Matthew Parkhill
Matthew Parkhill returned to the director's chair earlier this year with his new movie The Caller - which is released on DVD today.
The film has been met well on the horror festival circuit and I caught up to talk about it, shooting in Puerto Rico and accidentally putting together a great cast.
- The Caller is about to be released on DVD so for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet can you tell me a bit about it?
It’s a psychological thriller about a young woman who is escaping an abusive marriage and has moved into an old apartment where she starts getting these weird phone calls from this older woman.
These two women start to bond, as this older woman has been having trouble with her husband/boyfriend, but then she drops the bombshell that she is calling from the past - and the main character Mary doesn’t believe her at first and just thinks that she is a nutty old woman.
Basically the old woman starts to prove that she is from the past and starts to f*** with Mary’s life in the past and there fore has repercussions in the present. So it’s a rollercoaster psychological thriller basically.
- The script was penned by Sergio Casci so how did you get involved and what was it about this story that drew you to the movie?
I got sent the script by some producers that I had worked with before and they had been approached to put money into it. I just loved the smartness of it - at the time I had been getting sent a lot of genre movies for some reason and this is one that stood out for me because it was just so smart.
I loved that not everything was explained and I loved the fact that you had to think about it and I loved the fact that it had a really meaty female lead, which you don’t always get in a genre movie.
It was as much about a psychological meltdown as it was about any horror elements so it was just something that stood out for me and I really enjoyed the read.
- With the exception of this movie you have penned all your writer everything else that you have directed do what was it like working with someone else’s screenplay?
I have to say I felt it easier to be honest, I am a very reluctant writer, I found it easy because I found that I could me more objective about the material; when it’s your own material it’s hard to have a distance from it but with someone else’s I felt I could be more objective about what worked and what didn’t work. It was a good experience - I never want to write again!
- With so many movies like this they tend to turn into a bit of a gore fest - this film doesn’t do that so was it a conscious choice not to go down that road?
A lot of the other scripts that I had been sent were torture porn or body count movies and, not being disparaging about those movies, they just don’t for me I don’t watch those kind of and I don’t like them.
I’m a big fan of The Ring or The Grudge, Let The Right One In or Rosemary’s Baby, movies where the horror and the fear is more about the atmosphere and it’s as much about what you don’t see as what you do see.
So when this came along, a couple of days before I had read a script set in Scotland where these kids ended up in a cellar and slaughtered each other or someone slaughtered them; the fact that this wasn’t that I liked that kind of movie.
I love horror movies and I love thrillers and psychological thrillers but I am not a body count guy - and I felt with this one it went to a slightly more interesting place and as a result could stand out from those other movies.
- Rachelle Lefevre and Stephen Moyer are on the cast list so can you tell me a bit about the casting process?
It was kind of by chance that those two ended up in the film even though it looks like a marketing dream - I always say to people ‘I wish I was that smart - I will put Twilight and True Blood together and hey we have a movie’.
We got word from a casting director that Stephen was interested, someone had sent his people the script; but originally he was interested in the role of the ex husband.
The first call I had with him, we are both Essex boys and we grew up a couple of towns from each other and went to all the same pubs without knowing it, the first call we had together, after getting over our Essex heritage, he sort of said ’I more interested in the role of the boyfriend’ and I said ‘that’s funny because I feel that that is a much more interesting role for you.’
Obviously he carries that True Blood baggage, which most people know him from, that sort of menace and danger and I thought if he played the boyfriend in this that would be interesting because the audience won’t know where the threat is coming from - it will be like ’is the boyfriend about to turn into the threat?’
It was just something that we saw eye to eye on - so that is how he came about, I am big fan of True Blood so that was a no brainer.
Rachelle was on my shortlist but she wasn’t the original Mary and we ended up having to replace the original Mary after we started shooting. Rachelle stepped in, literally stepped in at the last moment, flew down to Porto Rico and started filming the same day.
While it looks like a carefully crafted piece of marketing it wasn’t it was just one of those things.
Moyer and Rachelle had never met before but they have great chemistry on screen, I didn’t know that; normally when you are casting you will do something that’s called a chemistry read where you get your two actors in a room and see if they sparkle on screen - I had not idea how they play off on screen that was just luck.
So that was a wired one because it wasn’t planned but it paid off - on my next movie when I cast I am just going to wait until we start shooting.
- How did you find working with them?
I loved it. They are both very different actors - Moyer hits it straight away he sort of comes in and does his thing - he is very well prepared; he asks a lot of questions before hands and then makes his artistic choices.
