Last May, a new company called Horror Inc. announced the launch of the “Jason Universe,” an initiative aimed at injecting fresh life into the Friday the 13th franchise. Though the company has a hand in Crystal Lakethe upcoming Peacock prequel series, its first big launch is Sweet Revengea short film bringing everyone’s favorite hockey-masked maniac back to slay.
After teasing the short at San Diego Comic-Con (and reassuring fans a feature film is most definitely on the “to-do” list), Horror Inc. has premiered it online. io9 got a chance to talk to Sweet Revenge writer-director Mike P. Nelson (Wrong Turn, Silent Night Deadly Night) and star Ally Ioannides (Into the Badlands) about the short. We do get into spoilers, so watch it before you read on!
Cheryl Eddy, io9: Sweet Revenge is celebrating the 45th anniversary of the franchise and is bringing the new Jason Universe initiative to the forefront in a big way. Did you get many instructions, notes, or things to do or not to do? What was the process like?
Mike P. Nelson: I think that’s what was so exciting about working with Sheri [Conn] and Robert [Barsamian] and Robbie [Barsamian]; they were really open to hearing a new take. And sure, there’s always little things, especially with an IP is as big as this, we want to make sure and be true to certain things. But they were open to a new take and to a little bit of a new twist. As long as we can bring back Jason as ferocious as ever, doing Jason things, that was the big thing.
And then of course it was cool that it was just as important to them as it was me to actually, like, for 13 minutes, try to tell an interesting story and not just, “Let’s just have Jason kill as many people as possible.” I’m not going to say that people wouldn’t like that, but I just have a feeling it would just get a little tiresome after a while. And my motto is always: it’s the heart. Heart is what makes horror great. That was an important aspect: telling a story that had some heart and introducing a character that people fall in love with and get to see a transformation.
io9: If you pay close attention early on, you’ll see some clues that this is not a typical Friday the 13th story. We have Eve being called a “force of nature” who “didn’t run away.” “Some people find the one, sometimes the one finds you.” Eve takes a bite of an apple. Knowing that the film would be so short and fans would be watching it more than once, did you pepper in things that people would only pick up on the second time through?
Nelson: A thousand percent, which makes me so happy you literally said all the right moments. I’m just like, “I hope people pick up on all these little things that I think are important to her in the story.” You said them all and that makes me very happy.
io9: Eve is underwater for a long time before she pops back up. Are we to assume that she dies in Crystal Lake and then is reborn with Jason-like powers?
Nelson: To a certain extent, yes. When I came up with this concept, the idea was that I didn’t care to see how Jason [underwent] his transformation. I love that we still keep that shrouded in mystery. There’s always conspiracies on what happened to him. Is he alive? Is he dead? Did he really drown? Did he not drown? And I think all that’s great. Now, from my perspective, that’s how I see Jason: is that he did drown, and he came back because there’s nothing more powerful emotionally than a story about coming back for revenge.
And to me, it’s a very similar story with Eve. And Eve allowed me to explore how it might have gone down for Jason. Every character is different, but being able to see what Eve goes through was this fun sort of body horror—not understanding quite what’s going on, why do I feel this way, why do I look this way, and then realizing that there’s something that brought her back. I mean, look, she gets impaled with a machete. She’s not coming back from that unless there’s something else going on. So I think keeping that—yes, there is ambiguity, which again all the Jason movies have, which I think is really important to have. But I also feel like having that wink and a nod to, ‘Did she go through the same thing that Jason did is?” is definitely there. Yeah.
io9: Ally, what did you think when you heard about this project?
Ally Ioannides: I was in shock, honestly, when Chad [Villella]the producer, called me and told me about it. Being asked to be a final girl in a Friday the 13th film is pretty iconic. I’m still like, I honestly can’t believe it.
I went back and watched the first four and just tried to take it all in and sort of understand what is good about it and what people expect from it, because obviously it is such an iconic franchise and people feel very special about it … I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything that I could to give people that same feeling.
Nelson: Ally to me was somebody who we could introduce as Eve as somebody who was almost the complete opposite of Jason. She’s in pink plaid, she almost resembles a combination of Annie and Tina from [Friday] part one and part seven. She’s soft-spoken … But then crazy shit happens.
