Exclusive: Director Todd Strauss-Schulson Dishes on The Final Girls
Staci Layne Wilson
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Recently we caught up with director Todd Strauss-Schulson about his latest film, The Final Girls (review), which is available now on VOD, and came back with the scoop on the flick! Read on!
Dread Central: I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’ve to say: Your premise seems really unusual. How do you describe it?
Todd Strauss-Schulson: It’s about a girl who loses her mom, and a couple of years later she gets access to this film her mother was in – the mom was an actress in these bad B horror movies of the 80s. [Through magic] she gets a second chance to be with her mom, in the movie. And that’s really the story of the film. That’s what I loved about it when I read the script because what an unusual way to tell the story of losing a parent and loss. It’s a really smart idea to tell it through horror and comedy. It was really personal to me because I lost my father right before I made my first movie. And it was really personal to the writers, too. It’s kind of a second chance to be with [a lost loved one] in kind of a dream world. So the horror element is sort of cloaking that story. It’s a jumping-off point. My background is more comedy – more visual kind of comedy – so to use that with the 80s slasher genre, and then tell a more important emotional story, was something I really wanted to do. This is like Back to the Future but with slashers, so it’s different! There are scares and stuff, but by the end there is a big emotional payoff.
It’s amazing, the interest in this movie from the horror community. I mean, the movie is PG13, right? So I wasn’t sure how horror fans would react… I mean, there’s not a lot of blood, and the kills are tame compared to The Green Inferno, you know? So, it is really not about the death; it’s about the aftermath of a death. But the horror community has really embraced us because this is a love letter to those old 80s movies, and it really is trying to add depth to some of those archetypes. And, it’s fun. It’s just a crowd-pleaser.
DC: Well, you have a solid comedy base, but both your screenwriters are more into genre. Joshua John Miller is a writer and is also an actor who was in Near Dark and The Wizard of Gore. How much did the three of you collaborate?
TSS: We collaborated a lot. Even though I have the personal connection to the lead character because we both lost a parent, Josh also lost his dad. His dad was an actor – he played the priest in The Exorcist [Jason Miller]. And so Josh was grieving, and the only way he was able to see his dad was on the big screen in a horror movie, just like our character in The Final Girls, Max [Taissa Farmiga]. And he’s getting killed, thrown down the stairs! That’s traumatic for the son [same as Max watching her mom get killed by slashers over and over]. So they [the screenwriters] wanted to tell a story of loss, but not through melodrama. I actually went to school with Mark; they told me this idea years ago and I thought it was a great idea, but I never heard anything about it again. Then I went off and made my first film and three weeks before, my father died. It was terrible; he just missed it. He was like my best friend, so supportive of my filmmaking, and so making my first film was a pretty loaded emotional experience. I was dreaming about him all the time. Not sad ones, I mean, he was visiting me and stuff like that. And so Josh sent me the first draft of The Final Girls back then, and I thought, “Oh my fucking God. I am literally living this experience right now.” And then just from the standpoint of me loving movies – I grew up wanting to be a film director – and so the idea of making a movie about these kids who literally go into a movie was [awesome]. So for three years, we worked on the screenplay. It was hard to find the right tone… sometimes it was too funny or too scary. Too meta. So many characters and stuff. So it was a matter of us [making it all work].
DC: The cast had to be essential to making it all work.
TSS: The tone of the movie wasn’t immediately clear to a lot of the people [actors, while casting]. To me, it’s my “voice.” Like, if I told you about the movie over dinner, then you saw the movie, it would be the same. There are some characters who chew the scenery, but the movie has to feel grounded. So Taissa, I felt I knew her [from her work]. I certainly didn’t know her personally, but she auditioned for us and she was just so amazing. Natural, ethereal, just so honest. And Malin is like the MVP of the movie. Malin is an amazing actress and I have always been a huge fan of hers. She is so beautiful, but she’s really funny and she can hear the music for jokes. And she just had a baby before we shot the movie, so she was a mother too. The movie is funny and scary, and visceral at times, but when you see Taissa and Malin together, it’s like, “Wow. This is the movie.”
DC: What 80s slasher tropes did you most enjoy sending up?
TSS: When I was kid, I started off being terrified of horror movies. Like Fight Night [scared me]. I couldn’t sleep. I was so destabilized I slept in my sister’s room for six months! But then I sort of dove in with A Nightmare on Elm Street and stuff like that. Army of Darkness, Evil Dead. I fell full bore into those things. I wanted to be a makeup artist, like Dick Smith. As far as the tropes go… I think we make fun of them all. I liked the idea of taking, say, the jock character and making him sympathetic. Taking the mean girl and explaining why she’s so mean. We certainly liked creating our own mythology of the bad guy. We loved cribbing some of those old school [music] scores, too – Carpenter, Tangerine Dream, Rick Wakeman – and modernizing them. And of course the wardrobe – we’ve got guys in crop-tops like Johnny Depp in Nightmare. It’s reverbs. If you really love horror movies, you are going to have a blast with all the visuals in The Final Girls. There’s color washes that feel like Argento, there’s camera work that feels like Raimi, and there’s a scene that’s like De Palma on steroids. It’s fun. And then, we’ve got our story.
Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson, The Final Girls is an unconventional comedy about Max, a high school senior, who is mysteriously transported with her friends into a 1980s horror film that starred Max’s mother, a celebrated scream queen.
Synopsis:
When Max (Farmiga) and her friends reluctantly attend an anniversary screening of Camp Bloodbath, the infamous ‘80s horror film that starred Max’s late mother (Malin Akerman), they are mysteriously sucked into the silver screen. They soon realize they are trapped inside the cult classic movie and must team up with the fictional and ill-fated camp counselors, including Max’s mom as the scream queen, to battle the film’s machete-wielding killer.
With the body count rising in scene after iconic scene, who will be the final girls left standing and live to escape this film?
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