Interview With ‘APPENDAGE’ Director Anna Zlokovic

We all have that little, negative voice in our heads. You know the one…the voice that makes us doubt we’re skilled enough for that dream job, makes us question whether our significant other truly loves us, and makes us feel a general lack of self-worth. While that critical talk typically remains confined to our brain, it takes on a literal life of its own in Appendage.

Hannah (Hadley Robinson, The Pale Blue Eye 2022), a young fashion designer, seems fine on the surface but secretly struggles with self-doubt. Soon, these buried feelings begin to make Hannah physically sick and sprout into a ferocious growth on her body: The Appendage. As Hannah’s health declines, her new little buddy begins to fuel her anxieties: her perceived lack of talent at work, her deteriorating relationships with her boyfriend and best friend, and her parents’ lack of love and understanding. At her breaking point, Hannah makes a shocking discovery: there are others out there like her.

Appendage, which premiered Oct. 2 on Hulu, is directed by Anna Zlokovic, whom PopHorror had the pleasure of chatting with as part of the streaming platform’s Huluween press junket.

PopHorror: To start, can you talk about what inspired you to make this movie?

Anna Zlokovic: I have anxiety…big reveal! And I was struggling with that at the time of writing the movie, and I remembered a session I had in therapy a long time ago where my therapist did this really great exercise where she was like, “Hey, let’s take your anxiety, depression or whatever’s going on, let’s turn it into a character that you can interact with and we can sort of describe it.” And it always stuck with me. In that moment, I was like, “I think this can be a really great narrative thing that maybe could relate with a lot of people.”

PopHorror: Can you talk about your vision of what this thing looked like? Did it change over the course of making the film?

Anna Zlokovic: Totally! It was a fun and interesting challenge to balance the creatures being cute but also really terrifying, and how that sort of evolves across the movie. And the goal is definitely, it starts out cute and funny, and then it gets really kind of more dire and screwed up, and that’s always a really interesting thing that we had to balance. And so I did that with Amber Mari, our creature designer, and we went back and forth a lot in the design. We’d be texting each other all the time, she’d be texting me pictures, and so we were always trying to ride that line with each stage. It was really fun.

PopHorror: Is that it on your desk?

Anna Zlokovic: This was actually a birthday gift that they gave me from the design team. This is not one of the ones that was in the movie, but he’s a replica.

PopHorror: He’s adorable! And how was it created? Is it a physical thing? Was CGI used at all?

Anna Zlokovic: It was all practical. I think we did use the effects to maybe clean stuff up, and one of our puppets was animatronic. We had six puppeteers puppeteering it, so we had to remove those people. We did the effects of that nature, but it was all fully real. It was like having another actor on set each time that they would come in. It was wild.

PopHorror: The message that I took out of it was, your critical inner voice, you have to be nice to it, maybe it won’t be as critical. Can you elaborate on that?

Anna Zlokovic: Yeah, absolutely! I think that’s really spot on, and I think so much of the movie is about acceptance, and not about sort of banishing the sides of ourselves that we’re ashamed of or insecure about. It’s sort of about bringing them into the light and being like, “Hey, hiding this is making it worse and not talking about it,” and loving it and being compassionate towards it and accepting it is hopefully better.

PopHorror: I also feel like a big part of it was, it gave her a warped sense of reality as well. Can you speak to that?

Anna Zlokovic: I think the movie’s so much about that. It’s about how this creature affects the way she thinks and makes her question people she trusts, makes her question herself and it distorts every element of her reality, I would say. And so much of that comes from her relationship with her mom, and all of that is meant to tie together. But I think that’s The Appendage’s job, is to just distort your reality.

PopHorror: Without giving too much away, was there a favorite moment for you to create that you’re just really excited for people to see?

Anna Zlokovic: Yes, there is a scene I would say halfway through the movie where someone has said, “The rocket launched! After that, I was like, ‘Woah!'” And I’m really excited for that scene. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a gnarly scene, I would say.

Thanks for speaking with us, Anna! Appendage is now available to watch on Hulu.