Horror News: Exclusive Interview for The Empty Space Premiere, The Craft: Legacy and Freaky Trailers

I recently spoke with filmmaker Andrew Jara about his upcoming film The Empty Space. The film portrays a young woman’s grief and anxiety after a violent attack. 

Director/Writer: Andrew Jara

Producers: Valerie Alene and Andrew Jara

Executive Producer: J. Whitney Epp

Aimee Andrews:  Valerie Alene

Noah: Joe Sinclitico 

What was your inspiration for this film?

“When I thought of the idea I was living in Los Angeles and I for some reason started getting really bad panic attacks. I always had some anxiety but I think it was the first time that I really put a name to it, talked about it. One of the reasons it took me so long to realize I had anxiety was because there were days when I would feel happy. In movies people that are depressed are just depressed all the time, if they have anxiety it’s all the time, and I wanted to show a realistic version where you can laugh and it doesn't change the fact that you have anxiety and a mental illness. I wanted people with anxiety to see it and say ‘oh yeah that is what it’s like.’ ”

Would you like to see more accurate representations of mental illness in film?

“Yeah, I think so. I think it’s that weird thing where you don’t want to glamorize it but you also want it to be realistic. You want people to relate to it. The easiest way to explain it is with marijuana. If you've ever smoked weed before and you see people smoking weed in the movies you’re like,‘that’s not what it’s like, it doesn't look like that!’ That happens a lot with mental illness where you’re like ‘oh yeah that's not how it feels and that's not what I go through.’ So, if you're telling a story about that sort of problem in film you want people with that problem to recognize it and to have it be destigmatized, but when you're given a very black and white view of mental illness it kind of re-enforces that maybe there is something wrong with you and there’s not, it’s common. Talking to actors and talking to people who’ve seen it so far, everyone has anxiety. Maybe not to my level, but everyone has it. So to hear people say ‘oh yeah, I related to this’ or ‘I felt like that!’ Kind of helps, because that’s exactly what I wanted to do.”

How do you think filmmakers should go about walking that line between dramatizing and an accurately portraying mental illness?

“Well, I think it’s like everything else, you want to talk, you want to research, and I have anxiety so I had all the research that I needed. It's the same thing when you want to include representation of anything whether its mental illness or diversity. You want someone who's experienced it because of the little things that you wouldn’t think of if you didn't have it. Whatever the topic is, you have to have some kind of lived experience even if it's small, even if it’s just talking to different people.”

How long did it take to make the film and what kind of roadblocks did you hit along the way?

“I made two other films, I made The Last Ones and then I made Borderland. With Borderland and with The Last Ones I wrote them to be as cheap as possible and with this one I just really wanted to go for it and tell the story. I really wanted to save up so this movie took me about three years to save up for, so that was one of the main things and then as far as roadblocks, just the common things: trying to get actors, finding the right ones, getting the locations, losing locations. We filmed Borderland in between because by the time we were ready to film The Empty Space it had been five years since I had directed anything so I wanted to see if i could do anything. We did Borderland in about a week and we did it for $4,000 and then went on to The Empty Space. Of course anything that takes five years you really have to stick with it and it gives you the chance to really dissect it and make sure you really like the film.”

What was your process like while making this and how did it differ from your usual process?

“In terms of writing, The Last Ones and Borderland I liked a lot but they were just movies. Everyone talks about the difference between movies and films and so this one (The Empty Space) was a film and it was, like I said,‘I have anxiety I want to tell this story.’ It was important to me to get things right and I wanted to really hook the audience in a way that I hadn’t before. It was really honing in on the spirit of the story and making sure I knew the character. When it came to directing, we rehearsed for three months beforehand. It was about finding time to really look at every line and because you’re dealing with anxiety and because there are laugh lines or parts where she's (Aimee) sarcastic or she's happy, you don't want it to come off like her emotions are going up and down. I know when I was at the worst, it didn't matter if I was happy or if i was laughing, it felt empty. I really wanted to push that, especially with Valerie because she had to kind of learn how to be someone with anxiety and we’d go through ‘why would she say this if she's really sad?’ With the other actors, like with Joe who plays Noah, he had to play this creature that isn't really defined in the movie. It was kind of figuring it out and you have to really work on what helps the actors the most. The guy who plays the robber, since he had so few lines, when he was playing during the robbery scene he would say ‘oh you want me to play like Michael Myers?’ And that would put him in the mindset of where he had to be. Everytime you make a movie you learn. On the first film I thought, ‘okay as long as I tell them what to do they'll figure it out.’ And on the second film I realized, ‘okay what you tell one person doesn’t work on the other’ So on this one it was kind of a mix of everything, and listening to everyone and talking to everyone and just kind of growing in that moment.” 

Lighting played a major role in this piece, what was your thought process behind using such unique colors? 

“When you're in film school, at least the film school I went to which was New Mexico University, they really emphasize realistic lighting, but I realized a lot of my favorite movies have that unrealistic lighting. Whether it's Argento or Del Toro, they play with the light. And being Hispanic, we love color. If you drive through El Paso the houses are different colors and I didn’t realize that most houses were not like that until i got to Portland or LA. I like the directors that want to be realistic and they want to have the darkest darks, but I love the colors! Especially with Noah we played with the purple, because there are very few times you ever see purple and i wanted to throw it off like, ‘listen there's something off about this guy.’ ”

What do you think this film will add to the genre?

