Interview: Director Johannes Roberts Discusses THE STRANGERS: PREY AT NIGHT
Picking up the reigns from another director to move along in a potential franchise’s impending forward direction isn’t an easy task, I’m sure – but to grip those reigns after a long 10 years of downtime between specific films? Now that’s a whole other bloody ball of wax – however, director Johannes Roberts (47 Meters Down, The Other Side Of The Door) was more than ready to steer The Strangers: Prey At Night, and actually cranked out a pretty decent film that horror fans should enjoy as a late-night watch. He was more than gracious enough to give us a few minutes of his time to discuss the sequel, as well as what he’s got coming up next, so settle in, read on and enjoy!
Dread Central: Take us back to the beginning – you’ve just found out that you’re the man responsible for bringing a new film to light – what’s going through your mind?
Johannes Roberts: Well, the first thing I thought was “is this a sequel, or is it a reboot? I mean it’s been 10 years – does anybody remember the first one? Where are we in the landscape of the story?” There were a lot of questions that had to be answered with this one, so I had to think about the best way to approach it, if anybody wanted it to look identical to the first one. From all of that, it sort of developed from there – I was a big fan of the first one, so we were very true to it, and as the project went on it became its own thing.
DC: The look of the film was fantastic, and alongside the 80’s soundtrack there was a sense of a directorial tribute unfolding to some of the horror-crafters of years past – do you agree?
JR: Yeah, very much so – I look at it as this was one of those movies that I could have a bit of fun with in terms of lauding someone like John Carpenter, while playing around with some of the cinematic techniques that I used in the film itself.
DC: Was there anything that gave you a certain amount of difficulty while filming?
JR: You know, the trickiest scene to film I think was the driving scene in the beginning when the family’s in the car – we filmed as they were driving through Cincinnati and you know, it was just painful! You try and direct from the car that’s alongside of them, and you get stuck in traffic – nothing works. That was much harder to direct than the pool sequence or the burning car sequence.
DC: So what can fans expect to see you coming up with next?
JR: Well, I’ll be working on 48 Meters Down as you know, and I’m also really interested in virtual reality, and I’m going to try to incorporate that into this underwater ghost story I’ll be working on, and I’ve got another ghost story that I might be shooting before I shoot 48 Meters Down – there’s a lot of interesting stuff floating around, so I’m just keeping my eyes open to see what I’d like to take next.
The Strangers: Prey At Night is NOW AVAILABLE on Blu-ray and DVD.
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