Director Kevin Lewis thrilled horror fans last year with Willy’s Wonderland, the gonzo black comedy caper that saw Nicolas Cage’s wordless janitor trapped inside the titular amusement park, where he was forced to battle for his life against bloodthirsty animatronic animals possessed by the spirits of a cannibalistic cult. While the filmmaker is remaining in the same genre for his latest feature, The Accursed is an entirely different beast.
A more classical type of supernatural chiller, the story finds Sarah Grey’s Elly mourning the recent loss her mother, before she’s extended an invitation by Mena Suvari’s Alma to look after Meg Foster’s ailing Ms. Ambrose for a few days at a remote cabin hidden deep in the woods.
Once there, though, Elly begins experiencing haunting hallucinations that lead her to believe Ms. Ambrose isn’t as bedridden as she appears, while her own family history is placed under the lens as a string of horrifying events begin to connect her own repressed memories to the spooky events unfolding around her.
Ahead of The Accursed‘s release in theaters and on-demand today, We Got This Covered had the chance to speak to Lewis about his most recent trip into the world of horror. During our chat, we dive deep into the success of Willy’s Wonderland, the influences behind the film, his life-threatening battle with COVID, and much more, which you can check out below.
Willy’s Wonderland was your first feature in a long time – which got a great reception, and now you’ve followed it up with The Accursed and Oak in quick succession. Have you been determined to get more active behind the camera, or is it more a case of the right projects coming around at the right time that speak to your sensibilities as a filmmaker?
You know, it’s a little bit of both right? When you make movies, it’s got to be the right project, because you invest your heart and soul into it. And when I read The Accursed – from Rob Kennedy who wrote the script – it was great. And I was like, “I have to make this movie”. So yeah, it’s about finding the right project. And then having that that zest and zeal to go out and make it. I’m very happy that we got it done.
You wrote a powerful editorial right around the time Willy’s was released on your life-threatening battle with COVID. Presumably, such a serious event has massively changed your perspective on the world on both a personal and professional level?
Absolutely. You know, when you’re faced with something like that, and you survive it, you just want to grab life by the collar and go, and so that’s what I’ve been doing. I just want to enjoy every moment. And, you know, I love making movies. And so I’m really just putting energy into doing that. And, of course, being with my family and friends, and just, you know, taking taking those moments and not just shrugging them off, to really kind of soak it in. Because, yeah, I was close. It was very close. And I’m very happy that, I made it. And I’ve made two films right after it. And I’m on working on another one right now, and a couple others. So yeah, it’s been a good experience post-COVID hospital.
Your last movie had a hero that didn’t talk, and now The Accursed has a “villain” that doesn’t move for the majority of the running time. Were you always aware of that symmetry of sorts, or was it just a coincidence that there were similarities, but at the opposite end of the spectrum?
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of interesting, right? But as a filmmaker and artist, you really want to do something different. You try to challenge yourself on things. So I felt The Accursed was just kind of a really different vibe than Willy’s. I love Willy’s, but I just wanted it… Willy’s was kind of a love letter to the 80s, and the fun kind of amusement park rides.
This one was more of a love letter to the 70s in the vibe of like, more psychological , Rosemary’s Baby, and The Omen, and The Changeling, and that kind of thing. So I wanted to do… you get pigeonholed sometimes, right? So people look at you and go, “Oh, well, you can only just do kind of kitschy fun things”. So I wanted to do something a little more, you know, darker. And that’s kind of more like me. I like those kinds of films. So I really jumped at the chance when I read the script.
Rob Kennedy is a horror veteran himself, so were you always on the same page when it came to bringing the screenplay to life, or were there any notable changes that were made by the time cameras started rolling?
Rob was fantastic. We hit it off, and we saw the movie the same way. He was there every step of the way. If I had ideas, I’d call him up, and vice versa. And so yeah, we were creatively on the same path for this film.
Based on the premise and even the trailers, a lot of hardcore horror fans might think they know what to expect from The Accursed, but it doesn’t play out the way people may be imagining. Was deliberately avoiding the familiar tropes and subverting expectations always something that was in the back of your mind during production? Because it’s a classic chamber piece horror in a way, but also very modern.
I really like what you said about that. It’s a chamber piece, and it is kind of contemporary and modern. It’s funny, because there’s some things you can fall into, and it’s like, okay, we kind of know and poke fun at it. But it’s like when she comes in and says “the thing in horror movies” and stuff like that, I was aware of all those things.
And so, I was trying to call attention to it to say, “Okay, we’re talking about it, you’ve seen it, but I’m trying to guide you to the left, but then make a sharp right”. So, yes, we were aware of that. And we were trying to… I was trying to really go and say, “Okay, what can we do that’s original and different?”. But still keeping in that lane. And at the end of the day, it’s all about the characters, and their experiences, and their relationships with each other.
