Exclusive: Filmmaker Tom DeNucci Talks Almost Mercy, Working with Horror Legends, and Unleashing Danielle Guldin

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Tom DeNucci first came to our attention with a small role in Woodhaven Production Company’s initial film, Inkubus. Since then DeNucci has become the go-to guy for Woodhaven horror films and has just released his newest movie, Almost Mercy.

Hitting VOD today (May 26th), Almost Mercy (review) is by far the slickest offering from Woodhaven and DeNucci thus far. Recently the writer/director sat down to discuss the film with Dread Central.

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For openers, DeNucci gave us a bit of background and some info on just what viewers can expect when settling down for a screening. “Almost Mercy is a fresh look at a classic revenge story,” DeNucci said. “You get to see the bond that forms as two characters come together, see how they react to the world around them as they discover that monsters aren’t always in the form of boogeymen and zombies and sometimes some of the most horrible people could be your gym teacher at school or your next-door neighbor or your best friend’s dad. Evil can come in a lot of disguises. It’s not always Freddy Krueger or some demon. It could be a policeman or your principal.”

Almost Mercy would not have worked without the right actress to play the role of Emily. Emily is the movie. She not only stars but narrates as well. Woodhaven was wise enough to incorporate the skills of Danielle Guldin in the role, and she simply owns it. DeNucci talked about how Guldin came to be Emily. “Danielle is, by far, the quarterback of the team, and she was unbelievable,” DeNucci said. “I couldn’t have asked for a better lead in this movie. Producer David Gere cast her in a film he was making called Sensory Perception; I was an actor on that movie, and Danielle and I worked together and did a couple of scenes together, and I saw that she was very talented. And that was a very low-budget indie movie and it wasn’t the best conditions to work under and I saw this grit and toughness I liked about her. Then we went our separate ways, and I hadn’t really talked to her for some time. Then this role of Emily came up and she wanted to audition for it, but I wasn’t sure about her right away. There were a lot of other different actors we were looking at, and we really had a nationwide search. But, sure enough, the auditions came in and she got past the first round and then there was a taped submission she sent in and this taped audition was the friggin’ character. She was Emily. The tape was like six or seven minutes, and I think I watched a minute and knew, ‘Wow, this was it.'”

Audiences will certainly be impressed by some of the powerful issues dealt with in Almost Mercy. School gun violence, bullying, and inappropriate clergymen are all big parts of the story. DeNucci talked about how he handled these hot-button issues. “I felt that it had to be dealt with in a really delicate fashion,” DeNucci said. “These are issues people have had to encounter in their lives, and it’s nothing to joke about. I think we had to deal with it very carefully because you don’t want to turn people off. It’s not like we were attacking topics like that just to get a rise out of people. This was serious stuff we really wanted to portray in our story. One way we tried to handle it was with Emily’s voiceover. It’s almost uncomfortable and there’s a dark humor to some of the things that are going on. It’s one of those ‘laugh at it because there’s nothing else you can do to make it better’ situations.”

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The voiceover DeNucci mentioned is one of the most important parts of the movie, and Guldin knocks it out of the park. It’s got a fantastic humor to it that offsets all the horrible things happening in front of you. “You’ll find that Emily’s voiceover narration is often very snide and contradictory to the things we may be seeing on the screen,” DeNucci said. “We get to get inside her mind and see how kids deal with these issues and kind of build these protective walls so they are able to function on an everyday level while going through such heavy, heavy shit at home or school.”

