CraveOnline: When did you laugh, in the car, in the shower or in the bed?
Laura Caro: Everywhere.
Francisco Barreiro: Everywhere.
Laura Caro: Everywhere.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: The car was the second day of shooting and it took us the whole day. The whole day in that car.
That scene felt like moments I’ve had in real relationships.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: Right, right, right. That was the idea.
Laura Caro: That was the idea because I mean, everybody has had them before. Everybody can relate to that.
You find the moment whenever you can.
Laura Caro: Exactly, especially when you’re a couple and the kids are running around and you’ve known each other for so long. The novelty of it, the spark, you have to find a moment whenever, wherever.
Why do you say sex is the most important aspect of the film?
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: Because I think the most important elements of the film to me are related to sex. The sexual awakening of the kids or the taboo around sex, to me that scene in the car says a lot of things about the movie. That’s why I kept it for so long. It’s a very important scene that tells a lot about how does one think when you’re a grown up? How do you remember the way you had your sexual awakening and how do you see it through your kids? When you see that in kids, sexual behavior, something sexual between kids, you feel really awkward and really uncomfortable. You don’t seem to remember that you went through it. It was the same for you. Those were the elements that were really, really important for me.
Even the devil has some sexual interest when he rips her top open. What was the special effect of that?
Laura Caro: Well, actually when they rip my top off, they pretty much did it in post-production.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: A lot of it was post-production and there were air compressors.
Laura Caro: They did air compression so I was like this and they were shooting air.
So it is your body, not a model.
Laura Caro: No, it is.
Had you seen The Entity before?
Laura Caro: You know what’s funny, I don’t see scary movies. I don’t see horror movies at all. I’ve seen them.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: I showed you a few scenes.
Laura Caro: Yeah, Adrian showed me a few scenes and he gave me some references to study specifically certain scenes and I saw them, but I haven’t seen the whole film. I don’t know what’s wrong with my head. I just have a lot of imagination. I remember that I saw The Exorcism of Emily Rose and there’s this part where the investigator wakes up every day for three days at 3:00 AM in the morning. Well, I woke up for a whole week at 3AM and I was in my house like, “Oh my gosh, it’s going to come get me now.”
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: Actually, The Entity is one of the biggest references.
Laura Caro: And Antichrist, the baby scene.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: They are some references, but the thing is to me The Entity specifically is the film that I look to when I think about haunted houses or evil things happening in a house. To me it’s the perfect film. I hated some of the approaches that I’ve seen in the last few years to the supernatural genre, things like Paranormal Activity and stuff like that. I wanted to go back to The Entity and take that as a very big inspiration of course.
What don’t you care for about the Paranormal films?
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: I just saw the first one I have to say. The thing is to me it’s very strange the way it’s structured. I feel like it’s some sort of “Big Brother” on horror and it’s repeating the same thing over and over again, which to me is like something that’s not evolving. It’s the opposite of evolving. It’s going backwards in the way of storytelling.
I feel like in the ‘70s and the ‘80s you could have much more interesting ways of telling stories. Now that we’re supposed to have a lot more visual stimuli, visual things we’re watching all the time, it seems like it’s happening the opposite of what you’d expect. You need a film like Paranormal Activity where they tell you the same thing 10 times. To me that’s really, really strange. I noticed that and it surprised me a lot with the beginning of our film.
A lot of people were surprised about the beginning with the sex scene, the first shot of the movie there’s something happening there. I took that idea from the films of the 1970s. It was very typical. I saw it in a lot of horror films that they start right off with something happening on screen, but it seems now like people are not used to that. They need a certain time to set up things. In the ‘70s people could just come to a theater and bang, see these kind of things.
It’s interesting, the sequels were by different directors and they did more with the “Big Brother” cameras. I’d be interested to know your opinion if you end up seeing them. I have to wrap but your output has been so prolific, a movie a year. How have you kept up so much filmmaking?
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: I don’t know, luck. Pure luck. I like to keep working a lot and having a lot of scripts at the same time and trying not to think about very big projects but thinking about small projects that I’m excited about and try to do a lot of things at the same time. It happens like that. Maybe you’re developing something for five years and maybe for six months you’re developing something and both films have a green light at the same time. It’s luck.
For the actors, what was it like to shoot the bloody scene when you go into the trailer?
Laura Caro: It was so fun.
Francisco Barreiro: It was so much fun. I really like it.
Laura Caro: It’s one of my favorite scenes from the film actually. It was awesome. The special effects people were amazing.
Adrian Garcia Bogliano: It was difficult in a way because it was a real trailer. It wasn’t a set. It was a trailer.
Laura Caro: It was really narrow, the lighting, they rocked it. Every time I see it I enjoy it like when you filmed it.
Fred Topel is a staff writer at CraveOnline and the man behind Best Episode Ever and Shelf Space Weekly. Follow him on Twitter at @FredTopel.
