Evil Dead Burn: “We wanted to explore this disgusting side of the human soul”
In the summer issue of Première, Sébastien Vaniček, Florent Bernard and Souheila Yacoub tell the story of the making of Evil Dead Burn. Excerpts.
With Evil Dead BurnTHE frenchies Sébastien Vaniček and Florent Bernard (co-writer) tackle the cult saga and put Souheila Yacoub in the shoes of a widow just out of a toxic relationship, stuck with her horrible in-laws. Suddenly, the demons arrive… The trio tells us behind the scenes of the horror and what the American dream can hide in the shadows. Selected pieces of the oral story to be found in full in the summer issue of Firstwith The Odyssey by Christopher Nolan on the cover.
Sébastien Vaniček: “After VerminI made a few meetings with American studios, and I quickly saw that my creative freedom was not central to them. And then I had an interview with Ghost House Pictures, Sam Raimi’s production company, during which I felt a real interest in my way of working. Their idea was for it to be a film evil Dead 100% original, over which I have total control. Raimi is a producer who is very protective of the vision of the people he works with. So with Florent, we wrote 15 pages of pitch, where we presented our characters and the three acts of the film. We really did it in our corner and we went all out, without barriers. »
Florent Bernard: “ evil Deadin its DNA, it is: “What happens if good people become monstrous demons?” » You don’t know how to react to this person you’ve always known. We wanted to pervert that, and even through humor: there’s a bit of it in our film, but we couldn’t do slapstick because that’s Sam Raimi’s signature. So how were we going to add a touch of facetiousness to family relationships? We all have dark sides and the idea was to explore this disgusting side of the human soul. But in the context of a popcorn movie, entertaining. »
Sébastien Vaniček: “We both thought we had to kill the father. Respect as much as possible what we could, but also have fun breaking up things that the public has seen too much. For example, the Book of the Dead,It can quickly become a cream pie. We didn’t want to repeat this scene with the characters who find a book in a cellar and read incantations… From this observation, everything else had a snowball effect. »
Souheila Yacoub: “I’ll say it straight away: I don’t know anything about horror films! I don’t like it, I’m too scared. I hadn’t even seen it yet Vermin at that time, because the horror plus spiders… Too difficult for me (Laughter.) But Sébastien spoke to me about the character of Alice, very far from the cliché that I had of the horror heroine, who is either the final girl badassor the little girl who cries. It was important that Alice was complex, sometimes illogical, that she had flaws, whatever. And also that it is not a necessarily sexualized character. I immediately saw that we were on the same wavelength: above all, they wanted to make a good film, with horror in it. »
Sébastien Vaniček: “There were sometimes – strong – clashes, but nothing was ever imposed on me. I had total freedom in my editing, in the places where I placed the camera… But that doesn’t mean that I got things done easily. Everything was a debate, everything could be questioned. And, in their defense, the producers also wanted to make the best film possible. Except that a good film is subjective (…) So the weapons I had, I had to use them in the right places. This could have led to complicated conversations, but it was always fruitful. I am grateful and it was enriching, but you had to have the shoulders, especially not to hide. If I had been a little more discreet, it would clearly have been a different film. No regrets. »
Our entire oral story of Evil Dead Burn can be found in the issue of Première currently on newsstands.
