PopHorror Let's Get Scared
Joe Russo and Chris LaMont met in film school at Arizona State University, when Chris was Joe’s professor. They soon forged a lifelong friendship that has resulted in writing several shorts and feature length films together. Their latest screenplay, The Inheritance, is a horror film that not only won a spot on the BloodList, an annual list of the best unproduced horror and genre screenplays, but it’s directed by veteran horror director, Alejandro Brugués and stars Bob Gunton from fan favorite The Shawshank Redemption.
A billionaire on the eve of his 75th birthday, invites his estranged children back home out of fear that tonight someone or something is going to kill him. He puts each of their inheritances on the line, to make sure they’ll help.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with director Alejandro about what he liked about the script, creating the swimming pool scene, programming a double feature, and more!
PopHorror: I really enjoyed The Inheritance, so I’m super excited to speak with you today.
Alejandro Brugués: Thank you very much. I’m happy you enjoyed it. I haven’t seen it. I have to fix that. I have to watch the movie at some point.
PopHorror: Yes. Yes. I definitely recommend it. So, what intrigued you about the script and made you want to be a part of the project?
Alejandro Brugués: I think first it was how it blends genres because it’s a whodunit. It’s all who will do it or whatever. My English is not good enough to change that phrase. It’s a murder mystery in a way, but then it turns into a horror movie. It’s a very classic horror movie, and I liked how it started as something and then turns into something else. And I also liked the pace because it’s really fast. You have stuff happening all the time. So I think those were things that first, and there’s the family dynamics. There are characters that I could read. I did my own social commentary thing in my head, when I was reading the screenplay and all that. So yeah, I think it was a mix of all those things.
PopHorror: I really enjoyed the pace, and I agree with you that it was pretty fast paced. I remember thinking, “Wow, this didn’t waste any time getting started.” And I liked that because it hooked me right at the beginning, when they went in and saw their father, and everything was coming out. It was within what, the first five to eight minutes of the movie, that it all started?
Alejandro Brugués: Yeah, it moves really fast.
PopHorror: Yeah. I appreciate that. And was there anything that you were adamant about keeping in the film, no matter what?
Alejandro Brugués: Well, I knew I wanted the protagonist, which is played by Briana Middleton, I knew I wanted that to be a diverse character because if not, I was like, okay, then we have the whitest possible family, and I feel like I have nothing to say here. So yeah, that was one of the things that I wanted to do when I boarded the project. Then, I don’t know. I am trying to think specifically if there was something in the screenplay that I had to fight to keep. I think we had to adapt a lot to the locations because the way it was written, you really didn’t have a house like that, and we couldn’t build that house. There was no way we could build that house, so we were always having to adapt the set pieces and the scares to the locations that we could use. So that part was tricky. But filmmaking is adapting. It’s problem solving and so that’s part of my job. I’m trying to think if there was something specific that I was like, “Oh, this has to be like that,” but I cannot think of anything right now. I don’t know. I’m easy. I can adapt easily, so I don’t think so because I am trying to think, even some of the set pieces, the way they were written and the way that they ended up in the movie were different. The swimming pool was different, the painting was different, and the stairs were different. The ending was always like that. We had to adapt a lot of set pieces to the locations.
PopHorror: You mentioned the swimming pool, which I have to say that my favorite scene was the kill scene in the swimming pool. I don’t want to give too much away. I don’t want to say who it was or anything like that, but that was my favorite. That was a great scene. How did you convey your vision to your cast and crew?
Alejandro Brugués: In the most stupid way possible. In this movie, literally for the swimming pool scene, that was a location that was written differently and once we landed on the location, I had this swimming pool, and it was very shallow. So, I was like, “Okay, how do I do this? How do I kill someone in this swimming pool?” Because the way it’s written, it’s impossible to do it. We were shooting in Victoria, and literally I bought a mask, and I went to the hotel and I sat on the swimming pool, in the bottom of the swimming pool for an hour, looking around me in the bottom of the swimming pool, trying to think, what can we do here? And once I had that, I literally pulled out my phone and I shot it with my fingers and I was describing, “And then this happens. And then boom, this happens. And then boom!” That kind of stuff. I probably have the videos here. I did a lot of shooting with my fingers there instead of the… It is really dumb. It is really dumb and then you cannot believe you’re really trying to show someone, how are we going to do this in such a… But it’s effective. It’s whatever works. So I had to show that to the stunt team and they immediately knew what I wanted. So let me see if I can find that for you, because… I think this is it. Let me see. Yeah. I think. Oh, you cannot see it. Good. This is blurring the font to make me look less stupid. [He pulls up a video on his phone of his fingers in the pool]
PopHorror: Oh, there. Oh, that’s awesome!
Alejandro Brugués: So I’ve got… Yeah, it’s really… This is stupid.
PopHorror: Well, you adapted with what you had. Right?
Alejandro Brugués: You do whatever you have to do to make it work! I was in a swimming pool, I only had my phone and my fingers, so I was like, boom! And they got it. And the stunt team immediately knew what we were going for. But I also did like that with the chase in the storage room. That was a massive room that we had to dress for that. And I went into that room again and it was me with the phones and my fingers, and now they’re coming here and then they go here and here, and then they jump. I also have, usually when I’m prepping, I cannot draw. So we had a storyboard artist and she was fantastic. So for some of those scenes, I would show this to her and she was the one making really cool storyboards that would make me look smart instead of the Mr. Bean thing with my fingers. But also, whenever I am prepping a movie, I bring action figures. I have a bunch of Walking Dead action figures to use as stand-ins in those, and I even have a small green screen, so sometimes I just place the characters and I take pictures and figure out my setups.
PopHorror: Oh, I love that so much. And I have just one last question for you today. If you could program a double feature with any two movies, what would they be?
Alejandro Brugués: With any two movies? Oh, jeez. I have one in the tip of my tongue. I was talking about this the other day. What was this? I don’t remember right now. I don’t remember. The other day I did Furiosa and then Fury Road and I felt good. I can’t remember. I saw some the other day and I was talking, and I was like, “Oh, that movie would make a great double feature with this one.” But right now, I don’t remember. I cannot believe I’m going to botch your last question. Let me think. Let me think. Give me one second. it was for me, I would probably do something really boring, like watch The Shawshank Redemption and The Secret in Their Eyes, the Argentinian one, back-to-back. That would be a nice double feature for me. But if I had to do a fun double feature… Well, once someone had a double feature of Juan of the Dead and One Cut of the Dead, which I assume was fun, but I wouldn’t like to include one of my movies in this double feature thingy. But that sounds like a fun afternoon.
PopHorror: Oh no. I’ve stumped you.
Alejandro Brugués: Yeah, and it’s one of those that I’m pretty sure three days from now I’m going to wake up in the middle of the night and I’m going to be like, “I got this.” But right now I don’t. Yeah, right now I don’t.
PopHorror: We’ll go with The Shawshank Redemption and what was the other one that you said?
Alejandro Brugués: The Secret in Their Eyes. That’s a double feature that’s going to make you a better person.
Thank you so much to Alejandro for taking the time to speak with us. The Inheritance is in theaters and on Digital now!