Jason’s big, and he has this mass to him, and he’s this force of nature. And Eve doesn’t come across that way. We’re told that she is, but she doesn’t come across that way until finally you realize, “Oh, she is!” And so seeing that opposite side of the spectrum, you see Eve and then you see Jason; it’s a fun matchup, if you will. Also just the fact that you have a final girl who’s not just a final girl. It’s a final girl who sort of becomes the monster in a way, which I hadn’t seen done before. Especially a final girl killing one of our protagonists—I mean, come on! How cool is that?
io9: How did you cast your Jason Voorhees? What kind of direction did you give to shape that performance?
Nelson: It’s Schuyler White, and he’s actually a stunt coordinator. I worked with him on a couple movies prior to this, so him and I had a pretty good rapport … he’s 6’5, he loves horror, and he excels in stunts in horror films and he understands horror. He’s a huge fan. He’s the sweetest guy in the world, which doesn’t necessarily lend itself maybe to Jason on the surface. But I think to work with somebody who understands and has just a pure love of that character and has loved and watched him all of his life, him bringing his own vibe and also that sort of wink and a nod to what Jason was, especially in those first four movies, was huge. And he brought that. It was immediate.
We didn’t want to do the running Jason. We wanted to make sure that it was the Jason that’s gonna get you no matter how fast he goes. And he’s not in any rush. The joke on set was, there’s almost an artistry to what Jason does in some of the things in the short, like his tableau on the clothesline and the fact that he grabbed the apple slicer. It’s not just grabbing a kitchen knife to poke a bunch of holes in this woman on a table. He grabs the apple-slicer … There’s something going on up there that he wants to see certain things happen while people are experiencing pain while he’s murdering his victims, which I think was again a fun wink and a nod to how he’s handled his victims in the past. Schuyler brought it and he was a joy to work with. He just understood the job and got it done in the best way possible.
io9: This is the ultimate horror fan’s dream that you got to live, making a Friday the 13th movie and planning out a Jason rampage. First, Eve’s discovering all these dead bodies, and I’m like, when are they gonna show him actively killing people? Then of course we get to that. How did you map all that out?
Nelson: In the pitch, it wasn’t just, “Let’s just see how many people Jason can off for 13 minutes.” It was more, Eve goes through what she goes through, and then [it’s almost like] she comes across crime scenes, like all these aftermaths, because that was something that’s always been fun in the Friday the 13th movies. You come across the dead bodies, and sometimes you didn’t even see the kills happen on screen … that always stuck with me watching those movies, and so to me, that was sort of my “What if instead of [Eve just] getting to the cabin after she comes out of the lake, she has to go through the horror of witnessing his handiwork?”
Building that excitement that, to your point, “Oh my God, when are we going to see him?” Getting to see what he’s done over the course of the film—that, to me, was fun. That was an exciting thing. And then, of course, when you see him for the first time, and then the absolute slaughter fest in the cabin, that’s our big climax, you know what I mean? Our big Jason scene, where he just goes to town, doesn’t hold back. And we bring him back in full force.
io9: The short has a suggestive yet open ending. What do you think happens next?
Ioannides: I do like the idea that there’s some sort of kinship, some sort of knowing. I think it’s more interesting than just a fight. But who knows? I mean… proposal?
io9: She already had the ring!
Nelson: I would agree with Ally. I think it sets up this idea of, what does Jason do when he realizes there’s someone else like him? What is that response? Is the response at first, like, “I’m going to kill you because I don’t understand”? Is it, “Well, you’re like me, maybe I need to hang out”? There was always this sort of idea of, does Eve want nothing to do [with Jason] and Jason just keeps following her around? Or is it the other way around?
I think that there’s a lot of fun to be had in a story like that because it doesn’t ruin the mythology of what the Friday the 13th movies are, because you still have Jason, you still have his past, you know where he comes from. He’s mad that his mom was murdered and that he died due to an accident because people weren’t paying attention. You still have all that. [This] doesn’t rewrite anything. But what happens when somebody else goes through a similar transformation as him and has to deal with that sort of body horror—and then what happens after that?
Those are the questions that are fun to play with. And I honestly love the idea that it sits within the fans and the viewers after, so they can start talking about it. I think that’s one of the most exciting things. Yes, I have my own ideas and what I’d love to do after the fact and how that could end up going. But where does that take the viewer’s mind afterwards? That, to me, I think is where things get really exciting: where can this go?
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