When a raging fire breaks out in a movie theater, a bunch of teenage friends slash their way through the screen and step into the world of the film.
In “The Final Girls,” Max (Taissa Farmiga) and her chums find themselves trapped in an ’80s sex-crazed slasher flick “Camp Bloodbath,” which stars Max’s mother as one of the main characters. The group has to contend with the tiki mask-wearing, machete-swinging killer that murders each member of the camp as revenge for being bullied in the past.
It may sound like a weird premise, but the film’s director, Todd Strauss-Schulson, said it mixes horror comedy with family drama to show that the two can make a happy marriage.
This Thursday, Melnitz Movies, part of the UCLA Graduate Students Association, is hosting an advanced screening of “The Final Girls” in the James Bridges Theater. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Strauss-Schulson, who will answer questions about his film coming out Oct. 9.
The Daily Bruin’s William Thorne spoke with Strauss-Schulson to discuss the upcoming movie and his take on the horror genre.
Daily Bruin: What was it about the “The Final Girls” script that captured your imagination and made you want to bring it to the screen?
Todd Strauss-Schulson: I liked how by the end of the film, even though it’s funny and crazy and badass and super visual and all that stuff, the climax is an emotional one. It was the emotional stuff that drew me in, the mother-daughter relationship. I first read the script as I was editing my first film, and my father had passed away four weeks before we started shooting. It was a very intense and emotional experience. I was making my first film, I’d just turned 30 and my father had passed away. I was dreaming about him all the time as I was making that movie; he’d visit me in my dreams and it was nice to see him again.
When I read the script for “The Final Girls,” that was what got me into it. I saw the movie as a girl who has a second chance to be with a parent in the middle of a dream world, in a crazy death nightmare.
DB: The film has moments that are meta, about a movie within a movie. How difficult was that to incorporate?
TS: The first version of the screenplay didn’t have much of that stuff and it wasn’t that funny. A lot of the comedy I brought to it was the meta stuff; I love when the movie plays games with the audience. But I also had to feel the balance and the tone, because when it gets too clever and cheeky, it kinda kills some of the heart and emotion. We spent years working on the screenplay.
DB: Are you a big horror fan yourself, because the film plays with many horror stereotypes?
TS: When I was young I wasn’t a super big horror junkie – I was too afraid of horror movies. I remember seeing “Fright Night” when I was 10 and I couldn’t sleep for days. But then when I was 13 or 14, I saw “Dead Alive” and that movie completely changed my perspective; it was almost comical, it was ridiculous in how flamboyantly disgusting it was.
I wasn’t sure that I would ever end up making a horror-slasher flick in my life, but for this particular story, it was a clever way to deal with death. To set it in a genre where the bigger the body count, the more fun the movie is, intrigued me. We tried to take the stereotypes of the slasher movies and add some depth and emotion to it. We were using horror to push a different agenda.
DB: The world of the film is very colorful, what was the intention in creating it like that?
TS: For me, it was less about the kids getting sucked into a horror film and more about them being sucked into a movie.
We wanted it to be very hyperreal and super cinematic, very strange, very beautiful. The green of the trees burns your retinas and the skies are technicolor, almost like “Gone with the Wind”-style mad paintings. We wanted to use every tool in the toolbox in terms of cinema, to flesh out the world.
DB: What would you do if you were transported into an ’80s horror movie?
TS: I’d die pretty fast. The moment I land, I’d start writing a letter to all the people I care about and then lay down and accept my fate. A better question is to ask what’s my favorite horror movie.
DB: What’s your favorite horror movie?
TS: “27 Dresses.”
Compiled by William Thorne, A&E senior staff.