The Big Picture - Modern Horror and ‘It Comes at Night’ Director Trey Edward Shults | The Big Picture (Ep. 15)

Episode Date: June 8, 2017

Ringer editor-in-chief Sean Fennessey and film critic K. Austin Collins discuss the emergence of modern horror films like ‘The Witch’ and the increasing emphasis on tone over standard horror tropes (1:00). Then, Sean is joined by Trey Edward Shults, who explains how working through his own darkness led to making his latest film, ‘It Comes At Night’ (15:50). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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When conversations flow, decisions get made, innovation increases, and even widely dispersed teams become more effective. Dolby Voice and Dolby Conference Phone are also integrated with leading video conferencing solutions like BlueJeans Huddle. Visit dolby.com backslash the ringer to try a Dolby Voice and Dolby Conference Phone are also integrated with leading video conferencing solutions like BlueJeans Huddle. Visit dolby.com backslash TheRinger to try a Dolby Voice demo today. Hello and welcome to The Big Picture, a Channel 33 Movies podcast. My name is Sean Fennessy. I'm the editor-in-chief of The Ringer. I'm very happy to be joined today by Trey Edward Schultz, director of the new movie, It Comes at Night. But first, before we talk to Trey, we're going to be joined by Ringer staff writer and film critic and thoughtful person all around, K. Austin Collins. Cam, welcome to the show. Thank you for joining me.

Yeah, this is great. Thank you. So Cam, you know, like I said, I talked to Trey and I want to talk a little bit about It Comes at Night, his new movie, which is a sort of a horror movie of sorts that essentially follows a family living in a cabin in what seems like a post-apocalyptic time. A disease of some kind has trapped this family in close quarters. And then there are some, I guess you could say, unwelcome guests that arrive. It's not a conventional horror movie, though, by any means. It's very claustrophobic.

It's very true to Trey's first movie, Cretia. You know, I'm curious what you think of Trey's work and kind of how you describe the first two movies he's made. Well, first of all, I, you know, went into this feeling pretty gratified that he made a horror movie because my impression from Cretia, which is, you know, basically a movie about an estranged family member who comes back for Thanksgiving after 10 years and, you know, hilarity ensues and things go crazy. Um, I remember thinking when I saw that for the first time that the way he kind of moves the camera,

the way he evokes these sort of weirdly uncomfortable moods would have been perfect for a horror movie. He kind of made a horror movie out of domestic drama. Um, so I feel like I'm, I'm glad that he actually went more in that direction, although I'm with you on the sort of horror movie part. And I wonder if maybe we can talk about that because I walked away from it

not as sure that it was like a pure horror movie as I thought it was going to be. Not that I wasn't scared, but I'm a scaredy cat, so that's not a good measure of anything. I'm scared of a lot of things, so that's not a good measure of any i'm scared of a lot of things so that's not a good measure of anything it doesn't do it doesn't do conventional horror movie stuff there's not very many jump scares um there's really only one kind of dream sequence that you can speak of that really leans into some of the conventions of some of this stuff and he's he's a mood filmmaker you know he's somebody who's trying to get you uh wound tightly

and waiting for something terrible to happen. And sometimes he delivers on that. And Cretia, memorably, for those who haven't seen it, there's an epic, horrifying moment where a turkey falls. That's all I'll say. A beautiful turkey. A delicious-looking turkey. Glistening, well-basted. Yeah.

So he has a real knack for um building towards the moment but it comes at night doesn't always deliver on that moment the way that you want it to right right and you know does it does his filmmaking remind you of anybody are there people that you think are working in that zone that because you know a lot of modern horror especially with the rise a lot of the blumhouse stuff has is thoughtful and is well made but doesn't is not afraid to lean into some of the classic tricks of the trade. Right, right.

