00:00It made me think about Mario Bava and Dario Argento's movies, so it was intentional.
00:06Valentina, this is, I could hug you.
00:19So I really enjoy the color pattern of your movie.
00:24It made me think about Mario Bava and Dario Argento's movies.
00:28So it was intentional.
00:31Valentina, this is, I could hug you.
00:34Listen, I have been doing Italian interviews all day.
00:40And at the very end, just before we sign off, I have to go, no, no, but there's one more
00:44thing I got to tell you.
00:45This movie is a love letter to Mario Bava.
00:47It's specifically Mario Bava.
00:50It is absolutely, it's obviously the opening scene in my movie is a nod to Black Sunday.
00:55But the color patterns and the visual patterns of the film are the whip in the body.
00:59The great Mario Bava movie with Christopher Lee.
01:02It is absolutely influenced by Mario Bava.
01:05It's a modern Gothic, the way Bava was doing modern for his day Gothics.
01:10And I'm thrilled that you said that.
01:13Okay, so why do you love scaring people so much?
01:20Because I think that you love this thing.
01:23Because deep down inside, I hate people and I want to scare them.
01:26No, I find that horror and comedy are actually two communal experiences.
01:34I think laughter and screams, you need other people to share it with and they spread.
01:38So when people are laughing, you laugh.
01:40And people scream, you scream.
01:41I also find that there's a fun in horror movies that's a safe fun.
01:47Like you're watching all these horrible things happen on screen.
01:49But really, you're in the comfort of a theater.
01:51You're in the comfort of your own home.
01:52And thirdly, I think subconsciously, I think we recognize that when we see evil on screen,
02:01and evil exists on screen, it only stands to reason that there's also God.
02:06That there is a, whenever you show darkness, by definition, there has to be the good side.
02:12So subconsciously, I think horror movies are comforting.
02:15As a real quick anecdote, when Stanley Kubrick was developing The Shining,
02:22with Stephen King, he actually told King that he felt ghost stories, even dark ones,
02:27even sad ones, even tragic ones, were by definition optimistic stories
02:31because they believed in an afterlife.
02:34So even if the ghost was tortured, it continued to exist.
02:38So that's, I think, something that we, I think, take a part in movies.
02:42So you don't have nightmares after another movie?
02:46You are glad?
02:49I have the nightmares.
02:50I'm crazy.
02:51So I actually enjoy having nightmares.
02:53It's like watching a movie while I sleep.
02:56Okay.
02:57Perfect.
02:59I love the fact that you used a lot of prosthetic effects.
03:03Yes.
03:03It was because you had a little budget or also because, since you love Mario Bava and Giotto Argento,
03:11you love also prosthetic effects more than CGI.
03:15It was actually neither of the two.
03:17It was specific.
03:18It wasn't a matter of the budget.
03:20And it wasn't actually Mario Bava for this one.
03:22It was that I feel that when a ghost appears in a movie and it's purely CGI,
03:27there is a unreality to it that doesn't scare me.
03:31Whereas if it's performed by an actual performer and it's physically in the room with the protagonists,
03:37you can feel the physical presence.
03:39So in the Grudge movies, specifically the original ones,
03:43but also the early American remakes that Sam Raimi produced, those are acrobats.
03:48You know, they found these contortionists for the American ones from Cirque du Soleil,
03:52and you feel that there's something coming at you.
03:54So we cast Marina Mazepa, who was a semi-finalist in America's Got Talent,
04:01who can move like she's got no bones.
04:04I mean, and she's like this beautiful 23-year-old Ukrainian model,
04:08but she's like, as soon as she takes a step, her spine turns around.
04:12And that's stuff that, yeah, CGI can do,
04:15but I think the audience is sophisticated enough to recognize that's pixels doing that.
04:18Whereas when a human being is doing that,
04:21if there's something ugly and off-putting to the eye and to the brain
04:24that makes it even scarier.
04:26Since you know all the tricks behind these horror scenes,
04:32what scares you now when you watch an horror movie?
04:35Because you know everything, the tricks, the secrets.
04:37So what scares you now?
04:40Hereditary scared me.
04:42Hereditary scared me because of the scene.
04:44I'm going to assume that everybody who's listening to this is seen hereditary,
04:47because of the scene where the little girl loses her head.
04:50But what scared me was without us seeing the mother, Toni Collette,
04:56discover the body later, we're in the room of the son,
04:59and we hear the mother's screams.
05:01Those screams terrified me because they were so real.
05:05The grief was so genuine.
05:07That scared me.
05:09Also, the early Conjuring movies, the early Insidious movies.
05:12We're talking about modern movies now,
05:13because if we go back, all of Dario Argento's 70s works,
05:17hear the shit out of me.
05:17Oh, I know.
05:19By the way.
05:19By the way.
05:21Boy.
