‘The Killgrin’ Director Joanna Tsanis On Crafting Her New Creature Feature
Girls just wanna have fun, and sometimes that fun means making a nasty little creature feature about the experience of grief. At least, that’s fun for writer and director Joanna Tsanis, whose feature film debut, The Killgrin, just hit VOD after a successful festival run. While she treads familiar genre ground, she uses practical effects and a killer sense of humor to make sure her film sticks out from the pack.
In the new creature feature,
“After a personal tragedy, Miranda explores unconventional self-help methods, only to learn from a spiritual healer that she has an infection of her aura called a ‘Killgrin’, which thrives off her misery. Initially skeptical, Miranda turns to the more traditional method of group therapy, but soon unravels a terrifying truth when people close to her suffer a gruesome fate.“
We spoke with Tsanis and the film’s stars, Konstantina Mantelos and Adam Tsekhma,n about horror vs. psychological thrillers, Pokémon, and balancing horror with comedy!
Dread Central: Congratulations on this film, Joanna. How does it feel to have this film finally released into the world? I know it’s had a festival run, so how does it feel now?
Joanna Tsanis: I’m really excited to get it released into the world. Dark Sky Films has been really amazing, and festivals are always fun, especially genre festivals. It’s kind of the best way to show a horror movie.
DC: They’re the best, they’re the best. Everyone’s so cool and just wants to watch weird indie horror stuff.
JT: Yeah, absolutely. Then the monster is also out in the world. It joins the monster canon, so that’s a lot of fun for us.
DC: That’s so exciting. So I wanted to hear where this idea came from, how it started, and why you wanted to make your own creature feature.
JT: I’d say I would pinpoint it to when I was a teenager. I lived in an area of downtown Toronto that had a lot of $10 psychics, and I, being a teenager, was very curious. So I went to one and she did actually end up telling me that there was something wrong with my aura and I needed to pay her a rather hefty fee—at least a hefty fee for a teenager—to get it cleansed. I did not have the money, so I couldn’t do it, but it’s sat at the back of my mind. Anytime something bad would happen, I’d be like, “Oh my God, I should have gotten my aura cleansed by that woman!” But I’m still here. I think she had her wiring mixed up. [Laughs] She was talking about The Killgrin, not about my life.
I started thinking about that moment again during the pandemic because, obviously, a lot of people were wrestling with mental health struggles. I was thinking about the ways in which people engage in self-help and make sense of their internal struggles, and I wanted to write a movie about that. So that’s when I started developing this film.
DC: Konstantina, you carry this film on your shoulders; The Killgrin is all Miranda’s story. You make it seem easy, which I’m sure it wasn’t. I’m curious what that experience was like with you to get into Miranda’s headspace and be on screen for almost the entire film.
Konstantina Mantelos: Just a tad. It was equal parts super exciting and also terrifying. It was really cool getting to work closely with Joanna and talk to her about the writing process, where some of the ideas behind what happens to Miranda came from. So many experiences that Miranda goes through in the film are experiences we all go through, especially those moments when people in your life are suffering and you don’t know how to help them.
I related a lot to Miranda’s caregiver quality and the way that she gets wrapped up in certain relationships that take her energy and suck her dry when she’s desperately trying to help the people she loves. The film shows that when she now turns to trying to help herself, she’s at a loss and desperately trying to figure out how to do that for herself.
DC: You’ve pinpointed why I love this movie. Adam, your character Brian is the little ray of awkward sunshine who functions as a beautiful little comedic interlude throughout this film. Joanna, why was it important for you to have this kind of comedic relief character to balance out the rest of the film?
JT: I think any film with this kind of heavy subject matter or any horror film needs a little bit of levity here and there to give the audience a break. So I knew I wanted to have some levity in terms of Brian’s characters specifically. I wanted every character in the film to be dealing with their internal struggles in very different ways. I wanted Miranda and Brian to have a similar issue where they don’t want to be alone with their own thoughts for too long, but they both go about it in very different ways.
Miranda’s always seeking solutions. She’s trying everything. She tries the new age method, she tries the traditional method. She tries everything she can to get some effective self-help, whereas Brian self-soothes by constantly needing to be around people. So I wanted to show that juxtaposition through multiple characters and how they all deal with grief.
