Exclusive: Alexandre Aja Talks The 9th Life of Louis Drax and More!
Staci Layne Wilson
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Alexandre Aja, the French horror director best known for his breakout film Haute Tension and remakes of The Hills Have Eyes and Maniac (director and producer, respectively), has a couple of new films to talk about.
The Other Side of the Door (review), directed by Johannes Roberts, is debuting on DVD and Blu-ray this month. Alex chatted with us about what made him want to step in as a producer on that particular film, in what must be a sea of solicitations for his endorsement. He also gave us a few details on an upcoming movie he directed, called The 9th Life of Louis Drax.
Dread Central: So, you’re in Paris right now? Pretty good connection. Better than the one we had from the U.S. to Morocco when you were in the middle of scouting locations. Seems you are always working!
Alexandre Aja: If I could live on set, I would be the happiest man in the world.
DC: I see a lot of upcoming projects for you.
AA: Yeah, I finished one; it’s going to open in September, and I’m supposed to start to direct at the end of the year. I have a very different type of movie, a 17th century movie about the favorites of King Louie the 14th. It’s a movie about human beings… it’s a very complicated movie, a very, very crazy movie about the 17th century in France.
DC: How did The Other Side of the Door come up on your agenda?
AA: I received the script from Johannes and usually I don’t want to produce people that I don’t know because it’s such a long ride and you really have to know each other and trust each other and I started reading the script and the script started to interest me in ways because it reminded me of projects I’ve been attached to that never happened. I was supposed to make a supernatural movie about a couple dealing with the death of their kid, and we couldn’t get it made at the time so this interested me. A year later I started talking about re-adapting Pet Sematary, and again the same theme about the drama and about the loss of a child that will lead you into pure awe and pure fear, and when I got the script, the script was exactly about this type of dynamic, about a couple that is dealing with something pretty dreadful. The mother was driving, the car went over the bridge into the river and the car was filling with water and she could only save one of the two kids in the backseat, and so she wants to say goodbye and takes the ashes of her dead son to a temple that is supposed to bring her dead son back to life on the other side of the door… you can say goodbye, but no matter what you cannot open the door. What Johannes has managed to create is kind of a spirit, a feeling of storytelling that is so immersive that you’re really into the drama and the story and that you know, that no matter what, she will open the door.
DC: Would you open the door?
AA: I definitely will open the door. I think that everyone, when someone tells you, ‘Don’t open the door,’ you have to go and open it.
DC: Do you feel like we are moving away from fun slashers and more into serious, emotional horror movies with ‘what if?’ scenarios? It seems we’re seeing more of that these days.
AA: There is still some physical violence, and the gore maybe became organized and not in a good way. You know, if you do a zombie movie, you can go out in left field, if you do “Game of Thrones,” you can do really good violence. I think today they let me do such a weird mix and I think it helps… but you’re right. I don’t even know or remember a proper slasher, to be honest. I know there is a lot coming; they are going to reboot every classic slasher movie. Like Halloween.
DC: Do you think there’s a societal backlash? For instance, Universal recently canceled some events for its next Purge movie because of the massacre in Orlando.
AA: It’s hard to say, you know, when you live in a society that has become so violent and so crazy. I was in Paris when we had our share of terrorist attacks as well and it’s true, when you see all the news on TV and you’re writing about murder and killing and butchering and you think maybe I should do something a little bit more light but I don’t know. I generally believe in nightmares and that nightmares are here to help you deal with your fear and to help you digest the world somehow and make you more balanced. I know that sometimes you have people see things in a different way but I know that these movies bring me, bring out in me the feelings of my own fears. I hope there is no link made between violence and movies because those people are coming from a completely fucked up world but we cannot stop thinking that we are responsible one way or the other but at the same time I have no idea how the impact of the Orlando shootings are going to be on The Purge. The Purge is still not real, it’s not real life, even if there’s a political subtext, a very strong message, it’s still all right and I think people should take it as a way to exorcise everything that they see on the news.
DC: So… I’m very curious about The 9th Life of Louis Drax. We haven’t seen a movie directed by you since Horns. What’s with the title and nine lives: It’s Louis a cat? [Laughter]
AA: It’s just a story of a pathetic little kid who… I mean, it’s not really a scary movie, it is just on the edge, on the frontier of the supernatural… but the story is a kid who happens to be accident-prone and who is in the craziest accidents, and every time he is in an accident, he survives so that’s why his mother is saying he has nine lives of cats. That’s why his nightmares started when he fell from a cliff in San Francisco and miraculously survived and that’s where the investigation started, who was taking care of him, trying to figure out what happened to him, who pushed him from the cliffs and why the father is avoiding the police and is on the run and this same investigation trying to find out why he is having accidents for so long. It’s a beautiful movie. It’s one I was supposed to direct for so long. Max Minghella wrote the script and it was one of most surprising reads I’ve had, the most emotional twists I’ve ever read, it’s a very different movie for me, it’s quite unique.
Look for The 9th Life of Louis Drax on September 2nd.
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