PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Give me all the Christmas horror. Watching Christmas horror movies is one of my favorite ways to get into the holiday spirit. I don’t watch them year-round. No, I save them for this time of year. That’s what makes them so special. This year we’ve been given a new Christmas horror film, A Creature Was Stirring, written by Shannon Wells and directed by Damien LeVeck (The Cleansing Hour – 2019). Starring Scout Taylor-Compton (Rob Zombie’s Halloween) as Liz, Connor Paolo (Gossip Girl) as Kory, Chrissy Metz (This is Us) as Faith, and Annalise Basso (Snowpiercer) as Charm, A Creature is Stirring is a haunting and terrifying locked-room horror movie that leaves you guessing up until the last minute about what the fuck is happening.
A nurse taking care of her daughter’s mysterious affliction struggles to hide her secrets when uninvited strangers take shelter in her house during a lethal blizzard.
To celebrate the release of the film in theaters and VOD, I chatted with Damien, Scout, and Connor about filming in the dead of summer, what intrigued them about the script, horror movies, and more!
***This interview contains spoilers***
PopHorror: I really enjoyed A Creature Was Stirring. I went in completely blind, and it surprised me at every turn so I’m super excited to speak with you guys today.
Connor Paolo: Hell yeah!
Damien LeVeck: Glad you’re here! Thanks for coming.
PopHorror: My first question is for all of you. What intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?
Damien LeVeck: I accept cold submissions for screenplays on my website and this was one of them. I try to read as many of them as I can and I turned to my wife on a airplane and said, “This is one of the greatest screenplays I’ve ever read. Shannon (Wells), the writer, has such a unique voice. It was really, really cool. The script is very multidimensional with these very layered, rich characters and that’s my jam. I like character driven horror. I like movies that are about something that have a message where they talk about something that’s important. This had all that, and also deals with some really heavy issues like addiction. Those were the reasons why I was like, “This is a really great horror movie.” You really care about these characters. All of them.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Yeah. I think the same. The writing, and I really, really fell in love with all the characters and the dysfunctions that the characters had. I had never played a character like this before, so I was really excited to sink my teeth into a character that was dedicated to her faith and her beliefs. And then obviously, the creature, man. I just wanted to see how they would do that. I fell in love with the creature.
Connor Paolo: It’s rare that I read a script that I don’t know what the fuck is happening, but not because of poor writing or because it’s badly constructed, or the story doesn’t make it sense. It was really clear to me when I started reading that something’s off. The way it presents is not actually what’s going on, but I didn’t know what it was. Unfortunately, it’s rare to start reading a script and then be like, I need to see the resolution of this. I have to figure out what’s going on. And just the style. The style was unique. I think I remember reading the dinner scene that we have where Annalise’s character goes off about the Green Lantern. I remember thinking this is fucking weird, but I like it. I have to understand more things. Which means I’m in. And then I met Damien and Damien’s lovely and so dedicated. It’s always really cool when you talk to a director who’s just fucking jazzed about the movie they’re going to make. He was so excited just in our initial conversation that it just means they’re going to make a good film.
PopHorror: That’s so awesome. My next question is for Damien. This film is a great locked room horror, which I love. How do you make the most of such a small set?
Damien LeVeck: We had to film in a real house, in a practical house. We didn’t build a set and that was extremely challenging because you have to find a house that can, in some way, shape or form, match the geography of the house that’s in the script. So, we spent a long time looking at a lot of houses in Kentucky and let me tell you, there is not a single house in Kentucky that has a bedroom with a big bathtub and a bathroom connected to it on the second floor as it’s written in the screenplay. Once we found this house that would pretty much work, we had to do some tricks to make it look like Charm’s was upstairs while actually filming in a room that was downstairs, but we made it work. We also had to do a lot with decorating the house to make it look like it was set for Christmas. We also faced a lot of challenges with filming in the summertime, in the dead of summer in a house. You’ve got the doors and windows open because the crew are going in and out so much, and you just can’t keep the house cool. It was very challenging to do it that way as well.
PopHorror: It’s interesting to know that you filmed this in the middle of summer.
Scout Taylor-Compton: I swear to God they always do this, man. I don’t understand why no one thinks about the heat becoming an issue when you’re filming these types of movies. The house also too, the crew couldn’t be seen so there were only very limited spaces to be hidden. It was like a puzzle trying to figure out where the crew would go to hide and where the actors would be. It was really funny to watch.
PopHorror: This is for Scout and Connor, was there anything that you were adamant about bringing to your character?