Rachelle is a little different as she comes from a more emotional place, it’s a very emotionally heavy role for her, and she would get going after a couple of takes and then hit it. It was interesting with both of them - as they are both incredibly smart.
One of the things that I have learnt as a director and feel that I have improved of as a director is the ability to stand back a bit - if you have good actors with good instincts then you want to listen to them.
This movie went to a much more extreme place as a result of those two than it would have been otherwise, it was more of a psychological place, I will take credit for it but it was them and them working together and playing with the characters.
All directors say that there cast was a joy to work with but they really were a joy to work with - I hope that I will be lucky enough to do it again. They are great actors, especially here because she is in every single scene of this and I think that she really shines.
- Some of the most intense scenes in the movie come when Rachelle is on the phone so what there anyone speaking to her whilst filming those scenes - or was Rose's voice put
in in post production?
We were having this debate because it was a low budget movie and we were on a tight schedule, we shot in 23 days and had $2 million, but I always knew that I wanted Lorna. So the discussion was to film Rachelle’s stuff and then put Lorna in in post production as you say because it is a lot cheaper.
But a lot of actors say it’s not about acting it’s about reacting and I was like ‘Rachelle is going to need someone to play off’ so what we did was we built a set for Lorna’s character, which is a living room set, which you never see.
We installed a real phone line and we recorded with a boom mic on both actors and we were recording both of them the whole time.
We never rehearsed the phone calls, we would rehearse the blocking of the scene; the physical movement, but Lorna never called during rehearsals so Rachelle never knew what Lorna was going to throw at her.
So the things that you see her go through she was actually going through - as opposed to a schmuck like me reading off camera to me and then put in in post. And that is one of the reasons, for me, why performance wise both Rachelle and Loran are so good because they were bouncing off each other.
It was a tough one because when I got the script, as much as I love it, one of my first questions was how to you film a movie when 60% is a phone call? How do you make tense and scary when you have one actor on screen for a lot of the movie? It seemed to work by doing what we did, in terms of the phone calls.
- The movie was originally set in New York but moved to Puerto Rico so why the move? Was there any discussion about filming in Puerto Rico as if it was New York?
The script was originally set in Glasgow, because it was based on a short film by a Glaswegian writer; he had made a shot film ten years ago and then he had written a feature from that. But he couldn’t get it off the ground in Glasgow so he switched it to New York and that is when people started being interested and that is when I got the script.
I got a call from the producer saying ‘can we shoot Puerto Rico for New York?’ And I was like ‘I have no idea because I have never been to Puerto Rico’. I didn’t know anything about Puerto Rico at that stage but a lot of movies do shoot down there because there are 40% tax breaks basically.
So I went down to make it look like New York and within ten minutes I was like ’Well you could put the camera in front of this building and not move it’ but I was like ’what would you do that when this is such an interesting place visually?’ I thought why don’t we set the story here? It doesn’t chance the story it just chance the backstory of the characters.
So it started out as a cost decision, and a practical production decision, but it turned out to be an artistic decision.
- How did you find shooting there?
I had a great time. It was a tough movie to shoot as we shot in twenty three days, which is tight, and we had our fair share of things that happened during the movie and it was tough - but creatively it was great.
Personally I felt a long way from home because I had just become a father for the first time. But creatively it was one of the past experiences that I have had I don’t know why - maybe because we were down there a long way from anywhere and we had a great Puerto Rican crew who were very proud of the work that they did; they see this as a Puerto Rican movie.
It was a good experience but it was intense - we had hurricanes trying to wreck sets but it was a good experience.
I have done projects that have gone swimmingly but have been left less than happy with the final result and yet this one was tough physically to do but I am very very happy with the end result - you can never tell.
- You have touched on my next question really what were the biggest challenges for you whist shooting this movie?
We had big scale thing such has having to replace out lead actress on day one - that was tough and brought a few challenges.
The biggest challenge was time and the schedule - we started off with thirty five days and that went to thirty, twenty five and we ended up shooting it in twenty three; your average low budget movie usually had a schedule of thirty five days so that is pretty tight.
Initially working with a crew that I didn’t know but that quickly turned into an advantage because they were so damn good. All kinds of things happened to us; Moyer talks about the curse and all the weird things that happened to us on set that freaked people out and I was like ’Yeah, yeah, yeah’.
- How have you found the reacting to the movie so far?
It’s been very good - we got really good reviews from some really good people; Screen International gave it a really good review, it was like something my mother wrote. Then we got some very cool reviews from some of the big genre sites in America - these sorts of movies are their bread and butter.
