David Charbonier and Justin Douglas Powell are often weary of what’s behind closed doors, building an impressive filmography of scrappy thrillers such as the self-evident “The Boy Behind the Door” and one realtor’s open house nightmare “Push” where a single location gave way to plenty of imagination as to how those places could be frightening. So it had to be with some trepidation that they looked upon the opportunity of one cracking open for their careers — offered the chance to come in at the last minute to fill in for another director to work on a slightly larger scale than they had before with “Vampire Carnival,” giving them a literal playground to operate in complete with a ferris wheel and hundreds of extras to populate the fareground. The circumstances may not have been ideal, but when that’s always been the case, the two did what they always do and made the most of it.
“We were one of the last people hired for the project, so to come out on the other side of that and still have something that we’re really proud of just makes us feel really good,” said Powell, who could be happy that the film retains some of their signature. As he added, “We wanted to integrate a little bit more life and color into this one than we’ve been able to in the past while still having our signature darkness in there and this setting just lends itself well to those bright neons and flashy colors. We were like, ‘Let’s really, really go there, but then obviously still make sure that we have room for the dark.’
It’s a pleasing combination in the entertaining genre bender centered on Gemma (Nell Verlaque), a young woman still reeling from the recent death of her father who joins friends Olivia (Paula Chavez) and Ryan (Corrado Martini) for what’s ideally a fun Friday night out of the house with a trip to the carnival passing through town. Yet the evening goes south pretty quick when her pals have to be at least somewhat disappointed that she’s even in town in the first place, having once been a bright light at their high school and bound to a good college until her father’s death, and she is confronted by a former flame (Kieron Moore) who wouldn’t leave her alone back then. Still, that isn’t likely the worst that’s waiting for her when she and her friends are told “the real show is inside” after taking in a magic act and while there are bloodsuckers amongst the performers as the title promises, the film suggests Gemma’s inner demons may be equally capable of taking her down when memories of her father crop up. (Cheekily, the maze of mirrors she must navigate teases “Find Yourself” as a lure.)
Gemma may not be in for a good time as hoped, but Charbonier and Powell deliver one as they wonder if she can make it through the night, siccing a delicious Jason Isaacs on her as the patriarch of the family business behind the big tent and crafting a world as seductive as it is dangerous that she could willingly give into. After a special one-night theatrical event earlier this fall, “Vampire Carnival” is being made available far and wide on VOD in time for Halloween and the co-directors graciously took the time to talk about bringing their distinctive touch to the film, working against obstacles they couldn’t have imagined when they first signed on and the film’s piercingly nostalgic ‘90s needle drops.
I was pretty moved by the opening sequence in relation to your career when it really feels like you start out in this house and it opens up to something much bigger at this carnival where you have one of the really elaborate tracking shots that have become a signature to introduce all the characters. What was this like as an opportunity?
David Charbonier: Our past movies have been more contained and more claustrophobic, just out of the nature of [having] no money. We did have a little bit more this time around, but interestingly we had less time than even on our smallest project in the past, so it really pushed us to work quickly. But it was really nice to expand the world. That carnival sequence where we have that the one shot was a really fun scene for us to design.
It really did look like something you would do and I know this is actually the first thing that you’ve directed that you didn’t write yourself.
Justin Douglas Powell: That was an idea that we contributed that was not originally in the script. We redesigned their entrance into the carnival to become this large oner because we can’t have a movie without one. [laughs] We’ve done them in the the past and we’re like, “Come on, we’ve got to do it here. Why don’t we really challenge ourselves and make it the biggest one yet?”
What was it like to put music on it? Because the needle drops, starting with that first one, are really great.
David Charbonier: This was really exciting for us because we were able to actually have some real songs in a movie — the R.E.M. song [“Losing My Religion”] towards the end and we have the great Transistor song, “Look Who’s Perfect Now” over their entrance into the carnival. Those songs were really important to us because it sets the sets up what the world is and helps us build the era that we’re trying to show and the costume design and production design. But we love music, we love the ‘90s, so it was really fun.
What attracted you to this?
Justin Douglas Powell: We’ve wanted to tell a vampire story for quite some time and this one just fell into our laps. There was a a director that was on the project who dropped out and our team brought this to us and somehow we won it and got a cool trip to Spain. We were like, “hell yeah we’re in!” But we didn’t know what we were signing up for.
David Charbonier: it was a very difficult shoot, our most difficult yet. But at the time when it was presented to us, it seemed like it was going to be smooth sailing and really cool.
Seems like it was probably crazy just to set up a carnival.