Connor Paolo: I had an argument with Damien where he was like, “I don’t think the character should be this good looking,” and I was like, “He has to be.” I put my foot down and said, “No, he really does. It’s important.” I don’t remember being and just sort of planting my flag of like no, there’s a very specific thing. And also, both Damien and Shannon are so collaborative that I don’t remember ever throwing anything about Kory to them and them being like, “No, that’s wrong.” It’s really nice to feel as an actor that if we ask you to play this role, then we trust you to be this person, and that was always my experience. The biggest challenge for me was knowing that I didn’t exist, but not having him know that. That was about it.
Scout Taylor-Compton: The same, yeah. Damien, it was really easy to work with him on the characters. It was like bouncing off of one another. I know the only issue that we had with mine was my hair, was figuring out what we wanted to do with my hair. At one point I was like, “I’m not going to shave my head, dude. I don’t think my team will let me. I mean, I want to but I don’t think my team will let me.” I was trying to figure out and constantly sending photos like, “We could do some dreads or something.” So that was a big issue for my character, was my hair. Once we figured it out, it was fine.
PopHorror: Spoiler alert about not existing! The ending really shocked me. It went in a direction that I was not expecting. How important is it to you for the audience to go in as blind as possible?
Damien LeVeck: I almost don’t watch trailers anymore because I want to go into every movie fresh, completely fresh and not really knowing much about it. The thing that I like about this movie is that you go in and you at first think that it’s one thing, and then it turns into something else, and then there’s kind of a double twist and then you have your mind blown. I think that even if you go in thinking that this is just a typical monster in the house Christmas movie, you’re going to be surprised regardless because you’re just not going to be able to see the twist coming. That was another reason why I thought the script was so good because at the end of the script, I never saw the twist coming and that is an amazing feat to pull off on the page.
PopHorror: Yes!
Connor Paolo: Also, Damien didn’t do this thing that I feel like some directors do because I don’t know, maybe they’re nervous, he just never did this thing where he was sort of tipping his hat to the audience and going like, “Hey, look! This is not right, right? Here’s a little clue!” He just played it straight up until everything falls apart, which is the way that I thought makes sense.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Yeah!
Damien LeVeck: I did have some things that we were going to do that were in the script but would be more of a hat tip that something is off. And there are a few very subtle things in there, but I really don’t like spoon feeding an audience so if it confuses people a little bit… I want the movie to be rewatchable so they can go back and be like, “Wait a minute. Oh, I see that there.” It’s not obvious, for sure.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Yeah, this is definitely a movie you want to go watch twice or three times to figure out.
Connor Paolo: I did actually reread after I read it just thinking, okay, how does this read with Faith just having these conversations with herself? And how does that dinner table scene read if we’re not there? I was blown away, like this all works. All of this. The whole conversation that Scout has with her, all of this makes sense if we’re not present, which is hard to pull off.
Damien LeVeck: I want to point out one thing, that the dinner table scene is one of my favorite scenes in the movie. There is a hat tip in that scene and there is a shot where you can see Mom’s hands gesticulating – I think Scout’s talking or maybe Connor’s talking – but you can tell in that moment that the daughter is listening to Mom talking as somebody else. But it’s very subtle. You have to look for it.
PopHorror: I’m going to have to go look now because I did not catch that when I watched it. I have just one last question for you all. What is your favorite scary movie?
Damien LeVeck: Oh my gosh.
Scout Taylor-Compton: I think mine would have to be The Exorcist because it was the first movie that my mom showed me as an eight-year-old kid. And it scared me to death. Definitely The Exorcist.
PopHorror: That’s a good one!
Connor Paolo: I’m so bad at this.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Or this little indie movie called May.
Damien LeVeck: May is great!
Scout Taylor-Compton: I love it. I love that movie.
Damien LeVeck: I’m going to have to go with either Alien or Aliens. I saw The Exorcist when I was 11. I thought it was terrifying. It definitely set the stage for being fascinated with the paranormal and demonic possession and everything. Definitely a close runner-up if not a tie.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Alien is good too!
Connor Paolo: Don’t Look Now fucked me up for years, for so many reasons. But most recently, or this year anyway, I really liked Talk to Me. I just thought it was a really solid horror film. I think they did a great job with that.
PopHorror: I still haven’t seen Talk to Me.
Scout Taylor-Compton: Girl! I’m so jealous you get to watch it for the first time. It’s so good.
Thank you so much to Damien, Scout, and Connor for taking the time to speak with us. A Creature Was Stirring is now on VOD!