I mean, this is almost unfair because this movie came out from A24, and a recent horror movie that also came out from A24 was The Witch. And I like this one a bit more than The Witch, but they're similar to me in that they're very much about whatever they're actually about. They're really about mood. And they're really about how much you can get the images to really pull out of a situation. Like how much you can really tease the horror at the outskirts and make things mysterious without really ever. I mean, in The Witch witch there's a moment where

like a witch like kills a baby or something that was pretty terrifying um but other than that like the mood it's really it's really about mood it's about what you in the audience um are feeling because of the things you're seeing and not seeing rather than because of things popping out of you out at you and um things getting too too gory this is really not that kind of movie but it is like you know i mean you see lesions and you know the whatever this disease is is disgusting um but it's it's not the same kind of uh you know it's it's much more of a a mood thing um than a than outright scare thing which is why I think horror is such an odd, I mean, it's the appropriate category, but it's not the kind of horror movie I think

going into a movie that I'm being told is a horror movie. And I wonder how people are going to respond to that. I've been thinking about that, too. The way the movie has been marketed obviously makes it feel a little bit more traditional than it actually is. The Witch is an interesting comparison, though, right? Because in some ways those stories are very similar. They're about families who have sort of closed themselves off from society

who are then waging some sort of battle against an outside unknown force. So there is something to that for sure. And I think the reason maybe this works better for me than the witch is because family bonds and family tension are clearly his thing. You know, Krisha was interesting in part for being, you know, starring his actual aunt, being based on an event in his own life. I think it was something like a cousin relapsing at a family reunion was the basis for the story of Krisha. And you could just sort of, and I think it starts on people that he was related to as well. You can just sort of, and he's in it.

And you can just sort of tell that it's very personal, that the things that he's working out are things that he has thought about because he's been in them before. And I think what he carries into this movie is, and what's best about this movie for me, is just a lot of attention to the interactions and the trust between family units versus, you know, in this movie a second family comes up.

And how those families interact, the innate loyalty you have to someone you're related to, even as things are happening that maybe break that bond. I mean, those kinds of questions are the things that really make his movies interesting for me, even more so than the quote-unquote horror stuff. It's really about, like, you know, Joel Edgerton was a history teacher, and now he has a gun and a family and a bunker, and, you know, the things he's willing to do to get some chickens.

You know, it's... That's the interesting stuff. The bonds between people i think is what's standing out for that for me yeah and i think uh we train i talked a little bit about the shining and there's there's something to that too this sort of as people turn on each other and in closed spaces and as paranoia seeps in is more of a trope than you might think when you're watching this movie. But he's also such a visually striking director. But he doesn't do something.

He also talked about like there will be blood. He talked about a lot of operatic movies. And he doesn't always operate in that vein. He doesn't always hit you with the I'm finished climactic bowling pin scene. Right. Right. I mean, it's funny because when this movie ended, and obviously I won't give away the with the I'm finished climactic bowling pin scene. Right. Right. I mean, it's funny because when this movie ended,

and obviously I won't give away the ending, even as I saw it kind of going to that place, I think he denies you both the easy satisfaction of the ending, but he pulls something off, and I don't really know how to put it to words. He pulls something off that makes the movie much sadder to me. Because you kind of wind up realizing what the movie is about, which is not really the premise, the horror premise. It's about something a little bit richer and more personal.

So I really thought of The Thing, the John Carpenter 1982 movie. And I believe he's raised this in interviews as well the um the it's like the space that you're all in and you're all paranoid of each other and yeah there might be a monster but it's really about how that monster recalibrates how you're relating to everyone else that's in this tight space with you um and I just I mean I love the thing so any movie that evokes that in any way um is on my good side. Because I think The Thing is smart about that. It's not about the monster.

It's about us. It is. It's sort of like working at a website. We're all on Slack together, communicating. So if it's like a website, but what's the plague? I think it's just the impending doom of things happening that you have to write about. Yeah, amen. Well, Cam, are there any other horror movies in recent times that you wanted to discuss?

Obviously, you wrote quite well about Get Out earlier this year. I think we find ourselves in an interesting moment for the genre. You know, I think it's imperfect. But a movie that my mind goes back to a lot is Unfriended. I think ultimately Unfriended, I don't think teenage problems are like, it's too recent for me. It's like the trauma of reliving high school drama is somehow not something I ever want to revisit in a movie. But what I really like about that movie is that it just finds its own language to do that. It becomes just the computer screens. And I think it gets a little cheesy, and I don't think the ending really works.

