Writer/Director Kenichi Uguna talks to Fest Track about inspiration, genre, comedy, themes and effects in regards to his horror comedy: "Visitors (Complete Edition)", playing as an official selection at the 2023 Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:26 Hi, this is Tim Waspert from FesTrack. I'm at the Alamo Draft House in Austin, Texas for Fantastic Fests.
00:32 [Music]
00:45 What beautiful sheep of bark.
00:47 What do we call that?
00:49 [Music]
01:09 Could you talk about the tone and the approach for the different parts of visitors?
01:16 Because each is their own separate monster.
01:19 [Foreign Language]
01:33 [Foreign Language]
01:59 [Foreign Language]
02:07 [Music]
02:35 [Music]
03:04 But obviously there's a lot of influences over in Japan.
03:08 But can you talk about that, the influences for you growing up with your mom, but then how you apply them here?
03:15 My mother present for me, I'm maybe 16 years or 17 years, Texas Chainsaw Massacre's book set and family portrait.
03:29 Do you know?
03:30 Yeah.
03:31 For Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh, it's great. And I present for my mother, Dario Argento's book set.
03:39 Yeah, yeah.
03:40 And my mother's cell phone is a goblin's tema. Suspiria's tema for goblin.
03:48 Oh, wow.
03:49 Yeah, so I was a little boy. Every day I saw the Samurai Me or Romero and Dario Argento or something.
03:59 And it's inspired by Samurai Me and Toby Hooper and Dario Argento. Of course, John Carpenter.
04:09 Yeah.
04:10 [Pause]
04:39 [Clock ticking]
05:06 But there's such a mix. Again, those filmmakers are very great at comedy.
05:10 Yeah, yeah.
05:11 Knowing how to direct.
05:12 Yeah.
05:13 And knowing how to direct precisely the actors.
05:15 Yeah. So I'm inspired by Gremlin and her creature, Haruka's creature is inspired by Gizmo.
05:25 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love comedy film too. So combine it.
05:32 Yeah.
05:36 [Foreign language]
05:52 [Foreign language]
06:13 [Grunting]
06:28 [Foreign language]
06:49 But there's a lot of logistics that go into that to being able to be spontaneous in the acting.
06:57 Where she's like, "Ahh!" And he's like... It's about reaction sometimes, not about what's being said.
07:06 [Foreign language]
07:31 [Foreign language]
07:56 [Foreign language]
08:17 There's so many themes behind this.
08:20 A lot of fun, but a lot of comedy.
08:23 But as you said, it's about connection, about isolation, about how society is changing.
08:29 Now, even though we're not talking about this specifically, this kind of phone culture, but could you talk about reflecting that?
08:38 [Foreign language]
09:07 [Foreign language]
09:29 [Music]