(Courtesy of Gabriela Urm. An IFC Films and Shudder Release.)
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to Azrael director E.L. Katz and star Samara Weaving about the unique horror movie. The duo discussed the lack of dialogue, the physical scenes, and more. From IFC Films and Shudder, it is now playing in select theaters.
“In a world in which no one speaks, a mysterious, devout community hunts down a young woman named Azrael (Samara Weaving) who has escaped their imprisonment. Recaptured by its ruthless leaders, she is to be sacrificed to pacify an evil which resides deep within the surrounding wilderness – but Azrael will stop at nothing to ensure her own freedom and survival. From the seeds of this gritty, relentless parable of sacrifice and salvation, comes an immersive, real-time, action horror tale from the visionary minds of Simon Barrett and E.L. Katz,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Samara, this is a completely non-verbal role. On the plus side, you didn’t have to learn any lines. I’m sure that was a nice positive, but what was the most interesting challenge of this role?
Samara Weaving: It was all a bit of a challenge, but I kind of knew that going into it, and I think that’s what I was excited about. Like the fact that yeah, you have to communicate without using words, it’s gonna be really physical, there’s gonna be a lot of stunts, and we’re gonna be all nights, and it’s gonna be freezing. But there was something really exciting about that challenge. Because when’s that ever gonna come up again? I think I learned a lot from it.
E.L., I love the design of the creature, the burnt man. It’s very humanoid, obviously, and maybe that’s why it’s so frightening. Could you just speak to some of the design behind that?
E.L. Katz: Yeah, I love them too. The burnt people are close to my heart. Without getting too much into what went behind them. Like, there was an idea of trying to make sure that even if they were monstrous, you were still looking at things that just kind of also looked like people that were having a hard time and sort of in a lot of pain or sad or miserable. As much as I do love monsters that are just completely crazy looking, I think like if you can relate to them in any way where you see some humanity in them, I think it’s a lot creepier. Because in my mind, I wanted them to feel like you’re in the woods and you run into sort of a really crazy person that’s willing to rip them to pieces.
Not that you walk in there and it’s like full on, God bless him, but like a Stan Winston monster, it needed to feel more sketchy, and kind of like weirdly relatable as like, “Oh, those are people.” I just think that that’s more uncomfortable and creepier. We worked with Dan Martin, who did a lot of the designs in Possessor, and then Brandon Cronenberg’s other movies, which I’ve always felt were super gruesome, kind of artistic, and almost like a slightly weird fine art kind of way and like also just like disturbing in a way that just was a little different. He always brings his own personality and specificity to it. So, we went through a long process because I think it’s like when you’re making these things for camera, you really don’t know completely what the latex is gonna look like, how light’s gonna interact with them.
So you’re constantly trying things, you’re adding more to the skin, you’re changing the texture. I think there’s like a lot of trial and error. So, it really was up until literally like the day of that we were like, “Okay, they’re dialed in… We think.” But we’re not gonna know until we actually have this monster walk on the set. That’s the crazy thing about practical effects. There is a bit of risk because you don’t completely know what’s gonna happen. But I think that’s also part of the fun and it’s the stuff that we respond to when we watch those old movies.
Samara, you really are getting beat up in this. You’re crawling through these tunnels, you’re running through the woods. They just really put you through the wringer here. What was the most challenging part about this physically?
Weaving: What was the most challenging? The tree was pretty challenging being upside down on the tree, but really it wasn’t that cold that day. There was a really cold day. I don’t even think I was doing anything insane. I think I was just like lying under a car, the temperature…
Katz: I think that might have been the day that it started snowing.
Weaving: Yeah. There was something because the action stuff was so great and really fun and a good challenge, but like being so cold where you’re like, “I can’t think.” That was the biggest one. There was one day where it was starting to snow, and I was like, “I might die.” I had to be still, so I was getting really cold.
Weirdly, there was like one shot where I just had to put my foot in the water. It was like weird stuff like that that I hadn’t really mentally, like I’d prepared to be cold, but, and I prepared to like just be like, we’re gonna be cold, we’re gonna be running around. It’s gonna be, we’re just gonna have to get weird with it. But yeah, when that temperature dropped to something else, that was when I was like, “Okay, okay.”
E.L., what I like about this film is that it has multiple layers. There’s so much to unpack, especially if you’re paying close attention, but even if you’re not, you still just get invested in Samara’s character and her survival. So how is it kind of making it work for both? I feel like this is gonna be a strong repeat watch for a lot of people.
Katz: Well, I think like the main priority throughout the whole thing is to follow Azrael, you know? I think like there’s a lot of fun to be had of the design of the world. There’s a lot of attention that we put into that. But I think that this character doesn’t talk. It’s like hard enough watching movies and giving a crap about what the character’s going through when they’re talking about what they’re going through the whole time. So this is even harder. So I think that I was lucky to have Sam on board, who was just as invested in making sure that it’s these moments you connect with. What the hell’s going on? How does she feel?
It never just becomes this sort of like totally outside of it experience, it’s truly about her emotions. It’s truly about what she’s going through. It’s truly about how she’s changing by what’s happening to her. I just really wanted to prioritize that in terms of the camera and the beats, really just be with that character. Yeah, there are things going on around that are gonna have a lot of curiosity and weirdness, but I kind of wanted people to be able to watch.
It’s like if you picked up a graphic novel from the seventies that was not translated from another country, but you still are relating to the character’s journey. Even if you don’t completely understand everything that’s going on, you understand what’s going on of them for the most part. By the end, there are some interesting, mysterious performance beats that Azrael goes through in the finale, where it’s like, “Okay, I don’t know if I can relate to what’s going on for right now,” but you’re still invested in their journey. I always try to prioritize like the character because I think everything else is just trappings. I think it’s really about character.
Samara, one of my favorite scenes is about halfway through the film. You’re really banged up on the ground and you’re fighting somebody that’s equally as banged up. It’s this just grounded fight between these two people, who are just super injured but desperate for survival. How was it filming that? I thought that was just brilliantly done.
Weaving: That was my favorite stunt scene. That one, it was just so sloppy, slow, and felt really real. We were talking about that scene in The Revenant with Leo [DiCaprio] and Tom Hardy, where it’s just so brutal, and everything’s really taken down in tempo. Phong and Stanimir, the stunt coordinator, just crushed it. Everyone just brought their A-game on that day. It was awesome.
Katz: We were really lucky. There’s a lot of times you work with a stunt coordinator, and they’re just kinda like, “Okay, here’s some stuff. This is what’s been asked for. Here it is.” Stanimir Stamatov, I would say he is an auteur in the action. I think with somebody like him, it was all about really making sure that these scenes, even though we’re not like a giant budget movie, would really stand out, have a cinematic perspective, and have a character perspective.
Phong Giang, who was the villain in the scene fighting Samara, is also a very experienced stuntman and actor. So it’s like when you have those ingredients and everybody’s down, everybody wants to push it, everybody’s trying to design something like that’s really cool and memorable and specific. Not just like, “Oh, they fight really fast because that’s what is exciting.” It’s like, “No, it’s unique that they’re just so tired. They got no gas in the tank at all.” I’m on the same page. I love that scene too.
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