DC: Adam, what was it like for you, then, to play this character, and what about it was so interesting for you as an actor?
Adam Tsekhman: Well, he’s similar to me. I like to be the clown. I prefer not to explore my deep emotional life, I like to bury and smile and have fun and avoid because avoiding is the way to go through life joyfully, at least for a bit. [Laughs]
KM: There’s no chance of cracking there. There’s no eye twitch happening.
JT: It’s a very healthy message we’re spreading. Please follow Brian’s lead on this film. [Laughs]
AT: Maybe that is where my eye twitching comes from. That’s a great theory. I do constantly have an eye twitch. [Laughs] But yeah, I was talking to Joanna after, and yeah, The Killgrin is a dark, deep movie, but not for me. I was in a rom-com.
DC: You feel like you’re from a different movie in a way. And I love that, though, especially the montage while y’all are drinking and making nasty, weird green drinks and hanging out in your bachelor pad. What a vibe.
KM: One of my favorite moments from set was one day of being at the craft table with some of the art guys, and we were talking about shooting the scene with Adam in his apartment. And I was like, “What was sort of the inspiration, guys? What was the vision for Adam’s apartment?” I hadn’t seen it yet. And they were basically like, “Yeah, we talked with Joanna and essentially, we want the apartment to feel like every red flag for a woman the moment she walks in. Everyone should be screaming, ‘Girl, get the hell out of there.'” And I think it was achieved gloriously.
DC: It looks like every college film bro’s apartment that I hung out in college! Konstantina and Adam, are you horror fans outside of acting, or are you avoidant of the genre?
KM: I am a huge horror fan. Actually, just opposite my computer right now, I’ve got my mini collection of A24 screenplays. I started getting into horror around the time when The Witch first came out. I started seeing within the genre this sort of feminist darkness rising that really started to pull me in. Then I started deep diving and became a huge horror fan after that.
DC: Adam, what about you? What is your relationship to the genre?
AT: I can’t say I’m a horror fan. I won’t seek out horror unless I hear, “Oh, this horror is a great movie.” I don’t think this is a horror movie, even though it’s considered one: Midsommar. It’s a masterpiece.
KM: Oh, that’s definitely a horror movie.
DC: Horror is such a subjective label. I feel like some people say, “Oh, I don’t like horror. I like psychological thrillers.” And I often ask, “What’s the difference between the two, then?” because it is so subjective.
AT: Is The Substance horror?
KM: Oh yeah. It’s body horror.
DC: I think it’s body horror and a comedy too! I think it’s got a little bit of all of that, but I’m always quick to call something horror.
JT: There’s such a range. I love every sub-genre. I’ll watch the campiest horror movie, I’ll watch a slasher horror movie, I’ll watch a psychological thriller. I think a lot of movies are horror movies, even though most people wouldn’t classify them as that. I think American Psycho is a horror movie. American Psycho is a phenomenal horror movie.
DC: I agree with you. That book is also a horror book. The movie’s better in my opinion, but that’s just me personally. Joanna, I love that you made a freaking nasty monster movie. Did you have a goal besides just making a nasty monster movie?
JT: One of my favorite subgenres for sure is monster movies. I love that the monster lives on beyond the film. It’s like a Pokémon! You’ve got this monster out there now, just living and breathing without you.
DC: Gotta catch ’em all.
JT: Yes, absolutely. And you also get to create, which is so much fun. There’s so much craft in it, and you get to work with such talented people. When I wrote the script, I had an FAQ sheet about the monster so that anyone who had questions about the monster would have this sheet they could read to understand all the rules. But that was great to have once we got into pre-production, because I could share it with the whole Monster team.
The Butcher Shop effects studio did a phenomenal job building the monster, which was entirely practical. I had conversations with Adrian Bob, who’s the creature designer, early on, because the way the monster is described, it’s just a short paragraph in the script. But I had conversations with him about what the monster represents and wanting the audience to be afraid of the monster, but also simultaneously pity it since it is a monster that’s in pain. It was very cool. It was a really fun experience to build this thing. You’re making a movie, but you’re also building this monster at the same time. So it was just a fun experience.
