The Blackcoat's Daughter Director Oz Perkins Interview

Transcript

00:00People know that I had sort of a little bit of a silly kind of acting career, which I

00:05never believed myself in that role.

00:07I never felt in control of what I was doing.

00:10I was always convinced that there were 50 people behind me who could have done a much

00:12better job, who could have really owned it, and I couldn't access that part of me.

00:17So I had always known as a younger person that I wanted to make a movie, I just never

00:20did.

00:21Life sort of happened in a different way.

00:23So I didn't have a television commercial, I had never made a music video or a wedding

00:28video.

00:29So this was really a first time for me for everything, and I got lucky and you surround

00:35yourself with the best people and they do most of the work.

00:42I think that at the time, it's sort of out of date now, because this movie's kind of old.

00:46I mean, this movie's like two plus years old, because it had a little bit of a stopper.

00:51It took time to get distributed.

00:54And so at the time, there was a feeling that horror movies were kind of beleaguered.

00:58It was sort of a shabby genre.

00:59Now, of course, it's like the genre again, like it's cycled back into being the hot genre.

01:04But at the time, I sort of felt like the movies that I loved in the past, like Carrie and

01:09Rosemary's Baby and The Shining and Don't Look Now and those kinds of movies, they weren't

01:13really doing those kinds of things anymore.

01:16And so when I wrote the script, I actually went into a lot of studios who read it and

01:19loved it, but were like, oh, we could never make this movie.

01:21So horror for me was, I wanted to tell sort of a sad story.

01:27I wanted to tell a story of loss and a story of grief, which is what this movie is for me.

01:33But in order to do that over an hour and a half, you kind of got to give a little bit

01:37more.

01:38You got to give the audience some enjoyment.

01:40And so I found my way back into horror as a genre that really gets people's attention,

01:45really focuses their, you know, like we're really present when we're watching a good

01:49horror movie, right?

01:50Like more present than we are when we're watching a comedy, for instance, because comedy, it's

01:53kind of, oh, you let it all out.

01:54But horror, you got to really bring it in.

01:57So I sort of used it as a cover in a way.

01:59I said, oh, I'll make a horror movie on top that underneath is actually a sad portrait.

02:03I was really scared by a movie called The Invitation.

02:10I live in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles, and it takes place in Laurel Canyon in Los Angeles.

02:15That's possibly why.

02:16But I really, there was a lot of it that was really creepy and off-putting in a really great

02:20way.

02:21I really liked it.