But I love the audacity of it, I guess. It's a movie I think about a lot. It's not like the best movie. And I also, even though I didn't love The Witch, I movie I think about a lot. It's not like the best movie. Um, and I also, even though I didn't love the witch, I think about the witch a lot too. Um, I think we should have more horror movies about early America cause it was

crazy out there. Um, that's an interesting contrast to unfriended is maybe the most modern execution. Yeah. Absolutely. What scares us and what the potential of what terrifies us and the witch is sort of like what is then the origins of our pain and our suffering you know yeah absolutely

um and actually relative to it comes at night in a way um it follows which for me always was most striking for all the familial subtext of the main character like the missing father the mother who you hear but don't really see. That movie is as much about family bonds and friend bonds for me as it is about this unkillable, unstoppable force. And then, I mean, I love horror movies. I see bad ones. For whatever reason, I still think about The Bye-Bye Man. I do not know why. So The Bye-Bye Man, that's a movie that came out earlier this year. What was The Bye Bye Man about?

The Bye Bye Man, it's like if you say the name The Bye Bye Man, it comes after you and haunts you, and eventually it's you either killing everyone or killing yourself. I even sort of forget the concept. I just remember people being driven crazy and wanting to kill. But it's funny how that manifests itself. That movie has its merits. I'm not going to defend it or anything.

But I am. I mean, even bad horror movies. It's just a genre for me where even if they're bad, I don't usually walk away from them not having gotten anything out of them. I don't really feel that way about every genre, I have to say. I feel very similarly. I tend to consume almost every type of horror movie, which is an interesting thing. It makes, it makes that, it makes the genre sort of impervious to the vagaries of the business, the vagaries of criticism there. There's something visceral about the experience that people, if you're a fan are sort of, um, unable to deny? Yeah, right.

I mean, if I was scared at all, I mean, I'm an easy mark, but if I was scared at all, it's going to stick with me. Because fear is something that my mind always goes back to. And I remember about every horror movie what scared me. And I don't really feel that way about, even in genres that I really love more,

horror movies really stick with me in a way and i think it comes at night in particular i'm going to keep thinking about the red door i'm going to keep thinking about the hallway the cinematographer here um drew daniels i think is the name um is doing some really impressive stuff yeah i think about light in this movie trey and i talked about the red door quite a bit i mean that it is a kind of a terrifying concept. And I don't want to spoil it for the audience. But, yeah, you know, there's something visually incredibly powerful about what he did, no matter how you feel about the way that he told the story. Absolutely.

And I have to say, like, plague movies or plagues generally, I think, very quickly become very trite. Like zombie stuff, all that stuff, I think very quickly it's very uninteresting. And I think he finds a way to really instill this with a weirdness and a dread that felt evocative and unique and fresh for me. And I, you know, that's exciting, you know? Well, Cam, that's a good place to wrap it up. Thank you very much for chatting with me and talk to you soon talk to you soon all right thanks to cam collins and when we come back i'll be talking to director trey edward schultz

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Trey, thank you for being here with me today. Thank you for having me, man. Pleasure. So, It Comes at Night is your second film. Indeed. It's kind of a horror movie, though I've heard you redefine that. How do you explain the movie to people? Oh, I'm probably the worst to explain the movie to people.

Great, I'm glad you're here. I don't know, man. I would say it's a personal horror movie, and it's not a conventional horror. That's what I tell everyone when the first thing anyone wants to know. I'm like, it's not a conventional horror movie. It's a movie that comes from a deeply personal place and and i took that stuff and put it into a totally fictional narrative and i think it has a lot on its mind uh i don't know i'm always very vague when i talk about movies i do that's good though so i i described um krisia your last film yeah as uh

the scariest movie that i saw last year oh that's that's amazing. But it's not, it's also not a traditional horror movie. I'm curious for you why you take these enclosed environments, these claustrophobic settings, these personal familial bonds, and use them as a way to talk about sort of what scares you or what can be anxious. It's a good question. I'm not quite sure why I had gravitated to that so far. But yeah, man, I don't know. It's probably just a combination of my tastes and personal stuff. You know, both It Comes at Night and Cretia, they come from very personal places and dark places in my family and relationships with family members.

