Exclusive: Patrick Rea Talks Enclosure
Staci Layne Wilson
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Enclosure is the latest horror film from writer-director Patrick Rea, and it’s about a woman with a secret. When her husband insists she go camping with him to reconnect, things go – as they often do in these stories – horribly wrong. Supernatural stories and suspicions come to light, and they must determine if the real threat is inside or outside their enclosure.
Dread Central: Horror movies about trees and plants are rare –I can think of The Ruins, Albert Finney in The Green Man comes to mind, then of course there’s that scene in The Wizard of Oz – so what inspired you to make one?
Patrick Rea: Well, it started out very different. Michelle Davidson and I wrote the film to take place in the Ozark Mountains, which is about three hours from Kansas City. When we learned that we would be filming in South Carolina, we decided to make some changes to the story. Once we did some research on the “low country,” we took the creature mythology in a different direction and decided to merge a lot of the creature design with the region’s look.
The concept of giving the film a sense that nature was closing in on the characters was always a central theme, along with maintaining a strong female backstory to the legend. Ultimately, we wanted to do something different with the “woods-set” horror film. Placing the characters almost entirely inside of the tent, with the threat inside and outside, was something that interested me. Then approaching it as a character piece, where the two leads are forced to deal with their problems while stuck in this situation, felt like a fresh spin.
DC: Your cast is really top-notch. Fiona Dourif, Kevin Ryan, and Jake Busey are great “names” to have! Can you talk a little about how they can on board and what they brought to the table in terms of talent?
PR: They were great! Kevin was the first to be cast, after I was blown away by his audition. We then read several actresses for the character of Dana, but Fiona stuck out. She had impressed me in Curse of Chucky, and we felt she brought an edge to the character that may not have been on the page. As for the character of Sean, the central villain, we wanted someone who was physically different from Kevin and Fiona, but still appeared menacing. Jake was a great choice. All three of the actors were extremely collaborative. We would work out any issues with dialogue or story before we were on set. Once we had them set up in the tent, it became very close quarters for everyone, and we had a tight 12-day shooting schedule, so we had to move fast.
DC: We were following your Indiegogo campaign. Since the full budget goal was not met, how did you make the film, ultimately – private investors, or did a studio come on board?
PR: We were able to secure funding from private investors. I think in this day and age, a filmmaker has to have smart business sense to survive. I often speak at the film school at the University of Kansas, where I graduated in 2002, and I tell the students to not only have a good business plan ready, but also spend a great deal of time in pre-production. Get all of your problems with the script, shots, make-up, visual effects figured out then so you can deal with the other problems that will arise in production. Also, as a filmmaker today, it’s important to know more than just “directing.” Train yourself to edit or at least understand the process of editing. That way you can step in if need be to complete your cut of the film or even do the initial rough cut.
DC: What inspired you and your writing partner to do a story on a pregnant woman in peril, and do either of you have kids? How do horror movies like this affect viewers who are parents, as opposed to those who aren’t?
PR: The first inspiration was a camping trip my wife and I took years ago, where we were near a group of campers who had a major altercation. We were stuck in our tent, and the fight escalated to the point where one of the campers had gotten on a four-wheeler with a deer skull attached to the front. He proceeded to circle the camp area, just missing our tent several times. My wife and I were petrified, but I cut the tension by suggesting that maybe a bear would attack their camp and break up the fight. It wasn’t long after that excursion that I decided to start writing.
At the time of actually putting together the script, my wife was pregnant, so a lot of that fear of losing one’s self as an artist by becoming a parent seeped into the script. Michelle Davidson is also a mother, and she added a lot of layers to Dana’s character. I think this film will definitely affect parents or expecting parents differently. There is an anxiety when having your first kid that I think many parents will relate to. I know I felt there were a lot parallels between the Charles character and myself.
I just wrapped on a very different sort of film. The film titled Duke is a family film that deals with a dog that escapes a violent dog-fighting ring and is taken in by a family. Despite Duke being in a different genre, it does retain a bit of edge to it since it deals with a pretty dark topic.
DC: What’s your goal as a creative filmmaker, and where do you see yourself (and the industry), say, five years from now?
PR: Well, I have quite a few projects I want to do right now, a lot of which are in the horror genre. I’m always trying to line up my next projects, and I just see myself in the next few years continuing to grow as a filmmaker. I would love to make a film for a studio like Blumhouse in the near future.
As for the industry, I do think that there will be more reliance on smaller budgeted films. It seems that this summer was filled with a glut of over-budgeted films that failed to make money. If you look at the smaller “studio” films that were successful, such as The Purge: Election Year and The Conjuring 2, they all had mid-level budgets that allowed them to be profitable. I think that studios like Blumhouse will continue to be successful, and other studios will have to adapt and follow their lead, instead of sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into films that lack audience interest.
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