So I feel pleased. As a director I have to be pleased with what I have done and I have to be proud of it and stand by it and I feel whether you like it or not is down to taste - but I feel proud because it is a well made piece of work.
For people who are into body count movies and torture porn this isn’t their kind of movie but for those who like their movies with a bit more atmosphere - this is about fear and tension and atmosphere.
And from a female point of view it isn’t very often that you get a strong female role in genre movies it’s usually a blonde with big tits screaming and going through a door she shouldn’t go through - where as with this film psychologically it was a very interesting character.
- During your career you have worked in both movies and TV so how do the two compare/differ?
The TV as I have done has been quite low budget as well. There are more time constraints in TV things happen quicker - I have to say that I do love working in both.
Ten or fifteen years ago the world of film looked down on the world of TV but not anymore as there is some amazing stuff being done on TV and as a director and writer to get the chance to do that kind of stuff is phenomenal.
It is a different world in some respects, working on a movie will take two years of your life as a director, even if you are doing a big one off film for TV it is unlikely that it will take two years - so it’s a slightly different time scale.
- Finally what's next for you?
The next directing job, if it all goes according to plan, is a movie called Twist, This is something completely different to The Caller and it’s a modern day retelling of Oliver Twist and basically all of Fagan’s gang can do free-running and all of that and Fagan assembles them for a series of art heists.
My take on it is it’s a young Ocean’s Eleven with the cast of Skins and loosely based on Oliver Twist.
I have just finished the director’s draft on that and if the movie gods are smiling on us we will begin filming that in the spring.
The Caller is out on DVD now. Read our review of the movie here
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Matthew Parkhill returned to the director's chair earlier this year with his new movie The Caller - which is released on DVD today.
The film has been met well on the horror festival circuit and I caught up to talk about it, shooting in Puerto Rico and accidentally putting together a great cast.
- The Caller is about to be released on DVD so for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet can you tell me a bit about it?
It’s a psychological thriller about a young woman who is escaping an abusive marriage and has moved into an old apartment where she starts getting these weird phone calls from this older woman.
These two women start to bond, as this older woman has been having trouble with her husband/boyfriend, but then she drops the bombshell that she is calling from the past - and the main character Mary doesn’t believe her at first and just thinks that she is a nutty old woman.
Basically the old woman starts to prove that she is from the past and starts to f*** with Mary’s life in the past and there fore has repercussions in the present. So it’s a rollercoaster psychological thriller basically.
- The script was penned by Sergio Casci so how did you get involved and what was it about this story that drew you to the movie?
I got sent the script by some producers that I had worked with before and they had been approached to put money into it. I just loved the smartness of it - at the time I had been getting sent a lot of genre movies for some reason and this is one that stood out for me because it was just so smart.
I loved that not everything was explained and I loved the fact that you had to think about it and I loved the fact that it had a really meaty female lead, which you don’t always get in a genre movie.
It was as much about a psychological meltdown as it was about any horror elements so it was just something that stood out for me and I really enjoyed the read.
- With the exception of this movie you have penned all your writer everything else that you have directed do what was it like working with someone else’s screenplay?
I have to say I felt it easier to be honest, I am a very reluctant writer, I found it easy because I found that I could me more objective about the material; when it’s your own material it’s hard to have a distance from it but with someone else’s I felt I could be more objective about what worked and what didn’t work. It was a good experience - I never want to write again!
- With so many movies like this they tend to turn into a bit of a gore fest - this film doesn’t do that so was it a conscious choice not to go down that road?
A lot of the other scripts that I had been sent were torture porn or body count movies and, not being disparaging about those movies, they just don’t for me I don’t watch those kind of and I don’t like them.
I’m a big fan of The Ring or The Grudge, Let The Right One In or Rosemary’s Baby, movies where the horror and the fear is more about the atmosphere and it’s as much about what you don’t see as what you do see.
So when this came along, a couple of days before I had read a script set in Scotland where these kids ended up in a cellar and slaughtered each other or someone slaughtered them; the fact that this wasn’t that I liked that kind of movie.
I love horror movies and I love thrillers and psychological thrillers but I am not a body count guy - and I felt with this one it went to a slightly more interesting place and as a result could stand out from those other movies.
- Rachelle Lefevre and Stephen Moyer are on the cast list so can you tell me a bit about the casting process?
It was kind of by chance that those two ended up in the film even though it looks like a marketing dream - I always say to people ‘I wish I was that smart - I will put Twilight and True Blood together and hey we have a movie’.
We got word from a casting director that Stephen was interested, someone had sent his people the script; but originally he was interested in the role of the ex husband.