“I think there's a mix right now. You have the Hereditary kind of movies which are very serious and very dark and you have the kind of Hatchet, less serious movies. I kind of wanted to find this place in the middle with trying to portray a serious subject without being too serious. I wanted something I would want to see on tv late at night.”

What was the significance behind Aimee’s beanie?

“The beanie was a way for her to hide in plain sight, when she put on the beanie she was trying to be away from the world and when you have anxiety there are certain things that just become habit. Sometimes you just need that comfort so we wanted to apply that to Aimee and it also shows how much she changed since the incident.”

You had a lot of books and references about cosmic forces in the film, why did you include those?

“I don’t know if you noticed, but one of the books was written by John Carpenter, my producer designed it as little easter egg! Even without anxiety there are different universal answers we latch onto and I didn’t want to say anything was the wrong way or the right way. Some people reach to religion, some people reach to meditation or books, and I wanted to make it you can go toward religion or self help but it always has to come through you, you have to work on yourself. Nothing is a cure-all.”

Where can people find this?

“Right now we're about to premiere at the Sacramento Film Festival and going to try to take it through more festivals after that.” 

Is there anything else you’d like to add? 

“One of the things I really strived for was diversity because I'm Mexican American and I wanted diversity in the cast and crew. Especially in El Paso, which is 60% Hispanic, we have the Base there so there's a large mix of different people and I just wanted it to be as diverse in front of and behind the camera as possible.”  

Andrew Jara’s podcast, the Bomb Squad, comes out on Wednesday (you can find it on all podcast streaming platforms as well as Youtube). His new short film “Wellness Check” will be playing at the Nightmares Film Festival and Oregon Scream Week. You can catch The Empty Space at the Sacramento Film Festival October 23-November 2nd.

I also wanted to share my thoughts on Blumhouse’s upcoming teen horror films.

The Craft: Legacy

First things first, I cannot wait to see what Zoe-Lister Jones does with this film! Witchcraft is such a major piece of feminism, and we deserve a female-made version of The Craft. In most cases, I would say that I would prefer an original movie that dealt with witches that could be my generation’s The Craft. However, The Craft has always felt like it had more story to tell and I’m glad we’ll finally get to that. 

The first half of the trailer felt a little anti-climatic to me. The scene where Hannah’s period bleeds through her pants seemed a little odd. I’ve never once seen/heard of that happening, at least not with THAT much blood. I’m intrigued by a uterus horror approach to The Craft though, it could be similar to Carrie? Additionally, the sparkle graphics sort of took me out of The Craft vibe and felt very out of place. The girls in the Coven felt much less like outcasts to me than they did in the original Craft, so I’m wondering if the reboot will address how witchcraft has become more mainstream in the past couple of years.  

The second part of the trailer completely made up for the first. I literally started jumping up and down when I saw the photo of Nancy! I wanted more from Nancy in the original, so I’m thrilled that they’ll be diving deeper into her story in the reboot. A Nancy comeback would be amazing, and there’s one shot in the trailer (for about two seconds) that looks like it might possibly be her (or at least her boots), but I know that’s a bit of a pipe dream and we shouldn’t expect it.  

I really like how intense the coven is in this film, the number of people telekinetically thrown at walls in the trailer alone is awesome! It looks like a celebration of femininity and female friendships, which I’m so excited about! I’m really happy to see so many new faces leading the film, but I wish one of the leads would’ve been a bigger name (simply because teens usually won’t watch something if they don’t know any of the actors in it). Zoey Luna and Gideon Adlon are incredible, and I can’t wait to see what they do with the roles. I would’ve preferred more teen actresses (Zoey Luna is the only one under twenty), but I’m still really happy with the casting decisions. 

While the fashion is killer in the trailer, I wish we would’ve gotten witchier looks because fashion played such a large role in the original. Twitter was going crazy about the slowed version of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun,” but I personally loved it. I also loved the “We are the weirdos, mister” line because you can’t reboot The Craft without it. 

Overall, I’m super pumped for this film. I’m not sure that it’s the horror that Gen-Z wants, but I’m excited to find out. It looks like it’ll be a lot of fun, and I hope everyone keeps an open mind while watching it. 

Freaky

I also wanted to quickly touch on Blumhouse’s other new teen horror, Freaky. Something happened with Freaky that I’ve rarely ever seen before. Out of the blue, I was getting texts and messages from my friends, “DID YOU SEE THE FREAKY TRAILER?” Tons of non-horror fans were freaking out, they can’t wait to see it (neither can I)! 

Freaky looks amazing for a multitude of reasons, but I think the biggest is that it’s original without trying too hard. The concept is one that my generation grew up watching on Disney Channel, and now they’ve added a wicked twist. It also portrays Gen-Z without forcing “lit” into every line. 

Aesthetics and cinematography are a big deal to teen audiences (especially after Euphoria), and Freaky’s look killer. Kathryn Newton is epic (the Blumhouse producers appear to be fans of The Society, as they should be), but again I would’ve preferred more teen actors in the film. 
I can’t wait to see what Freaky adds to the teen horror space and how it’s received by Gen-Z!