And with Cretia, it was more addiction with like my dad or my grandma or my cousin. And then with Night, it was death and it was like losing my dad. And that's where everything began from that personal place and like confronting mortality for the first time in my life and like really changing things. Um, and that was like the building block that led to everything else. So it comes at night is essentially a, um, a disease, anxiety, drama, you know, the, the, it seems like the world has been overtaken somehow with this virus of some kind that is making people sick. Obviously you're relating that to a personal experience that you have are you thinking more specifically about how things are affecting the world that you're building or you focus strictly on the story and the characters that you want to

tell at least with this because i feel like every movie has been different so far i haven't really done much but with night it it like gushed out of me. Like, I lost my dad to cancer, and we had a messed-up relationship. I hadn't seen him in, like, over 10 years because he battled addiction, and, like, things were bad, and I just, like, cut off our relationship. And then I saw him for the first time in 10 years on his deathbed full of regret, and I just tried to help him find any kind of peace I could. And it was, like i said before like after that day my life changed like i saw things differently and it was my first time really

confronting death and with this two months after that i sat down and i wrote the opening scene and it was what sarah says to her dad is what i said to my dad and it just came from there but then this totally fictional thing spilt out after that. And then that's just where it started. Then obviously it's not like you make the movie right after that. Like I didn't film the movie

another like two or three years or like over two years after that. So you have time to think about your world and everything after that. But for me with this one, especially it really started from there. Cretia is a similarly personal story that features a lot of members of your family as the actors you're in the film yeah I want you to

kind of contextualize for listeners what the process was like getting that from the short film stage and so much of what you did and and what it was like to work so closely with people that were so close to you on something so personal. Totally. And Creech was actually such a long journey because I tried to make the feature back in 2012 with $7,000 of my own money I had saved. And we shot in five days. And I had a nervous breakdown behind closed doors. It was like one of the worst weeks of my life.

I knew we weren't getting a feature and it mattered. I cared about it deeply and I knew it wasn't working but I like trekked on and did it and then basically I spent two years with that footage and I turned it into a short film that I actually felt proud of um and in that time like before that short film played South by I wrote the script for it comes at night like I lost my dad I was going through that and I wrote that and like, that was what I wanted to make next. But like with the short film of creation, no one cared. I mean,

it had a great reception at South by I was expecting investors to just be like, what's your movie? Here's money. And no one cared. No one came up. So like, I just had no practical way of making that movie.

And then I started thinking about Crescia and the short and like how I love that short, but how much more the feature could be and what I always envisioned and how that's not in the short. The short is like 15 minutes of intensity and the feature has a whole other range of emotions and digs deeper. And so after that, I rewrote the feature and then and then we filmed that. And that time I took everything I learned from the short film and did it right. You know, I got the right. But we still we made that feature for like 30, 35000. So still a really low budget. We shot, I think, in nine days.

And, you know, we got family members, friends all meshed together. Best week of my life. Incredible experience. We knew we were making something special. And then that whole journey happened. We got family members, friends, all meshed together. Best week of my life. Incredible experience. We knew we were making something special. And then that whole journey happened. And then Crescia, luckily, people dug it. And then the kind folks at like A24 saw Crescia.

They were like, what do you want to do? I sent them the script I had already written for Knight. And they were like, oh, yeah, we want to make this. So it was like simple and easy. And we did that. And then my big thing going from Crescia to Knight was like, it's gotta be different. I gotta challenge myself in a new way. For starters, my family can't be in it and I gotta get professional actors. And that's what I did. And what I ended up finding out is like, it wasn't that different from making Crescia.

I want to ask you about that before, before we talk about it, of course, take me back. So you, you make the short film of Crescia and it doesn't get exactly the response that you want it to get yeah it does seem like a strange choice to double down and say i need to make this three times as long and i need to uh really get more money involved and more family involved what what would have happened if that didn't work where would you be i have no idea um probably still working for my dad still writing still just like studying I mean I'm still studying but you know what I mean just like hustling wanting to make something I I feel like I would have made something else by now I have no idea what that

would have been though what were you doing before the short film I've read that you spent some time working for Terrence Malick um what is that experience like before you're able to make your own projects, trying to glean what you can in Texas? Totally. Well, it's a long, wacky story. I basically, when I was 19, I was in college for a year. And then I went to Hawaii for the summer to live with my aunt, Carisha. And she does a lot of voice work. And she was connected with the industry there.