DC: Well, you get to world build in such a cool, instant creative way, which I feel like not everyone gets to do. Is there anything on that FAQ sheet that maybe isn’t in the movie, but you were really excited about in building the lore of the Killgrin?
JT: There are definitely a lot of things that aren’t referenced in the movie, but perhaps they’re felt because they’re still true and still within the movie. But yeah, I guess some things maybe weren’t referenced directly, but it’s always good for me to know and for the monster team to know. Then everyone else can maybe have it sitting in their subconscious somewhere as they watch
DC: Hell yeah. And then when you were designing it, did you have an idea about what you wanted it to look like? Or did you let your monster team go forth and build and create for you?
JT: I had some ideas. I don’t want to give away too much, but some aspects of the teeth I described initially, and also the barbed wire, and the more painful parts and painful textures of the Killgrin. But in terms of really building it and bringing it to the next level, I mean, the practical effects team and the creature designer were very helpful in that respect. And it was a lot of fun.
Konstantina has mentioned this about how, on set, you would see one side where the makeup artists would be working on the actors, and then the other side would be the practical effects team throwing slime on the monster. It was just a funny juxtaposition to have these two different groups doing similar things with very different results.
DC: Is the monster a person inside a suit?
JT: Leland Tilden, he’s the creature actor. He was phenomenal. We owe a lot to him.
DC: Adam, what was it like for you to get to interact with a practical monster in this movie? I know it’s not for long!
AT: No, just with Leland in the green room and the monster costume sitting on a hanger next to him. I’ll say, Mary Beth, while the costume was hanging on the hanger, it was kind of moving a little bit. It was a little weird. [Laughs]
DC: Are you sure it wasn’t your eye twitching? [Laughs]
AT: It might. I dunno. But I feel like the Killgrin exists independently of Leland as well. I don’t know!
DC: We’re bringing it to life. We’ve all thought about it so much. It’s like a tulpa. Konstantina, for you, what was it like interacting with the monster?
KM: Oh, it was fantastic. There are so many fun aspects. It’s the fun of getting to be an actor in a horror movie, and why I fell in love with it so much. There are so many fun elements to the fact that everyone in a horror film gets to flex their fun, weird, crafty side and do the thing that they actually really love doing. In the case of a monster, when we’re shooting the thing, the most amazing thing is, I don’t have to pretend here.
There’s a great moment in The Killgrin when I’m on my knees and I stand face-to-face with the Killgrin, and it’s there in front of me, all the truly amazing details that they did not skimp on. Everything we see of the Killgrin in the film was a practical part of the suit. So I could see it all. The way Leland would move, he found a relationship with the suit, which added to what this creature was and how it existed. All I had to do was take it in. I didn’t have to pretend I was there.
Then there’s the fun of half the time Leland has the head off, and he’s this big guy with this thing on, and he’s sweating, they’re fanning him a little bit. That suit doesn’t breathe well. So it’s just a great time.
DC: I love horror movies. They’re so fun to make. They’re so neat. They’re difficult to make for sure, but also a blast at the same time. So before we wrap, Joanna, I just want to hear from you, what are your top three favorite monster movies?
JT: I would say Pumpkinhead. It’s definitely up there. Pumpkinhead’s design rules, man. Why don’t more people make a monster the size of a Jurassic Park dinosaur?? It’s another creature film about people’s internal struggles. That’s a whole subgenre of a subgenre. That’s one of my favorites.
I would consider Hellraiser a monster movie, even though they are more humanoid, for sure. But I would put that in there too, just because the creature design has been such an inspiration to me on multiple films I’ve done.
And I think the other one, I would say, is The Babadook. I know it’s an obvious answer, but it’s an obvious answer for a reason. Jennifer Kent did such a masterful job with that. And what I loved about that movie, I mean, everyone’s favorite part of that movie is the police station scene. It’s so memorable when you just see the jacket and the hat, it just startles you. She just really accomplished something phenomenal in that movie.
The Killgrin is out now on VOD!
Categorized:Interviews