In his previous films DeNucci has worked with Michael Berryman, Tony Todd, Eric Roberts, and Nick Principe to name just a few. In Almost Mercy DeNucci adds two more horror icons to his ever-growing list of those he’s directed. “I’ve always wanted to work with Bill Moseley,” DeNucci said. “The Devil’s Rejects is one of my favorite movies, and Bill’s a guy I’ve always wanted to work with. I worked with Michael Berryman in the past and they actually have the same manager so it was one of those things where we thought about working with Bill for a while. Then this role for this crazy, intense preacher with skeletons in his closet came up, and it was kind of the perfect role for him. So Bill came on set, and he’s such a professional. He had a lot of dialogue in this movie, and he was really only on set for a week. So you’re always concerned because you spend so much time crafting the dialogue, but Bill showed up, and he was totally on point and not only delivered an incredible performance but also raised the character to a level I never even pictured in my mind. It’s kind of like watching a person who’s really good at guitar just take a guitar and rip a solo note-for-note like you heard on the radio. He’s just unbelievable.”

Kane Hodder also appears in the movie. “And Kane, I don’t think a lot of people realize the acting chops that he has,” DeNucci said. “A lot of people know him for being the man behind the mask, the Jason Voorhees character, but the guy can act. He really shows it in this movie. He’s got my favorite monologue in the whole film. He plays this offbeat gym teacher who’s kind of surly and more of a drill sergeant than a gym teacher, and it’s a really cool role for him. I think his fans are going to dig seeing him do something different and, for once, not be the boogeyman and not be the guy with a butcher knife and actually play a pretty in-depth character.”

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Since there seems to be a big crossover between horror fans and wrestling fans, DeNucci’s repeated use of wrestling legend Tommy Dreamer makes perfect sense. Not to mention the fact that Dreamer brings it every time out. “Tommy Dreamer is a guy I really enjoy working with, and we’ve become pretty close friends on a personal level over the last few years,” DeNucci said. “He’s been in every one of my movies and not just because we’re buddies. He shows up, he’s on time, he’s professional, and he’ll always give you everything he’s got. This was a different role for him. I called him up and said, ‘I would really love to get you in this film.’ He had just played a pretty significant role in my previous film, Army of the Damned, and I wanted to do something different where people didn’t even realize it was Tommy Dreamer right off the bat, kinda make them do a double take or look at the credits later on and be like, ‘Where was…? Oh, that was Tommy Dreamer.’ So he has this iconic goatee that any wrestling fan knows. It’s kinda been his look for some time now. So I called him up and said, ‘Tommy, I’ve got this role for you. Really different. He’s a businessman. He’s a shirt and tie kinda guy. How do you feel about shaving your goatee?’ Sure enough, he was like, ‘Wow man, I haven’t shaved in 15 years, maybe longer.’ But he did it. He jumped in with both feet. We parted his hair and gave him some kind of nerdy glasses and he brought to the screen something we’ve never seen before in Tommy Dreamer and I think wrestling fans are going to really dig it. It’s one of the most intense scenes in the movie. Don’t let the glasses and the nerdy tie fool you. Tommy certainly brings it in this movie.”

Finally, although Almost Mercy is a more cerebral film than DeNucci has done in the past, he still makes plenty of time for the bloodletting, and he finished our conversation talking about the men behind the magic. “Ben Bornstein has become my go-to guy in the world of special effects” DeNucci said. “He designed this show, and I can’t say enough about this guy as far as what he can do in bringing big level F/X to the screen on a very small budget. We didn’t have a whole lot to work with in the F/X budget, but Ben is always one of those guys who sits down with me, reads the script, and goes, ‘Okay, come on, Tommy. We can’t do this, this, or this. But we can do that, that, and that.’ He’ll always have a way to make it work so we can achieve what we’re going for. On this movie there’s plenty of blood, and horror fans are really going to like that element of it, but it’s not a gorefest by any means. A lot of the effects are practical, and we were really going for realism because we felt the story and the scenes were strong enough that they didn’t have to rely on blood gags or exploding heads or anything like that. But when it comes time for there to be an effect, it’s certainly visceral, and it’s going to get your attention. We also worked with a guy named Chris Dooly, who’s worked on some huge movies. He came in and worked on the last couple of days and worked on some of the bigger effects that we had with Bill Moseley. So, all in all, the F/X team was tops, and people are going to find, for a pretty low-budget movie, the F/X will go toe-to-toe with a lot of the bigger films out there.”

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