And I worked on a lot of commercials and stuff just so I could be around on sets. Whole long story. I lucked out and got on a Terrence Malick movie as an intern, which was not really— it was like second-unit footage for a Terrence Malick movie, essentially. It was like the birth-of-the-universe sequence in Tree of Life, and then the new movie he's released ended up being Voyage of of time. Um, and I got on that as a kid, not knowing anything. And then the, uh, whole long story, the, the, um, uh, the film loader taught me how to load film. And I started loading film and the DP liked me and he got me on all the other shoots and we got

along. And then I was like, I'm not going to go back to college right now. And I went to like Chile and Monterey and Iceland and Utah. And, you know, I was like 19 turning 20 and like, this is dope. And then I interned for Terry for a bit and then went back home. But I had to go back home and work for my dad because I wasn't getting paid money to do that. And then, you know, between doing that and then working on another Terrence Malick movie, working on a Jeff Nichols movie, but then working for my dad for money

and then studying movies and doing that as my film school, I basically just dropped out of college and made film my life and did my own film school and then worked on stuff when I could and then did what I had to do to make money. What do you learn from Malick? He's a, such a mysterious character. What was that like being on set with him? And what do you pick up in that experience? Yeah, I thought it was amazing. And, um, he makes movies in a totally unorthodox way and he's an amazing guy and has an amazing

energy. But the big thing i picked up is like don't try to make a movie like terry does you would be a fool to do that uh so i don't do that but what if anything what i took from him is i think uh just his like creative energy you know and how he searches and how he pushes to not do the norm you know and and look outside of that and find that right energy and channel it. Um, yeah, that's interesting. A good segue to talking about Joel Edgerton and, and movie stars. Um, what was that like for you to work with people who are saying not your aunt? It wasn't different at all. It was like, um, okay. The difference is you don't know these

people in the set. Like you don't know what makes them tick. It's not as intimate as it is if you're directing your mom or your aunt. But for me, what was always huge is like making that jump from going with working family with family and friends to people I don't even know is like, I need to feel like they're good human beings. And like, as soon as I sat down with Joel, like I just felt like he was a good person and I knew him and I loved him.

And he brought Chris over in that same meeting. Christopher Abbott, who's always also in the film. Um, and it was just so natural and right. And we're like, it's our first meeting and we're all just like hanging out and enjoying it. And I'm like, this feels good. And then the rest of the casting was like that. I had to, um, you know, be a fan of their work obviously, but like feel they were good people and excited and just good vibes. And by the end of the first week of shooting, it felt like that. It was a bigger production than Crescia.

It's still a small movie in the scheme of things. But like by the end of the first week, it felt like Crescia. We had crew and cast and like Joel sweating his ass off. I don't know if I can curse. You can. Say more. You can curse more.

Awesome. Sweating his ass off in between takes. And he's like let's do another one it's gonna be amazing and crew and everyone just being like really passionate and like the my dolly grip who amazing guy he was like shocked i would talk to him and like just explain the emotion of the camera and why it needs to move this way and like feel the scene and he was like i'm just like most directors won't even look at me, and they go right to the DP and like, thank you for that. So for me, it was like, even though it wasn't family,

these were all strangers, and this was a bigger thing. I want us all to feel like a family. I don't know if that's possible on bigger movies. This was still a smaller thing, but that's how it felt, and it was really beautiful. Was there any anxiety that came with having, say, 35 000 to make a movie a little bit sure when you get into it like you're just making a movie like how like going to set the first day and like i think for me it was like the beginning of each week going to set it's like oh i got an i got a long week

ahead of me so there's that and then's, you'll have a day or something where maybe something's not going right. You don't quite know what it is. And all these people are standing around and you're supposed to have the answer and you don't, there's stuff like that. But in general, it's like with Crescia, even though it was, you know, my friends and family and a small crew just making a movie at our house. Like we were still making a movie. And I think no matter what scale you do, you're still making a movie. And when you really dig into it,

um, it's kind of the same thing. What did you do to prepare for this movie? Do you watch horror films? Do you watch claustrophobic stories? Are you reading things? What happens ahead of time? Yeah.

Um, with this one, it was interesting. It was just like kind of drawing on a variety of different things. Like first off, it was my dad's death. And then I was also reading books on genocide. Wow. And there's this Bruegel painting that's in the movie called Triumph of Death.