That, to me, is what’s interesting in the human connection that we have, because horror, to me, great horror is great drama. And in the movies I just mentioned, those are great dramas, but they are horror. They’re injected with the supernatural, or things like that. But at the end of the day, it’s always about the characters, and what they’re going through. So that’s what excited me about this project.
Even though it’s a horror movie about a demon in the broadest sense, the themes of loss and generational trauma that define Elly are just as important to the story as the scares, and something that will resonate with a lot of viewers in a lot of different ways. Was grounding the story in something tangible and relatable like that always pivotal to the way you approached the material?
Oh, yeah, you hit the nail on the head. My whole feeling was that it was the sins of the mothers revisiting on their daughters, and that history will teach us nothing. And that basically, this generational trauma just keeps getting passed. And right now, we’re in a time where you can talk about problems, and it’s not weird.
Back in the day you couldn’t have a psychiatrist and things like that. And now you can, and so there’s a lot of things that are going on that need to be dealt with, with grief and regret, and how it kind of eats you up, and demons, right? The idea that you need to face your demons, and we have a physical demon in the movie, but it’s also a manifestation of, figuratively and literally, of demons, and we all have them.
And at the end of the day, it doesn’t catch up to you until it catches up to you, and you’ve got to face them. And that’s kind of what the theme is in this movie.
Horror movies with their own unique lore and mythology can often tend to overload on exposition, but in The Accursed it’s more of a drip-feeding process that doesn’t play its hand too early or give the game away too soon. Was that balance always there in the script, or was it more a case of figuring out when to show and when to tell during shooting and post-production?
A little bit of both. I always felt that I was never a big jump scare fan, I always like mood, and tone, and atmosphere. And I felt that if you inject that from frame one all the way through, you’re going to have this kind of unsettled feeling that I wanted the audience to feel. So that was very important. To me, that was one of the reasons I really liked the movie.
I just wanted to do something very atmospheric, and very kind of off-putting a little bit to the audience. And again, back to the 70s movies where it kind of makes you think a little bit and not everything is gratuitous or in your face, it kind of lets the audience’s mind wander. So I enjoyed that component of the film.
It’s sort of a rug pull as well, because the prologue has big scares and it’s action packed. But once it’s over, it’s back to square one before everything circles back around again.
Yeah, yeah. When I read Rob’s script, the first seven pages, I was like, “Wow, this is a mini movie in itself”. And I was like, “I’m really excited to do this”. But I love the idea that then we go into Elly’s journey, and you go through that, and you forget about it, but I love films where it’s like, they open up with something, and maybe you think, “Okay, well, they’re never gonna go back there again”, or whatever. But it all plays full circle, right? It all comes back to that cabin. And that moment of the third act. So yeah, that was one of the exciting things in the script for sure.
Meg Foster has plenty of previous in the horror and fantasy genres, and even though it’s not what you’d call her most “active” performance, even something as simple as opening her eyes or the smallest of movements has an impact – is it easier or harder as a filmmaker to direct a performer that’s effectively stuck in the same position for a great deal of a shoot?
Well, Meg is a legend and she’s a beautiful person, and I just love her so much. And she brought so much to this movie, as you were saying, even her on the bed. It’s like the atmosphere is thick with Ambrose, and I needed an actor to do that. Like I said, she she took the part she made it her own.
Nobody could do that performance like her, you know? And yeah, I mean, when she’s in the bed, even though she’s stationary, you just feel the vibe, you feel it, you know. And she’s just, she’s just an incredible actor, and I just had such a joy working with her.
What we were just speaking about now with the prologue, that sort of gives you an indication of who the character is. But then when it goes stationary, you’re expecting something to sort of just happen. But like you said, it’s not really a jump scare sort of movie, but that tension and underlying dread is there, even though there’s no movement at all happening in some of the shots.
Yeah. And that’s what I like, I just love atmosphere. And I like just giving a vibe to the heartbeat, kind of a pulse to the movie, and not relying just on kind of the tropes that we’ve always seen, but trying to create its own world, I guess a little bit of world-building in terms of that atmosphere and mood.
And it’s kind of like one of these horror books that you read by the fire, and just kind of crack open the pages, and you take your time. So there wasn’t a lot of fast cutting. I mean, there were a couple of sequences that are, but it was really kind of letting the story unfold and letting it just breathe, you know?
Building off that, many of the characters are archetypal on paper, but not in practice. There’s a real subversive streak to the film that does give audiences what they’re expecting in a way, but not in the way they’re expecting to get it.
