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| Hunt Club |
When a young woman (Mena Suvari) breaks up with her girlfriend (Maya Stojan) and is subsequently persuaded to go on a hunting trip with a father and son (Caspar Van Dien and Will Peltz) who witness the incident, nothing is as it seems. They haven’t told her that on this trip, she will be the prey, but there are a few things which she hasn’t told them either. When I met Hunt Club director Elizabeth Blake-Thomas, I explained that I’ve seen a lot of films about hunting humans over the years but that I couldn’t recall another one with a female director.
“It was important that we had a female director because of the subject. There was no choice, it could not be a male director. We had everything from a very strong female led team actually: the makeup, the designers, the wardrobe, the production. There were a lot of women on this set because of the female driven subject matter.”
Did that change the tone of the film?
“Oh, very, very much. In all honesty, when I was sitting in the edit, that was when there were decisions made where I was quite strong willed: ‘That needs to come out, that needs to come out. It's not necessary for this film.’ And possibly there could have been some other alterations, but you know, it is a horror. So it was a walking a fine line.”
The horror and humour in the film also have to be very carefully balanced.
“Exactly. And I think people do laugh. And then they are also feeling like, ‘Oh, God, that’s very sad.’ And then they're also be like, ‘Oh, that's disgusting.’
“One of my first films was a kids’ film called The League Of Legend Keepers: Shadows, and in a way it was a softer version of this. It was a little bit scary, a little bit, you know, because it was for 10-year-olds. And then as I've gone up, I suppose my other trafficking film, Unseen, shoed the darkness of that side of things. It's funny, I've actually directed so many things that now I kind of forget, which is a great place to be.” She laughs. “But I know what I loved doing was the action part of this, the stunt coordinating. We had a great stunt coordinator and that was really fun.”
It’s a big challenge to pace a film like this effectively and fit in all the action.
“It was not just about fitting it into the film, it was also about trying to actually film it in time, because we only had two weeks,” she explains. “So you know, you have to rehearse, you have to make sure everyone feels safe. Have you got body doubles? How are you making that work? Not only the practical element of it, but also the editing aspect. That is where you tell the story. You can write what you write, you can direct what you direct, but the editing is where you piece it together and decide to move things around. How can we tell that story in the best way?
“I really enjoy action sequences. I've just done my last film, Karma’s A Bitch, and I had three big action sequences, with Tony Todd, Rich Ting and Isabella Blake-Thomas. And it was great fun. Every film you do teaches you something to make you a better director for the next film, so really I've just layered as I’ve gone.”
I tell her that I enjoyed seeing her female characters fight in a realistic way, which is still fairly rare in cinema.
“It was wonderful having Mena and Maya because they were both dedicated to doing that. There was no question. I mean, Maya does her own stunts. She was all for it, and training and learning. We have two great coordinators on that film, brothers, they're fabulous, Greg and Geoff Samuels. Mena had a stunt double, so there was the odd time when if we were going over hours, we could use her back or whatever. But she was dedicated to the cause. She was like, ‘Man, I want to do this. I want to be part of it. Can I do it?’ So yeah, as long as you've got your stunt coordinators, they're working it out and it can still be brilliant, but stay safe. I mean, the whole point is these badass women kick the butts of these guys.”
Does it also make it easier for the actors to get into character in a film like this, when they’re doing their own stunts?
“I think so,” she says. “Although, on the last one that I've just done, as I said, my daughter had some stunts and said ‘I'll do them, I'll do them!’ I was like, ‘No, no, no. if you do them yourself, I can't finish the movie.’ So there has to be a practical element. That is, you can do it up to a point, but I can't have you getting hurt.”
Mena is impressive in the film not just because of her action work, but because she has enough charisma, e big enough personality, to anchor such a tale.
“Yeah. I mean, obviously, when you cast there are several elements that go into it. You look at it in terms of the bigger picture, of the whole movie. Who are the pieces that fit together? Which is a name that's going to bring in an audience? What roles have people maybe not seen them in that they'd like to see? Does that actor then want to do something different to what they're used to doing? Mena is one of those very versatile actresses who was able to just pull anything off.”
Casper Van Dien has been developing a fine line in cackling villains recently. How did the two of them work together on his character?
“He is the nicest, kindest, sweetest father and husband you could ever meet,” she says. In fact, on the first day, he's going around going, ‘Here's my wife, here's my daughter,’ and he's showing us pictures of them. And then he's literally got to go into the scene and bludgeon somebody. I think his character worked for him because he just had to portray it mentally, as opposed to physically. And I know he found it difficult when there were the scenes with Jessica [Harthcock], because he has a daughter of the same age. He and I connected on that because I have a daughter of the same age. So we were very aware of what it is that we wanted to show.”
Will Peltz has a differently challenging role, because – and here we are careful to avoid spoilers – there’s more to his character than immediately meets the eye.
“This is a horror, so we have to understand that there's going to be a simplicity to it,” she says. “But there is also a level of depth whereby his character, obviously has growing up issues with his father, based on him not being able to be himself, not being able to show who he really is. And that is a common theme amongst so many of our young people now. In horror slashers you can just go and stab people, but to have layers, I think that’s what makes this interesting.”
The hunting humans subgenre is traditionally very masculine, so it's interesting to see how she turns that around, I say.
“Yeah, there's always a fine line, because there's the script that gets written, the one you direct, and then the one that's edited. There’s a lot of shaving off things, changing things, having an audience look at it and go ‘No, I didn't like that,’ or ‘I prefer that.’ And that's when you really mould and you decide, okay, if your lead protagonist is that mother, she's got to have that strong through line. And so we actually took an awful lot of the male stuff out of it, so that we could keep a stronger female line.”
Going back to what she said about having just two weeks to shoot in, I ask her how she handled the challenges posed by the woodland environment in which most of the action takes place.
“We actually were in cabins,” she reveals. “We were all staying in these woods. It was a whole park that had been booked for us, so every location was there. Yes, it's quite hard to live in that environment and work in it, but it's also fun, because you have that community aspect. You know, every night you go back to your cabin, you've got four or five crew members – I mean, obviously, you have to like them. Luckily, we do.
“I'm somebody who likes simplicity. If you're going to go into that wood, the audience are not going to know if we were five miles into it, as opposed to just being on the edge and being clever with our angles. So we tried to make it as simple as possible. We try to make some moves as easy as we could. But of course, that still takes the time. Everybody was exhausted, but in a positive way, I think.”
A prolific director, she has several projects which she’s working on now.
“I’ve got Karma’s A Bitch, which is coming out, we're just getting distribution for that at the moment, that we've written and starred in and produced with the same people as this film. My daughter, Isabella Blake-Thompson, she wrote and starred in it, and I directed it and that is a YA thriller with an LGBTQ love storyline, which is wonderful. And then I've got two films that I'm hoping to be filming very soon depending on the strike. That’ll probably be in 2024 at the earliest now. That will be a romcom – I love romcoms – and an inspiration story.
Hunt Club is on UK digital from 14 August and you can pre-order it here.
