![]() Kong the same week I finished Seance we were both sound mixing at the same time. But now in 2021, both our films are coming out. At the time, it definitely felt like I was struggling to have any career whatsoever, while Adam was ascending. The timing both worked out and didn't work out. And conversely, this was the perfect opportunity for me to do what I wanted to do and actually start composing shots and editing sequences-the stuff I don't get to do because Adam happens to be brilliant at it. Kong and not feel like he was tethered to me as a partner who he had to bring on studio projects when it would have been non-viable. I wanted Adam to go on and do projects like Godzilla vs. But I knew Adam was moving on to bigger and better things, and realistically, clinging to that partnership would have been the wrong move practically, as well as creatively. I'd written Seance around 2014, with the notion that if I wrote a fairly low-budget horror film, I know I could get it made, and that's the type of story I want to tell anyway, and then it took my five years to get it financed. It was after that, when we started getting bigger budgets, that I was like "It's time for me to think about directing," because I knew Adam was moving on, especially after Blair Witch, and Adam was moving on to Death Note. It was a crazy way to work, but it was enough to get us You're Next sold. I'd be prepping a location while he's be driving over to it with the cast. Adam and I were doing everything, and I was doing everything Adam wasn't doing and vice versa. The better answer is that when I was making those better, small-budget films with Adam, particularly You're Next, the first V/H/S, and A Horrible Way to Die, I was very involved on set, especially on A Horrible Way to Die, which only had a five-person crew-we made that movie for under $100,000. So I became a screenwriter, and that's how I met Adam. I want to make films." I ended up becoming a screenwriter through a lot of convoluted circumstances, but the short version is, I wrote a script called Dead Birds for myself to direct and ended up selling it, which was great because I had no money at the time. Going back to when I was like five or six and watching movies, I was like "This is what I want to do. I genuinely wanted to be a director for as long as I can remember, which, given my history of head injuries, is actually longer than you think. You've dabbled in directing over the years, but how long have you been thinking seriously about doing it? And was this screenplay always one you wanted to make yourself? I just hope Seance finds an audience eventually. I think people don't discern from Adam's and my careers is that we're often pivoting from our most recent failure, which turns out several years later to be a success, and that process repeats. The Guest is a perfect example of a film that people seem to think was successful. So I'm looking at it the same way as you: whether or not people are going to see it. I'm hopeful that what you say is true, but I've only experienced failure.įinancially, Seance is already a profitable film, which is wonderful, because it's a small film. And people who don't want to do that can rent it on the VOD streaming service of choice. It's a good time, and hopefully the people who are excited to see Seance in a theater will have an option to do it near them, even though I know it's a limited release. At the same time, I know a lot of people who aren't ready to got back into movie theaters, and I know a lot of people who don't like going to movie theaters anyway because they don't like other people. I hope Seance comes out during a window where people are willing to see it in theaters.Īt the end of the day, what's nice about being a day-and-date release right now, which normally I wouldn't be enthused about because I'm a big believer that movies were meant to be seen in theaters if you can-that's the best way to see them, that's what they're intended for. We'll see what that means for a film with 1/100th of the budget. Kong, which I could not be happier about. Obviously, theaters were good for Godzilla vs. And he and I are just working everyday rather than going on vacations. Currently, my creative partner, Adam Wingard, is struggling to wrap his head around the fact that he's had a success, which is such an unfamiliar feeling that I think he's honestly more concerned than celebratory. Here's the thing, I've had many experiences in the past where I've felt a horror movie I've done is going to do well, and it does not. Are you feeling that? Do you feel like this is a good time to scratch that itch? You're releasing Seance in this strange sweet spot where people seem to be back into the idea of watch horror movies with other people again in a theater. Film spoke with Barrett to discuss his influences for Seance, his partnership with Wingard, and his idea for an NC-17-rated, Ewoks-centric Star Wars movie.
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