David Charbonier: We left a lot of those fun tasks to our production designer to figure out how. I’m sure we drove him crazy because we had something very specific in mind and I know he had a lot of fun trying to source all those those carnival rides from all over Spain. We really wanted to feel like a real Americana summertime carnival, even though we were shooting this in the winter. Even something like that — the movie’s not shooting at the right time of the month. Everything was sort of wrong, but we were trying to make it feel true to the carnivals we grew up going to as kids.
Was it as much as a dream as I would imagine to film in a hall of mirrors?
David Charbonier: Luckily since there’s two of us, we divided and conquered, so I handled the Eric show while Justin handled the house of mirrors. But one of our contributions to the script was the house of mirrors, which we really had to fight for. Production did not want to give it to us because it was too expensive. But we fought for it and Iwe’re really happy we were able to bring that to the carnival.
Justin Douglas Powell: The way things go down with the characters more or less always happened, but it was in a very different setting, so the way that we had to figure that out, and this was a lot of discussion between Guillermo [Llaguno, the production designer] and Jose [Luis Bernal, the cinematographer], just figuring this all out. There are a lot of two-way mirrors that we use, so the the camera is very rarely inside the maze itself. It’s actually outside looking through the mirrors. Otherwise, you end up having a whole bunch of reflections. It was just a technical killer because we only had a few panels that you could actually see through. So we had to constantly move these panels around the maze and move the camera with it. Finally, towards the end, we figured out a way to bring the camera in for a few specific shots where the actors themselves had to block the reflections. So it was really tricky and we were shooting it for a few days, which required David and I to split up during those days, which is a little frustrating, but we managed.
Was that a different experience?
David Charbonier: It really wasn’t because we are so aligned with our vision and the kind of story we want to tell and the aesthetic. Our previous movie “Push,” we did have to divide a little bit. But this one definitely required that more just because there was so much material to cover and also we lost five days of shooting while we were shooting, which is really unheard of. We’re still like not clear why that even happened. We were supposed to have like twenty-five days of shooting and I think we ended up with 18. For reference, “The Djinn,” which we shot in in my apartment for no money, we had 19 days.
And you have all these extras…
Justin Douglas Powell: Working with that amount of people… just the main cast alone, we’d never worked with that many people, let alone once you throw in all the extras, so it was quite the task. We learned so much. The logistics of those scenes were oftentimes further complicated just by the sheer amount of people that had to inhabit the space. But on the other hand because there are so many people, you just have to let everything go with the flow and just see what happens. So it was trial and error a little bit, but it was definitely a new playground for us to play on.
When you’ve always wanted to make a vampire film, I wondered whether digging into all the the practical effects and all of that stuff was as fun as you might have imagined it to be?
David Charbonier: I wish I could say yes because we love practical effects. Those are the horror movies that made us were those movies that were real, like “The Thing.” We had so much of that planned and made even. But because of losing all those days, one of the things we lost was being able to do some of the stuff more practically and bigger. But we remain fans of that art form and we hope we were able to still bring some of it to life and it’s something we obviously are we’re very passionate about to continue, especially in a world of AI. That art form really has to be maintained or it’s just going to be lost.
Justin Douglas Powell: I really do want to give a shout out to Raquel [Pintado], our makeup designer, because with so little time, she was able to put together so much. Several of the things that she did build weren’t able to make it to screen simply because we didn’t have the time. I remember being so excited when she actually showed us what she had put together. We’re just like, “This is incredible.” But there were some things that were so incredible and they ended up being cut for time. So it would have been a much like even like gory, crazier ride if we had gotten to explore a lot of those things that she had gotten to do, but she’s incredible and we really want to work with her again because she was so great.
Was there anything that came out better than you might’ve expected because of some ingenuity on the fly?
Justin Douglas Powell: The final montage was not the original plan of how this movie comes together. There were a whole bunch of different iterations of that ending that we had come up with, but finally our editor had like a really interesting idea of how to culminate the emotional core of the movie and building that sequence out was just really beautiful. I now can’t envision the movie ending in a different way, to be honest.
It doesn’t sound like the easiest birth. What’s it like to have pulled it off?
Justin Douglas Powell: We were both very happy to have a finished movie that we can share with the world. This is actually the first one we got to release an AMC theaters, even though it was only for one night. That was a really big deal for us. It was really exciting seeing it on the big screen and because it was such a tricky experience and the first that we didn’t write ourselves, to come out on the other side of that and still have something we’re really proud of makes us feel good.
David Charbonier: And I think it showcases all the talented people that worked on it behind the camera — all our amazing heads of department — and then we’re so proud of the performances. All the actors bring, that’s what makes us most excited about filmmaking — the emotional connection that characters can have with an audience. That’s what we’re most proud of.
“Vampire Carnival” is now available on VOD.