/Film Interview: Eli Roth, Producer Of ‘The Last Exorcism Part 2’
With so many horror sequels and demon possession films released year after year, a demon possession horror sequel doesn’t sound like the freshest idea. That’s whereEli Rothcomes in.
A noted writer and director in his own right (and an actor, too), Roth produced the upcomingThe Last Exorcism Part 2, a sequel to the surprise 2010 hit film, with those pitfalls in mind. He’s well aware the film has a mountain to climb. It’s a possession film, and a horror sequel. It has to live up to expectations bolstered by an original movie that made over $40 million and had an ending so memorable, the sequel was all but predetermined. The task then became working off the promise of that ending and avoiding the stigmas of its genre.
Afterthe release of the trailer forThe Last Exorcism Part 2in January, we spoke to Roth about the problems with sequels, how this movie attempts to transcend them as well as a bunch of his upcoming projects:the Netflix showHemlock Grove,his next movieThe Green Infernoand more. Check it out below.
/Film: SoI watched the trailer forTHE LAST EXORCISM PART II and at the end of the first film it leaves things very open for a sequel. But the trailer doesn’t feel like the sequel that the original film is setting up. Soisthis the sequel we thought we were going to see? With a demon baby and a satanic cult run amok? Or have you guys sort of flipped that?
I figured if anything, over time more people would see the movie and that’s what happened. A lot of people saw it in theaters and now they’re watching it on NetFlix and people really like it. The last one came out in 2010, so here we are in 2013… We spent two years working on the script before we shot it and we thought through every single storyline we could and the breakthrough really came through when we thought, “Let’s abandon the documentary format. What if the first one was more of a viral video that’s floating around on YouTube and people are just clicking on it.” We could at least have Nell have no memory of what happened to her and there’s this group that’s perpetrating this trick on her with this thing that she doesn’t know, but her family members have been killed in this fire and she has no memory of what happened and she’s sort of brought to this halfway home for troubled girls and she starts to figure out what this thing is, but that other people have seen the video and some people recognize her on the street, like “You’re the girl from that thing! Bend your back” and she doesn’t even know what they are talking about and when other girls in the house see it, they’re like “Get her out of here, she’s got a demon in her.” And slowly her world starts to fall apart. So there were a lot of different angles that you go through, but Ashley Bell… she’s such a good actor and you love the idea of what would happen to you if you went through this and you’re seeing it from her perspective in following her story?
We notice that they show the clip on YouTube in the trailer, but I wasn’t sure how exactly you were going to make the transition from found footage to narrative. Did you guys try to keep with the found footage approach for a while before you realized abandoning it was a good idea?
You dabbled in the supernatural with the first one and now you have to extend it in a smart way. Damien Chazelle is a terrific writer and Ed Gass-Donnelly wrote a film that’s kind of big in the indie word called SMALL TOWN MURDER SONGS and it was really well photographed and very intelligently made and really subtle. He was so excited about the subject matter and really wanted to approach it almost as a Polanksi movie in the way that Daniel, the director on the first film, approached it like Lars Von Trier, who is his favorite director. We thought that Daniel would be working with M. Night Shyamalan pretty soon and we thought “This is absolutely the right approach” and I think he did a really, really good job.
And you touched upon this a little bit there and I guess with the whole viral video thing, but lately, we see many demon possession movies. I think last year there were at least two or three of them. What do you have to do to say, “This is not your typical exorcism movie. This is different, even though it is a sequel?”
Another trailer that just happened to come out around this same time is [your Netflix show] HEMLOCK GROVE. It’s almost impossible to figure out what’s going on. How do you describe the show when people ask you about it?
Did working for Netflix change how you guys decided to tell that story at all? Now it’s almost like people are getting a ten hour movie at once as opposed to ten little episodes?
And generally violence in movies can be more explicit than violence on TV. Even with cable there just feels like there’s a different level there. Where does Netflix play into that? Can you guys be as violent as you would be in CABIN FEVER or HOSTEL? Or do you curve it back and think more on a TV state of mind?
I’m here with my friend Nicolas Lopez in Chile who directed AFTERSHOCK and produced THE GREEN INFERNO. His sister, one of her favorite movies is THE LAST EXORCISM. To her and her girlfriends, that’s the scariest movie they’ve seen and love it. That’s what we wanted to do with the sequel. People really related to Ashley Bell and she’s just such a superb actress. She got a Spirit Award with the first one and she gives a wonderful performance in the second one.
You mention THE GREEN INFERNO. Are you done with that? What’s the status on that? When can people start seeing stuff from that?
So if you’re out there shooting GREEN INFERNO and they are in post-production on THE LAST EXORCISM 2, how the heck are you balancing your days? Or even just on a normal day now? Besides that, you’re developing other movies, producing other TV shows… How do you keep it all in balance?
It was actually pretty good to know “I’m escaping to the Amazon with absolutely no phone, no internet, no nothing. I’m literally… basically I’ll get a one bar signal at some point, but I’m in the jungle, literally.” So not being able to contact me forced everybody to lock in their visions before I left, but yeah it’s tricky. The nice thing is the time difference. I’m five hours ahead, so I can get my schedule done and then… I’m just working 24 hours, but… (Laughs) It’s feast or famine. I think the key word is to learn to streamline a little bit and try not to tackle everything at once. If you’re doing a television pilot, a music video, or doing a feature… It’s been a very exciting year, but I’m going to try to keep my focus on directing.
