As of this writing, filmmaker Andrew Semans (“Nancy, Please,” 2012), the writer/director of IFC Films’ harrowing new movie “Resurrection,” is the proud father of a new baby. But when I spoke to him about a week ago, and when, more importantly, he wrote “Resurrection”— a scorching new psychological horror/thriller—he definitely didn’t have kids. His wife was due to give birth, and he was getting in as many interviews as he could before his baby arrived.
This is astonishing if you know about or have seen “Resurrection,” which you should—it’s in limited theatrical release as we speak and goes onto VOD on Friday, August 5. Starring Rebecca Hall and Tim Roth, in two of the best performances of the year, “Resurrection,” is in many ways a parent’s worst nightmare (read our review). The film centers on Margaret (Hall), a controlled, successful, single mom, who’s loving, but seems to be slightly overconcerned with keeping her teenage daughter safe. Abby, her daughter (Grace Kaufman), is about to go off to college, which is giving Margaret some anxiety. And then along comes David (Tim Roth), a terrifying man from Maggie’s past.
“Resurrection” is a film that needs to be seen and experienced, so its plot is better left vague. Suffice it to say, what ensues is a terrifying film full of emotional and psychological violence, scarier than any traditional horror movie and one that centers on gaslighting, manipulation, emotional abuse, trauma, and more. It’s also a movie that seems written from the point of view of a parent terrified about their child’s safety and the uncanny phenomenon that most new parents experience when you have a child: fear, vulnerability, and feeling suddenly super exposed to the dangers of the world. It’s a well-documented phenomenon, and it’s dumbfounding how well Semans captured it despite not being a parent at the time he wrote or directed it.
We spoke to Rebecca Hall recently, and you can check out that conversation here, but we also spoke to Semans about the creation of the movie and working with these preternaturally gifted performers. “Resurrection” is one of the best movies of the year, so read on to hear more about its creator’s thoughts on pre-parenthood, Rebecca Hall’s need for little to no discussion or preparation, and how this searing movie was made.
I talked to Rebecca Hall recently about the movie, and she was giving me shit about showing the movie to my wife, who is a birth doula, and not prepping her at all for the movie [laughs].
Oh wow, [laughs]. Yeah, I don’t know how anatomically correct [redacted for fear of spoilers] is in the movie. But, I’m actually going to have a baby with my partner just in a matter of days here. And I have not shown the movie to our doula. It hadn’t occurred to me, but maybe I will.
Congratulations. And yes, I was told this, that you were going to have a baby and your wife was due any minute now, and I was like, “Wait a minute, he’s not a parent already?!?” And this is so fascinating to me because the whole movie is about parenthood, motherhood, and that primal feeling about the impossibility of keeping something safe. You so tapped into that feeling, and you don’t have kids yet! And when I think about when I first had children, I think I was a bit aggressive and psycho in the first two years.
Well, I fully imagine that I will be a psycho, and I will be an extremely worried and anxious parent. I mean, that’s just in my nature. But when I wrote the script and when we made the movie, I was not a parent—I’m still, technically, not a parent yet! But it was all about engaging with themes around parenthood and parental anxiety, and parental fears. Yet it was all just speculative on my part, just based on what I had seen and, and just trying to project myself into the position of a parent and how I might react. And in speculating about parenthood, I found it very intimidating and very frightening. And I was worried, especially about my own anxieties. I was worried that I would be consumed with terror all the time, a fear that some harm would come to my child or I would not be able to protect my child or just be a bad parent. And those kinds of fears just felt really real to me, even though I wasn’t experiencing them. And so it was all just kind of extrapolating from that and trying to be as truthful as possible based on what I knew about parenting.
This is so astonishing to me cause it’s so accurate. I mean, it’s exaggerated—all movies elevate and exaggerate emotion for dramatic effect, as you know all too well—but honestly, I was shocked when I was told you weren’t a parent yet. There’s a quality where you can get unhinged that the movie taps into.
I think it’s something that I saw in my own father. My father was and is a very good and loving father. But he did seem to be—I’m trying to find the best way to put this [laughs]—if there was any sense that his kids were threatened by anything, even something very minor, he would get quite rough about it. He would always say to us, “if anyone comes near you, if anyone hurts you, there’s gonna be hell to pay.” And it’s kind of like the scene in the movie where Margaret (Rebecca Hall) goes to her daughter Abby, played by Grace Kaufman, and says, “If anyone touches a hair on your head, I will hurt them.” And it was something that, as a child, I would hear from him, and it made me feel comforted. But it really felt more like he was saying it for him, to let himself know that I will be able to handle this. No one will injure or harm my child and get away with it.
Yep, that tracks in a familiar way. On some level, it becomes about the parent’s baggage. It’s not really about the child, in a way. It’s very strange how you can lose yourself in it, in retrospect.
Yeah, I think that’s something that’s behind this parental vigilante or parental revenge sub-genre—this fantasy that probably any parent has, it sounds like you may have had it, I know I’ll probably have it too—of transforming into this like unstoppable Avenger if your child is imperiled in any way. That, “I may be just a normal, nonconfrontational, or nonviolent person, but if my child is in any way threatened, I’ll transform into this kind of just unstoppable ferocious revenge machine. And I think it provides a narcissistic gratification to watch these movies and watch these narratives and kind of project yourself into it if you were in that same situation. So anyhow, I was definitely thinking about all that when I was writing it.
It’s really insightful. I don’t want to carp on about this, but one time, two big mean-looking dogs attacked and came charging at me and my family because they were off leash and they saw our dog. And I charged at the dogs, ferociously, impulsively, and without thinking. I look back and go, “What the fuck? That is not a normal human response, that is not me, who is that person?”
I dunno; maybe it is a normal human response. Maybe it is something very deep within us, a deeply primal thing when our children are threatened, that we do find within ourselves an ability to engage in confrontations that we normally wouldn’t or find courage or even find a violence. I mean, if you watch movies like “Taken” or “The Revenant” or “Death Wish,” they would tell us that we do, or we can behave this way.
Read on for more of this interview on the following page.
