Recently we had the chance to put our questions to non-sibling half American, half Canadian filmmakers and Grave Encounterers* Colin Minihan and Stuart Ortiz, better known to the world as The Vicious Brothers.
Their new film, the alien abduction chiller Extraterrestrial, opens in the UK today and is their biggest film to date (‘We’d written a $30million film and tried to pull it off for $3million…’). Moving on from their wildly popular found-footage horrors Grave Encounters 1 and 2 the filmmakers seem pleased to be making more traditional genre films.
Listening to them talk it’s interesting to see how they work, even in interviews. They complemented each other’s answers , jumped on and off each other’s train of thought and you get the sense that there is a single vision for each film, honed and sharpened rather than compromised out of shape.
Extraterrestrial takes a familiar premise (teens/wood/aliens) and delivers some neat visual moments as well as some very nasty comeuppances. It is also a film out of time. New and well-worn elements collide and we started by getting a feel for their direct influences for the film.
Minihan began, ‘Steven Spielberg probably has the most influence, both Close Encounters and his more recent War of the Worlds remake were inspirational to us. Close Encounters was the first to do the light coming through the windows as a signature idea of aliens out there. War of the Worlds expanded on that but in a far darker way and far scarier.’
Ortiz continued, ‘Also some more obscure stuff, like the McPherson Tapes which was a TV mockumentary from 1989. It’s this pre-Blair Witch Project, found-footage film that not a lot of people know exists. Fire in the Sky – there’s one scene [in Extraterrestrial] which is a huge homage to that. That movie scared the crap out of me as a kid and I wanted to make an alien abduction film after seeing that.’
Now that it is the turn of the 1990s to be revived (Hello again Twin Peaks you lovely, lovely town), we asked the pair if the saturation of aliens in popular culture during the 90s affected their construction of the horror in their film. They agreed it had, that Extraterrestrial was a ‘modernisation [the myth] for a new era.’
‘I think that this is a throwback to ’90s alien horror. That’s why we wanted to make the film, there hadn’t been anything that had played on the mythos of UFOs and kept it to its roots. People making a science-fiction film want to make the creature as crazy as it can be, or have the alien made up of tentacles and look like a squid we always had a really clear, concise vision of what we wanted it to be like. We wanted it to be a throwback to what people think UFOs and aliens would really look like.’
‘Extraterrestrial is such a different film to Grave Encounters, which was a claustrophobic story and a lot of the horror is derived from being trapped. A lot of the horror in this film is derived from the idea of what they do to you when they take you. Certain characters in the film would do anything rather than be taken on the UFO – and that arguably more scary than being taken.’
While the pair are making traditional genre films they had an interesting take on making films right now, ‘We try to stay hip with what other people are doing. Unfortunately there are not a lot of horror films we take inspiration from, it’s usually from other genres. Horror movies right now are at a place where [financial constraints] doesn’t leave much room from crazy concepts and doing interesting things.’
‘I think now the best genre films are the ones which, unfortunately, aren’t getting wide releases. The ones getting released in the studio system feel safe to audiences and all a little bit played out.’
Finally we wanted to know more about their third Grave Encounters film, given the amount of interest online about a continuation. However that’s not where the pair are heading.
‘We have a scriptment – or a skelescript. It’s a prequel, it’s set in the 1940s in the mental institution when it’s operational and it would be a lot of fun to make that. We’re figuring out how to get it made.’
Extraterrestrial is out in Cinemas today.
*No, that’s not a word. You win ten points.
Our thanks to Marek Steven for his help with this one.
