard to live. I'm not a depressive, I'm not dark people, but I know the reality of that surrounding.
11:14 I know probably the real struggle in this movie is the way that the father gauge, I mean, has in his back.
11:32 Because love motivates him.
11:34 Absolutely, yes. It's love motivating. Even he doesn't know if he's already crazy.
11:48 I don't want to be more specific, but the family accuse him as a murderer.
12:05 Old Town accuse him as he tried to kill his children with himself. But he don't know if really that happened.
12:19 He, the character, he thinks he's crazy. That's one part in the movie that he's taking his medication.
12:29 And we show he closed the window, but he already know, no, he opened the window, but he already know open that window.
12:38 So he choose to watch again the window, look again the window and open the window.
12:45 And the reason is the people accuse him, I mean, are saying he tried to block the outside of the house.
12:59 The house?
13:00 Yeah, the heater.
13:02 Oh yeah, yeah, I see. What's interesting, because you're playing with perception, what people think versus what they do.
13:11 And I think that's the thing, even in this movie, is the people say it happened.
13:20 Even the mother of the characters say, "No, the people saying it." It's invent everything.
13:29 And now the people of the town hate these guys because they said it was happen with them in the past.
13:39 [Music]
13:52 We have to find the beast before it's born.
13:58 [Music]