Exclusive: Dread Central Talks with Ciarán Foy About the Book of ELI
Tony Timpone
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For a time, Irish director Ciarán Foy (Citadel, Sinister 2) feared that his supernatural horror film Eli would never see the light of day. It was produced by Paramount Pictures, but the studio got cold feet and shelved it earlier this year. Fortunately, streaming giant Netflix swooped in and bought the movie and will drop Eli globally on October 18. When you consider that Netflix’s Bird Box reportedly drew 45 million viewers in seven days, more people will now surely see Eli than if marketing-challenged Paramount had given the film a token theatrical release.
In the movie, 11-year-old Eli (remarkable child actor Charlie Shotwell) is a “bubble boy” suffering from an auto-immune disorder. After checking into a mysterious clean house to treat his ailment, Eli begins to suspect that the house is haunted and his doctor (Lili Taylor) may be up to no good. In the following exclusive interview, Foy talks about the making of Eli and its rocky road to the screen.
DREAD CENTRAL: What attracted you to this story?
CIARÁN FOY: What attracted me was how different it was at a certain point, not to spoil anything obviously. I read a lot of horror, and I was encouraged to read this by my agent at a point in time when I didn’t want to read anything because my son had just been born. I wasn’t sleeping. I looked like a zombie. But I read it in one sitting at 3 a.m. while feeding my son.
First of all, what gripped me was the bubble boy aspect of it, that there was this stake in the story already. It wasn’t just a typical story of a family moving to a new house for a fresh start. It already had a sense of jeopardy, and that this kid needed to find a cure. This was his last chance to live. And would he find what he was looking for at this clean house? I felt empathy for the kid straight away, so that kept me reading. And then the mystery of what this place was and what’s actually going on there. And then the really tense questions of who’s telling the truth kept me reading. And at a certain point, it takes a very cool, organic turn. “Wow! I did not see that coming.” A lot of the time it’s something that I’ve seen before. But that fresh angle really made me smile. I raised my hand and said, “I’d love to pitch on this.”
DC: Was it difficult casting the young lead?
CF: Yes! At the pitch, where I talked about my vision for the story, how I would design it and all that, I told the producers that this story will live or die based on whoever we get to play Eli. If you get a kid who’s just OK, it’s just not gonna work. I really need to believe and have empathy for him. And that requires a great performer. So, I saw a lot of kids, and Anne McCarthy, who cast the movie, sent me a self-tape Charlie Shotwell had made. And straight away, I said, “That’s Eli.” We met, did some work in improv… I wanted to see an angry side of him as well as the vulnerable side, because the more the kid realizes what’s going on, the more proactive and angrier he gets. I was very much relieved to finally find Charlie Shotwell because he’s literally the title of the movie.
DC: You put Charlie through hell. How did you protect this little actor, especially having recently become a parent yourself?
CF: I have made a couple of horror films with kids in them, so it’s fine. It’s so funny how different the final product is versus what it’s like on set. The atmosphere on set when you’re making a horror film is, literally, every day is Halloween. The kids are smiling and have to get ready to get freaked out. The final product when you’ve got it all edited together and the sound effects in there and stuff like that is horrific. But on the day, it’s just a lot of fun for everyone.
DC: A young boy dealing with ghosts brings to mind The Devil’s Backbone. Was that a major influence?
CF: Yeah, there were quite a few influences. Devil’s Backbone for one, Let the Right One In was another, The Sixth Sense…all of those. I remember saying, “It’s Devil’s Backbone and Let the Right One In and The Conjuring meet One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” That was another aspect of the script that I loved; I’d never really seen a story like this before with a kid in an institution and seeing everything primarily through his eyes. Except for three scenes, everything is exclusively from Eli’s point of view. With this specifically subjective point of view for the story, it really helps us keep the audience on the side of the character.
DC: Has it been a challenge for you and the cast and crew to discuss the movie without giving the big surprise away?
CF: A little bit. Obviously, when you’re doing a horror movie, you’re foreshadowing things to ultimately pay off. It’s hard to talk about what you’re foreshadowing [laughs]. At the same time, part of the joy of watching the movie with an audience is that surprise. Obviously, at a certain point, the cat’s going to be out of the bag, but this might be a movie where people tell their friends to go see Eli but not spoil it for them. They want their friends to experience that sense of, “Holy shit!”
DC: Was there anything you brought to the script or had changed when you came on board?
CF: The blacklist script was David Chirchirillo’s. It’s his story, the skeleton and bones of it. With Richard Naing and Ian Goldberg, I worked mostly on the first two acts. We wanted to beef up some of the set pieces so that the movie could work. The script was a really tasty cake and the third act needed a cherry on top. Together we worked on a few things, like Eli being changed to “Lie” and using the condensation as a conduit to ghosts. Those were my main contributions with regards to acts one and two. But it’s very much the original story in terms of what it’s about and where it goes.
DC: Lili Taylor has done a few horror flicks before and is an indie film darling. Any anecdotes about working with her?
CF: She was amazing to work with. [Before the cameras rolled,] you could see her [running] the scene in her head, and then she’d say, “I see what you’re going for. What if I did this?” It almost feels like you’re playing jazz with each other. And she was just a constant presence on set where everyone felt cool and calm when she was around. I used to look forward to her coming to set to see what ideas we could cook up. As a director, obviously you need to have a plan, but it was just exciting to see what we could do together. How the scene was going to be better today because of her.
DC: At the New York press screening, more than half the audience was screaming during the film. Would Eli have played better theatrically than going straight to Netflix?
CF: Horror, like comedy, is best as a communal experience. All my favorite horror experiences I shared with an audience… that sense of unity, screaming, that sense of communal dread. You can almost feel it in the air. That’s the best way to watch horror. So, hopefully, when people watch it on Netflix, they watch it with other friends. At the same time, Netflix has been our saviors here; they stepped in when Paramount, who funded the movie and were our partners, reached the point where they didn’t really know how to market it. Netflix stepped in, and I literally could not have been happier with the trailer that they came up with. It was amazing because this is a movie that, if I watched the trailer, I’d go, “I want to see that movie.” But what I loved about it was that it didn’t reveal anything. All the juicy stuff is left for the audience to discover. Eli would’ve played great theatrically, but at the same time, if you can’t market the movie, then no one’s going to go see it.
DC: It must have been very frustrating for you while Eli was going through the long holding pattern with Paramount.
CF: It was. It’s your baby and you want it to get out there. At a certain point, we didn’t even know if it would ever see the light of day. We were all worried that Eli would end up locked in a dusty basement somewhere and not be seen at all. And then Netflix was the hand that reached down from the heavens and gave the movie a home and a platform. Just seeing the number of views the trailer has already, and the fact that [actress] Sadie Sink has a connection to Netflix from Stranger Things…we’ve ended up in the place where it’s meant to be. I’m just excited for it to get out there.
DC: You’re working with Netflix again on The Haunting of Bly Manor. What could you say about that?
CF: I can tell you that I’m incredibly tired right now. I’m in the middle of prep. I start shooting Wednesday [October 16], so I’m in ulcer city from nerves and stress. But I’m excited to get going; the cast is incredible. I just love the source material. People think they know The Turn of the Screw, but you don’t know what Bly Manor has in store. It blew my mind. The original novel is just one of many ingredients. I’m doing two episodes. I’m here in LA today for a friends and family screening of Eli, then I’m back on the plane to Vancouver on Monday and I don’t come back till I’m done.
DC: Is there anything else you have coming up?
CF: I have this one other thing that just closed, but I can’t say right now. Hopefully, in a couple of weeks there will be an announcement.
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