Is that one of the reasons horrors and
thrillers are having such a moment,
because in society, politically...
We’re fucked.
Yeah. Essentially.
There are two things happening at the same
time, right? There are seismic changes happening
towards progress and then the complete
opposite — backtracking, regression. People
seem to have a double horror: the horror of the
monsters and of being the monster. Because we
live in a world now where you can be a monster
without knowing. You can be a monster because
you believe the wrong thing and then we
monster the people who don’t feel the same way.
So those of us who are very liberal and wanting
a better society, a more egalitarian society, we’re
just as frightened of ourselves and each other as
we are of the people who are very right wing.
I wanted to talk about your soundtrack
choices. I was quite shocked when Paris
Hilton dropped...
As part of pitching the movie and getting Film
Nation and Focus [Features] on board, I sent
a Spotify playlist. And I sent endless, probably
relentless mood boards because it’s really hard to
communicate the feel of something from
a script when it’s this kind of script. The fi lms
that I love, from Clueless to To Die For, they have
a deceptively, bubbly front, which means they
can be more satirical and dark. And also, I like
girl shit and I think that often it’s used ironically.
And that’s often the thought of, “Well, then
you’re not serious,” but for me, I wanted to start
from a point of saying, “I want this music in
there, I want these clothes in here. Do not
mistake that for silliness or irony. I’m not being
ironic. This is stuff I think is good and I love it
and I think Toxic is a masterpiece and Stars
Are Blind is incredibly romantic and of its own
time and a shorthand for something amazing.”Can you talk about the writing process?
The screenplay is very funny and very close
to the bone — there’s a single, spectacular
use of “cunt”.
Thank you! I really fought for that.Did you get a ton of notes?
The thing is that I’ve been sitting with it for such
a long time and it was in my head for so long and
I handed it in as it kind of is now. There were bits
and bobs that changed but really, the reason that
it was such a pleasurable process is that everyonewas just all in. Also, it was very low-budget and
we shot it in 23 days, so it meant we had to be
nimble. This isn’t a $100 million movie, it’s not
even a $10 million movie. And so, you can say,
“I want to take this risk and I think it’ll pay off
and if it doesn’t, sorry.” The great thing about
Focus is that they make fi lms like this and they
take chances on people like me. They gave me
a chance and they really trusted me and I’m so
grateful that they did, because they really could
have told me to fuck off. [And] LuckyChap were
incredible at supporting it and just saying, “This
is the thing it is.” It was never a question like,
maybe we can sanitise it and take out the “cunts”
or make things more palatable.Is it a continuation of your fascination
with female villains, presented in a way
we haven’t really seen before?
I think it’s true... You don’t see the way in which
women are frightening much. You see the way
that men think they might be frightening a lot,
and all of the literature that I love — which is
Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier, the
Brontë sisters, Elizabeth Taylor — [contain]
a seething cornucopia of malevolent women,
but who are malevolent in the way that your
grandmother would just fi nd the exact right