Bayona Talks Hater!

By Johnny Butane
October 17th, 2008

All right, so there’s not a helluva lot of insight in this Q&A with The Orphanage director J.A. Bayona, but it is the first time he’s spoken about Hater, the upcoming adaptation he’s doing of David Moody’s book, so it’s worth a mention.

Twitch Film got the chance to pick Bayona’s brain recently during the Sitges Film Festival to get an idea of just what kind of approach he’ll be taking with Hater, “When a director gives himself to the story, he ends up soaking the movie with his own style.” Bayona explained, ”Hater is a horror tale, but it’s also a very emotional story. It will be much more violent than The Orphanage, because it deals with hate as the main emotion. But it also talks about forgiveness, sacrifice and even love.”

The story of Hater deals with an epidemic of hate the sweeps across the world, uncocerned with race or creed or economic status. The infection makes its victims full of hate and capable of commiting horrible acts. ”What I really liked about the story was that it deals with the real world we are living.” the director continued, ”It asks if we want to live in a world where we are controlled from above, through fear. Hater is an answer to that fear: it shows what can happen when people react to it with uncontrollable fury. That’s an excellent start for a movie.”

Bayona also said he’s prepping a Spanish-language movie at the same time as Hater, which he will shoot when he’s done in Hollywood. No word on what that film might be about, but of course we’re hoping for another creepy horror story.

Keep it here for more Hater updates as the film approaches!

- Johnny Butane