And like that being an inspiration. So those were sort of core things right there non-film related i should say you're a very friendly affable man and that is uh i don't know those are the three most intense things i was i was in a very dark state of mind when i when i wrote it and like i've been trying to figure out because like lately people have been asking me it's like why do you connect your dad's death with books on genocide and for me what it was was uh was like the regret that he felt you know and um like me realizing my biggest fear now is to be in that situation he was at and like facing death and feeling regret and then that leads to me thinking like okay there's worse things than death and worse is like

losing your humanity in the process and that leads to me thinking like, okay, there's worse things than death. And worse is like losing your humanity in the process. And that leads to like thinking about genocide and cycles of violence and how we keep repeating this stuff. And those were the things that I was really playing with and like obsessed with and thinking about when I wrote Night. And visually you capture some of the iconography burning of bodies and things that, you know, are resonant from that. And even like the way I see it too, is like the house is if you, if you want me to get pretentious for a second, I see the house is like the microcosm for the society. And then it's these two families in this house and these families are like tribes, you know, like us as humans, we've been on the earth for so long.

Like the majority of that time, like ingrained in us is like a tribal mentality, you know, and our tribe versus yours. And I think if things continue to get worse and like we continue to destroy ourselves and push and push into that situation, we're just going to loop back to where we came from and it's going to get more and more primal. So like I always saw night

as like a cautionary tale in that way. How many questions do Joel Edgerton or Carmen DeJogo have about what you're thinking about? And do they want the story explained to them in any significant way? Do they want their character explained to them? Yeah, that's a good question.

Every actor's different, and every actor has their own process, which was awesome to see and really fascinating just to see how they work. What is it like trying to create Dread? There's an amazing, ominous feeling through both of your movies yeah and i'm i'm curious how you approach that kind of kind of thing i don't know it's it's i think it's honestly more of an intuitive thing honestly the movie i watched most while making night was there will be blood and And like I've seen that movie so many times.

And just like the tone and mood that movie instills. I remember I took my mom to that movie and saw it in the theater. And it blew our mind. Like at the end, we were just sitting in silence. Like what did we just watch? But she loved it. She loved it too. And we like had to talk about it after.

You know, it's not like I have this preconceived map. I'm like this this is how I'm going to do dread. It just sort of naturally comes out that way. And when I start writing and seeing the story visually and how I'm going to shoot it and thinking about the music, like I'll build a whole track list of music and how that's very important to me. And I think they're all adding up to the final atmosphere that's going to come out with the movie, with the film when an audience sees it. So like Cretia, a lot of it comes at night, takes place inside of one home. Do you think that the intimacy that you're sort of forcing upon the setting, it builds towards that? Do the actors feel like, God, I've been in this one room for five days in a row and it's making me feel a certain way? I think it depends. It depends on the scene we're doing or something or like the certain

situation. Um, but yeah, I don't know. I mean this, this movie even more so like there's, there were literally boards on all the windows, you know,

it's like even more claustrophobic than Grisha was, even though we do leave the house at a point. Um, but I, yeah, I think that's gotta be in it. And I also, I love like,

um, like psychodrama and and chamber dramas and stuff, so I just gravitate towards that. But the next thing I want to do, I can't. I'm not going to do another single location. I've got to get out there. I was going to ask you, will Claustrophobic Dread be your signature going forward? No, not at all.

And I don't even know what my signature is. Right now, all I i'm gonna do is uh is try to make movies that i care about with my heart and my soul and put everything i have into them and that could be anything like the next thing i want to do is like kids in high school and a family over a year and i want it to like flow like a piece of music like boogie nights or goodfellas or something and and like so like just saying that probably sounds totally different from night but in my head they're all the same thing you know but i do feel like like i haven't fully expressed myself yet like i've only i've only done bits and i just got to keep you know doing

my stuff so i can show more that i want to do and that i love and everything did you always want to do this what kind of movies did you think you'd be making oh i have no idea that's a good question um when i was a kid what it started out with was like aliens and terminator and die hard and like the best like action movies and like the first time i saw aliens i snuck the videotape and watched on loop all night long and then my dad woke up and when the sun was rising i had to act like i was sleeping um that has some relationship with your i mean there's a claustrophobic dread in that movie totally totally and then well it's funny because like even like night sort of has like an action sequence and stuff and like i kind of see childhood stuff that i love coming through and it comes at night which is weird but then when