It was great. Because when I would work with the actors, the idea is to bring truth to all those parts. And so, we’d always talk about what scared them, and what can we do to be better. Sometimes I’d be on set with Sarah Grey, and there’d be a dialogue. And that’s great, a script’s a script, but you could just do this in a moment and a look. And she was like, “Oh, my gosh, I was thinking the same thing”.
And so we go through things, and cross things out saying, “I think we say that with this”, and we really just hit it off. Like all the actors and myself, we’re always on the creative path to doing the same film. And that’s very important, right? You’ve always got to have the same vision going forward. And we all did, and we listened to everybody, and listened to one another. And really just tried to bring honesty to those parts and those roles.
The whole cast is excellent across the board, but Mena Suvari really stands out, simply because it’s not the type of role or performance we’ve ever really seen from her before, and it looks like she had an absolute blast sinking her teeth into the part.
She really did. She had a lot of fun. And it was really cool because I kind of she was like, “Well, what kind of type do you see – like a film character or from a novel?”. I said Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, because the villain doesn’t think they’re doing a bad thing, right? They think they’re doing the right thing, and they kind of have blinders on. And they’re just focused. And that’s what Alma is, she’s just focused, and you can make the argument that she’s definitely crazy.
But, she wants to bring her mother back, that sort of whole thing. And so she will just about do anything to get that goal. That’s her goal. And I mean, it was just amazing, she would get in these workouts before rolling the camera, and she would just get in the zone. And it was just awesome to see her, and work with her on this movie.
When we last spoke, you said you were developing two or three projects in the vein of Willy’s Wonderland. The Accursed and Oak would be two of them, but are you able to shed any light on what the third might be, or even any ideas beyond that you might be working on?
I’ve got got some cool projects, I’ve got sci fi movie that I’m really kind of looking to do. I’ve got a horror movie called The Houdini Pact. That’s really exciting, that I’m kind of prepping right now. And that’s kind of in the tone of like The Haunting of Hill House. And so I’ve got that, and I’ve got a couple other movies, I’ve got two or three others I’m working on.
It’s funny, these films, it takes time, you;ve got to get the right people in the movie, there are always moving parts, and I gotta get the right cast, and the right crew, and just everything’s got to be the right time for everything to go. But yeah, it’s exciting to work on these projects, and I’m finishing up post on Oak and I’m pretty happy with how that’s turning out.
Your last few projects have all been horror, but completely different from each other, and it’s one of the most flexible genres out there. You could make dozen horror movies, and never repeat yourself.
Yeah, isn’t that exciting? And for me, as a filmmaker, that’s what I want to do. It’s like, I don’t want to just do the same thing. That to me is not exciting. And these movies take a piece of your soul, they really do if you care, and I do care. So every movie, I want to challenge myself, it’s got to be something that I want to try a little different.
And that’s thing, people get pigeonholed, and I was saying, for Hollywood to be such a creative place – it’s so close minded, because they look at you and go, “Oh, you just do that”, you know? And it’s like, “No, there’s a lot of different things I can do”. Just like an actor, right? They look at an actor go, “They can just play that part”. It’s like, “No, they’re an actor, they can do a lot of different things”. And I’m really excited about the challenges ahead. And I want to expand as an artist, and push myself, and hope people come with me on the ride and enjoy the work.
If you could make any project of your choosing without any restrictions whatsoever, what would it be and why?
Wow, that’s a great question. It’s funny, because there’s movies that you love. But you’re like, “I don’t know if I can do that”. But there’s just so many different films that I just adore. But you know, it’d be really cool to do like an Evil Dead movie. I know. [Lee] Cronin is doing that movie that’s coming out next next year, and I loved his movie, The Hole in the Ground, and I’m so excited to see that.
To work with someone like Sam Raimi, or Ridley Scott would just be like a dream come true. Of course, Spielberg. Yeah. There’s just so many great artists out there. You know, one of my favorite directors, and I haven’t seen him for a long time is Peter Weir. I jut love Peter Weir’s movies. I wish he’d get back and do some stuff, because Master and Commander, and Dead Poets, and Gallipoli and Year of Living Dangerously, I mean, Witness. I just love that.
I love the movie Drive. Nicholas Winding Refn is just incredible. As an artist, Darren Aronofsky. He inspires me all the time, every movie he does, I just remember seeing Requiem for a Dream. And I was like, “Wow”. I thought I saw it all with Trainspotting, because I love Danny Boyle. And then that movie just flipped on its head. So there’s just so many wonderful, creative talents out there.
The Accursed is now available in select theaters and on-demand, and Oak will be released next year.