20 Things We Learned from John Hyams’ ‘Sick’ Commentary
Physical media is where it’s at, friends, because if you have the movie, you can watch the movie, period. Another reason to love your 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD collection? Special features like commentaries featuring filmmakers, critics, and other film fans. After living for more than a decade elsewhere on the internet, Commentary Commentary has been reborn here at Dread Central, which is fitting for its return from the dead, as it’s now all about the horror.
The horror genre sometimes seems like it moves in waves as trends take hold and dictate what gets made and seen for a short while. Slasher films have been part of that cycle before, most notably in the 1980s, where franchises like Friday the 13th and Halloween reigned, and in the late 1990s as Scream dictated a smarter, funnier approach.
The case can be made that while horror never actually loses the public’s interest, some of its subgenres do fade away on occasion. To that end, we’re currently enjoying something of a rebirth for the slasher subgenre—the Scream franchise is back again, and we’ve even gotten new holiday killers with Terrifier, Thanksgiving, and Heart Eyes all packing theaters and earning rave reviews.
One great little slasher that was lost to the pandemic is John Hyams’ Sick, a tight, low-budget thriller that actually uses COVID as a backdrop. It was dropped onto Peacock at the very start of 2023 and missed by too many genre fans, but thankfully, Scream Factory has just brought it home on 4K UHD and Blu-ray with new interviews and three new commentary tracks.
Now, keep reading to see what I heard on the commentary for…
Sick (2023)
Commentators: John Hyams (director), Yaron Levy (cinematographer)
1. Hyams and Levy have been collaborators since 2012’s Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning, and they were working together on the Netflix series Black Summer right before Sick. He thinks they were still “in the zone” of how they shot the show with long takes and multiple camera angles within those takes. Levy agrees and sees it as an economical way of storytelling that he found challenging and enjoyable.
2. Both men are comfortable essentially “editing in camera” and not grabbing additional shots or masters. “I think at times it makes producers and executives nervous,” says Hyams, “because you’re not really giving them a lot of options in terms of how to recut the material.”
3. The opening attack in Sick isn’t aiming to simulate a one-take oner. Like the scenes leading up to the fight, it’s about momentum and moving things forward with the camera’s movement. “It’s about how much tension you have when you don’t cut.”
4. This first kill was shot in the same building in Utah where parts of 2018’s Hereditary were filmed.
5. “He’s obviously a deep student of the horror genre,” says Hyams about co-writer Kevin Williamson. He credits the Scream writer with crafting a satirical slasher and then signing off on Hyams’ more grounded approach when it came to filming.
6. For the tech heads among you, they used Ronin-2 camera setups instead of Steadicam.
7. The lake scenes around the 15:00 minute mark give the impression that Parker (Gideon Adlon) and Miri (Beth Million) are alone out there, but that’s a lot of visual effects trickery. “When we’re shooting this, there are people water-skiing or jet skiing on the lake, there are houses out there on the hills,” so they digitally removed it all.
8. Hyams credits Adlon and Million for signing onto what amounts to a chase movie that had them tense and in peril for much of the film. It was especially tough on Adlon as she was still recovering from recent knee surgery.
9. “Oh, a COVID movie, that’s probably the last thing I want to do,” is what Hyams recalls thinking when he was first pitched on directing the project. “What sold me on it was I realized it was essentially a COVID period piece.” He liked how it tapped into “a collective existential freakout… where everyone was a little bit off the rails.”
10. The angled shot of Parker sleeping while our eyes are drawn to the doorway is a slight “rip-off” of David Fincher’s Panic Room. “It’s okay to steal from the master,” says Hyams.
11. Hyams intentionally aimed to avoid the kind of slow-moving killers that slashers typically trade in, and he instead went for “human” killers so it would feel more visceral and messy. This also allows him to play into an obvious strength, which is action/fight scenes.
12. He was leery at first of the moment in Williamson’s Sick script where DJ (Dylan Sprayberry) comes out the front door almost like a marionette, “because it stretches credibility.” But it ended up working better than he expected.
13. While jump scares can sometimes feel cheap and unearned, Hyams chose to embrace them with a focus on misdirection and filming techniques.
14. There were discussions about how many times Parker should hit the killer with the ice bucket, but “in the end I always feel like the audience wants to see someone hit that guy way too many times.”
15. Hyams credits stunt coordinator Eliza Coleman for delivering big beats for their small slasher, including a high fall, a full-body burn, and more. The burn at the end of the woman running down the road on fire was done by Coleman’s daughter, Whitney.
16. “Sick is a very low body count horror movie,” says Hyams, as it essentially plays out with audiences waiting to see which of the two young women is going to die. “Of course, if you’ve seen the movie, you realize they both survive, which is kind of what I liked about it.” He sees it as a survival thriller, and it’s worth pointing out that Hyams never mentions the word “slasher” at all in this commentary.
17. Hyams credits the sound design for bringing life to the film, as watching rough cuts in editorial can sometimes feel boring before score and effects are added. “Sound design is really the secret weapon of all filmmaking.”
18. He views the script, in part, as a long setup for a punchline at the 1:01:00 mark as Pamela (Jane Adams) gives Parker the chloroform-laced mask. Hyams also suspects the character’s name is a nod to Friday the 13th’s Pamela Voorhees by Williamson.
19. Jason (Marc Menchaca) dies after he’s cut, sprayed, pushed over a railing, and impaled on antlers below. “It happens so quickly you don’t have time to scrutinize how it was done, which is usually when gags work the best,” says Hyams, adding that it involved a mix of practical effects and a hidden cut from a stunt performer falling to the actor already rigged up below. “Filmmaking still requires, even with VFX, misdirection and smoke & mirrors.”
20. The script originally ended with a single cough from Parker, but Hyams chose to instead end on the wide shot of Parker and Miri, a burning Pamela, and the arrival of the police. “It’s not even about that, it’s about the friends holding hands.”
Quotes Without Context
“Every camera movement moves the story forward.”
“How long does it stay interesting?”
“Every day started with us being behind.”
“I always will have an idea, but I’m always waiting for that idea to be improved upon.”
“This is the fun of this movie, is that there’s basically no second act. It goes first act, right into third act.”
“When people fall down stairs, they’re basically just falling down stairs.”
“Let’s have a super brutal fight here.”
“Sometimes you need your killers to kill somebody.”
“If you can keep the audience on edge, they’re really ready to laugh if you give them any kind of release.”
Call it a slasher, call it a survival thriller, but either way, Sick remains a slick ride for fans of thrills and kills. It’s the rare film, genre or otherwise, that makes good use of the COVID backdrop as more than mere set dressing. It’s a smart, surprising, and fun time deserving of more eyeballs.
Scream Factory’s new 4K UHD release affords the film’s nighttime scenes depth and detail, and the extras provide plenty of insight into the film’s production. Kudos to all involved, and here’s hoping more streaming-only releases get quality physical releases eventually, too.
Categorized:Commentary Commentary Editorials