i got older i saw stuff like um like i remember the first time I saw Clockwork Orange or Raging Bull and it blew my mind and that was the first time I saw movies in a new way like the first time I saw Raging Bull I was like this isn't Rocky I don't know if I like it but I can't stop watching it and it really like did something to me but then I got obsessed and I kept watching it now it's one of my favorite movies ever you You said you saw There Will Be Blood with your mom, which is a heartwarming story. Do you come from a very film literate family? No, not at all. My mom and my stepdad are both therapists. And then my biological father that passed away,

he was the one that always took me to action movies. He grew me up on action movies, westerns he was obsessed with um he didn't like arty stuff and then uh my mom and my step my stepdad's the same way he's like when i'm explaining it comes at night i'm like it's not a conventional horror movie and stuff he's like yeah just sell tickets get butts and seats and that's not me at all um but then my mom like she i feel like i got her around on like stuff i love like i started taking her to like there will be blood or like i remember what else i took her to like blue valentine or like like sort of only the most heartwarming stories yeah we would like watch those movies

together and cry and like feel the emotions and everything so yeah i don't know this is an unusual scenario where i'm talking to someone about their mother, but I feel like I know your mother because I've seen your mother on film. Exactly. I can picture her in my mind's eye. There you go. So tell me a little bit about what it's like now to be a working filmmaker. Sure. I suspect that it's a lot different from where you were three years ago.

Yeah. How do you balance making choices, figuring out how you want to be perceived, what projects to do? What is it like to have all that in front of you right now? Well, it's a good point because it's so interesting. I like sometimes I have to remind myself, like, you know, feel good, buddy. You're in a different. But like I have a personality where I'm like at competition with myself and I'm never satisfied. Three years ago, my dream, just like dude i was broke working for

my dad i seemed like a crazy person with a fantasy of making movies one day everyone thought i was nuts i was a weirdo living with my parents all i wanted in the world was to be able to just like make any kind of living doing what i love and then currently i'm doing that so i hope i keep i get to keep doing that but now that i'm here, I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, I haven't done enough. I'm not working hard enough. I haven't tried enough. So it's also like a weird jump to go from that to this.

And like now I'm sitting here talking to you about a movie I made is still a bit surreal. But I always go back to I'm just going to do stuff that I believe in with all my heart and soul. And that will lead the right way, you know? So whatever that is, like right now, I'm not going to do anything unless like, it's what I love and I have to do. And I hope I just get to keep doing that. That would be incredible. Did you, did you move to Los Angeles? I did. No, I live in Florida. I live in, uh, I went from Texas to Florida. What is that? What part of Florida? Uh, right now we're in Orlando before we were in South Florida, about 30 minutes from Miami and my girlfriend's from Florida. So for a while, for a long time, I was living at my parents' house where we shot Crescia cause we were so broke. And then for a bit, it was my girlfriend and I and our three cats crammed in my bedroom upstairs, which is the end bedroom where

Crescia crawls into her son's room and everything. That was like exactly how my bedroom was, which was great. But like we had to get, we couldn't live there for too much longer. And then, but we were still broke. So we went to South Florida and my girlfriend's grandma gave us like a cheap apartment that she owned. But then I got paid a little bit of money for night. So we moved to Orlando and got a decent apartment. So one step at a time. I don't know. That's amazing. So how do you pursue your career

from Orlando, Florida? Is that difficult? It was actually so far. What I love is that it's away from LA and New York and it's away from the bullshit. Cause I think in, you know, in this industry, there's a lot of bullshit. And for me, it just grounds me and I can just, you know, in this industry, there's a lot of bullshit. And for me, it just grounds me. And I can just, you know what I mean? It's like another whatever. It just makes it simple. Like, I'm only going to do what I love. Let's do that.

There's got to be a way to make that happen. Where did you shoot It Comes at Night? Upstate New York. And how did you figure out to do it there? It was primarily, like, money reasons for tax incentives and stuff. And we were going between uh like outside of toronto or upstate new york and then we went we had like location scouted outside of toronto and like i couldn't find anything because i had to shoot 40 minutes within the city and i

was trying to get creative like i can combine three houses into one and it was gonna be a nightmare and then luckily we found this house in upstate new york and made it happen you mentioned a24 who picked up Carisha after it was at Sundance is that where uh South by Southwest Southwest excuse me um and then obviously they decided to make it comes at night right away what has it been like working with them obviously it's been quite a year for them and it's been amazing just to like sit on the sideline I remember like seeing the Oscars it like blew my mind i uh we're at home and we don't have cable and we got some streaming link and tuned in at the very end it was mind-blowing but they've

been amazing i like i've i've continuously waited for them to like let me down in some aspects and they haven't and they've just supported uh you know the film i wanted to make this whole time through everything uh so it's great too if people don't like the movie they wanted to make this whole time through everything. Uh, so it's great too. If people don't like the movie, they go to me for that. Not a 24 because they just, they supported me and had like, if it was like a creative thing, they would have great ideas or just support me or whatever. And like got me the budget I needed for it. And, and if I ever asked for anything that was lacking or worried about, they came through and like nothing but amazing things to say. What's the, what defines success for this movie? You know, what, how do you, does it,

I assume it's not an amount of money that it makes, but, and I'm sure you're proud of what you, what you've made, but how will you feel on June 10th or June 18th? That's a great question. And I know, I mean, we didn't make the movie for a lot of money, so it doesn't need to make a ton of money i don't think to be successful but regardless of all that um success to me is like people that just dig it in any capacity and like i was doing a few interviews yesterday uh and two girls had lost their dads and they were talking and they just like felt a connection like such a deep connection just from like the first frame of the movie just through that but then i talked to other people and they didn't have that reaction at all. You know, they did totally different things about it. And like, I made the movie for people like that. I think there's going to be a lot of people that don't dig it and it's not going to be their

cup of tea. And I intentionally leave questions unanswered and all this stuff that I'm doing. But the reason I make it is for hopefully someone connects with it so to me that's success do you worry about or read criticism do I read yeah totally I read all the reviews really like yeah and I'll reread reviews wow yeah and I'm probably take it seriously or process it yeah take it serious and really think about what they're saying you know and think about like uh there was some review that just came out it was like the first not not good review early it was like okay but it was for this movie uh and a lot of thing like i i like was really i reread it like five times because i'm a freak i was like he's not getting this and he's not getting this but i don't know i'm a a weirdo, but I do.

I'm fascinated to see how people interpret what I'm doing, if that makes sense. It does. Do you feel it necessary to clarify some of those things or do you want it to be open? Well, specifically with this movie, I don't feel it necessary to talk about that because I leave things open intentionally. The movie's about the unknown.

We can't know more than the characters. We have to know what the characters know and experience it like that. And I purposely put in what's in the movie for a reason. So that, however, for the life of the movie, people that dig it and whatnot, hopefully people will take different things and read different things into it. And it's very intentional. So I don't feel the need to explain myself, but I also don't want to come off as like annoying because I won't explain the movie. So it's like a fine line to balance, if that makes sense.

So in a different version of this movie made by a different filmmaker, there would have been a sequence where like we see a newscast on television that explains the origin of what's happened to society. I'm wondering if you want all of your films to feel grounded in reality. This really works in a lot of ways because, like you say, it's only what the characters experience is what we understand. There's no explicative moments here with stuff like that.

Is that something that you always want to capture or can you see yourself doing something more fantastical? That's a great question i know for now that's all i want to do but like i don't like i want to challenge myself do new stuff so who knows what's in the future but like now with this movie and then the new thing i'm writing that's my jam um so i want to do that but i don't know honestly i'm i'm open to whatever. Do you see yourself making a big studio movie at any time in the future? I know I grew up loving those kinds of movies, if it's the right material, totally. But I can't jump into something that I don't love and believe in in my heart,

and I'm not going to try to get a studio movie just to get a studio movie. I, you know, so many are made and a lot of bad movies are being made and you know, I don't want to waste anyone's time. What about alien seven? They come to you. They want you. The funny thing, like alien is like, you know, that's my childhood, but I don't think I would ever do an alien movie. Well, Trey, thank you so much for being here this was a great conversation it was a pleasure thanks again to cam collins and trey edwards schultz the big picture is brought to you today by proper cloth something is always off when it comes to dress shirts luckily ordering a custom fit shirt has never been easier thanks to proper cloth and they guarantee a perfect fit meaning if

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