PopHorror Let's Get Scared
DREAD, the horror label of L.A.-based Epic Pictures, has released Bystanders, a harrowing rape-revenge thriller, on VOD starting January 21, 2025. This directorial debut from Mary Beth McAndrews has already turned heads on the festival circuit, winning seven awards at HorrorHound Film Festival, including Best Feature and Best Directing. Starring Brandi Botkin, Garrett Murphy, and Jamie Alvey — who also penned the script — the film explores the brutal aftermath of a college party gone horrifyingly wrong.
McAndrews, herself a sexual assault survivor, describes Bystanders as a deeply personal project. “Being able to tell this story in all of its gory glory has been incredibly cathartic and liberating,” she shares. With its feminist lens and unflinching narrative, Bystanders is both a gripping horror story and a powerful statement.
In this interview, McAndrews opens up about the journey of bringing this bold vision to the screen, her collaboration with writer Jamie Alvey, and why films like Bystanders are more important than ever in today’s cultural landscape.
PopHorror: Alright, so I’m doing this for PopHorror, as you may have been informed…I’ll just dive right on into it. What initially drew you to the script?
Mary Beth McAndrews: So I had initially read the script for this actually in 2018 because I had known the writer Jamie Alvey from Twitter. We were both freelance writers at the time. We had written for similar websites, the same websites, and we just had similar circles, and when she posted about Bystanders, a script that she had just finished, I think she had finished, she was working on, I was in grad school at the time, and I was actually writing my master’s thesis on women-directed rape-revenge films, specifically Revenge by Coralie Fargeat, and so I was immediately drawn to her post about the script because it was such an interest of mine, and I read it, loved it, wanted so badly to help make it…I was an academic, I was a writer, I was a critic, I wasn’t really a filmmaker, and I didn’t have that skill set…I was like well one day who knows but like manifesting…and I guess we manifested the right way whatever that means but i ended up
You know, when I got my job at Dread Central as editor-in-chief, I also was given opportunities to work with Epic and Dread. Epic Pictures owns Dread Central, and they also have Dread, which is their horror label. And so I was given some awesome opportunities to produce some of their micro-budget horror features to kind of dip my toes in the water and get that experience, and I loved it.
And I had been pushing the Bystanders script. I had it. I finally had an opportunity to talk to my boss and his production team about it.
After a lot of harassing and following up and bothering, they greenlit the movie and…when my boss Patrick Ewald asked. “Hey, do you want to try your hand at directing this? You obviously really care about the subject matter, you know I can tell by the way you’ve been pitching this. Do you want to give it a try?”
And I said yes…I had such a unique opportunity. Not many people have the opportunity to direct kind of handed to them like that. So, I had to say yes. In my head, like saying no would have been silly to kind of reject that opportunity. And I adored every second of it.
How Easy Was It to Direct Bystanders?
PopHorror: So, would you say it’s easier to direct or harder to direct than you originally thought? Like how natural was it to get into that?
Mary Beth McAndrews: For me, it actually came pretty naturally. And I think because I don’t give myself a lot of credit for the work I’ve done before. I used to work in television, but I was in the digital side. So I was a social media and digital media video producer for a long time. I was at Discovery Communications, at National Geographic, and then I also did a non-profit where I live.
So I had had a lot of experience finding ways to film things, but I never equated them because they’re either on my phone or I was just leading a smaller shoot
But I loved doing that stuff. And I think when I got on set and realized how very different, but also the similarities, I realized, oh, I’ve done this before. It’s a different kind of thing. But I have some of the I’ve used some of these muscles before. So I have a little bit of like idea what to expect…
I fell into it pretty naturally and it felt natural, I loved it. I love that it was small…I don’t have any other experience with bigger budgets but having it be so small was difficult but also like so collaborative with everyone. Everyone put themselves into this movie’ like this is not my movie, this is our team’s movie, like it wouldn’t have been possible that any of them…
…And that was actually also a big confidence booster, especially as someone who was not even sure if that would be remotely an easy thing for her to do.
Sensitive Themes
PopHorror: So how do you balance delivering a compelling horror experience while addressing these, let’s just say, sensitive themes of the story?
Mary Beth McAndrews: So I have to give Jamie Alvey a lot of credit for that, our writer who also plays Claire. She did a lot of that work for years honing the script in terms of balancing. But I also think she did a lot of work on the script, but on set things also change on the fly just because things come up all the time more than you would expect.
It became this thing of like we kind of thought we knew what to expect from the script, but then, like, especially Garrett Murphy (who plays Gray), he brought in this…really quirky sense of humor that we hadn’t expected and really added to the character in a way that we hadn’t thought, and so that…was really incredible to watch and also see shape the film into something.
That I’m so proud of and balances tones in really weird ways, but kind of in interesting and unique ways and we played with tone so much more than I was initially expecting…I think a lot of films in this subgenre are very dour for very good reason, and I understand that like I love Violation…but I think our film had the opportunity to kind of occupy a little less of a dour space and play a little bit there.
And we really leaned into that, especially when I really saw it working with Garrett’s sense of humor and how that played off of everyone else.
PopHorror: So, what were the biggest challenges you faced in bringing Bystanders to life ,and also the characters in terms of logistics and, I guess, even emotionally speaking?
Mary Beth McAndrews: There were a lot of challenges on this movie but like it’s so funny because we had a sound guy come in for one night when our sound guy had something else and he said I’ve never seen I’ve never been on such a fun set and this movie is so sad or like so intense like it’s wild how fun this set is and I that was kind of what I wanted to from the outset; kind of set a tone of “This is very important but we need to be able to have fun and like find levity, because as a sexual assault survivor myself, I really didn’t want to sit in that headspace of sad trauma, and it’s important to sit in those spaces but I didn’t want that to be the entire 12-day shoot, because that’s not what this movie was and that’s not my personality, either. I am a pretty naturally bubbly person and so it was.
A lot of working with the cast to set a tone when the cameras weren’t rolling that like it’s a safe space and like I know people would like laugh at the term safe space, but it was like that people could talk about their feelings and how they were feeling about this movie because it’s a hard movie for everyone not just the women. Obviously our female characters go through a lot but also the guy characters are put through the ringer in terms of what actors are expected to play and the headspace that I want them to be in and a lot of them are new actors so it was just like a big challenge, essentially, was making sure to hold everyone’s emotions while also maintaining the integrity of the set and getting everything done while also not pushing people too far. It was a delicate balance, but I think because we all trusted each other, it was way easier than if we had not had that trust.
And I just I’m very lucky with that and we had so many little challenges like you do on an indie horror movie i mean just like so many silly things…
The biggest challenge was just getting this done and the amount of time we had with the resources we had and it was a challenge but it was also like such a joy to get to it felt like such an accomplishment to like make a movie for so little resources and be like and look at it it’s actually okay and it just like it was such a challenge to do that but it feels so good when you see the final product and you’re like hey that’s neat like that feels good for what we had.
A Sense of Accomplishment
PopHorror: Oh, sure. And if, if you accomplish something, you’re, you’re naturally going to want to brag about it, or, or why did you even make it…otherwise, why even do anything like that?
Mary Beth McAndrews: Exactly. And it’s so, you know, it’s so easy for people to be disappointed. And, you know, I will always pick apart the small parts where I’m like, I know this could have been different, but no one else does. And like, I’ve been, I’ve been trying to remind myself that of like, anything that I am perceiving as
It’s probably not being detected by most other viewers. So I try to remember that when I’m watching the movie, like at festivals or something…no one’s focusing on that. Don’t worry about it.
PopHorror: Well, even when I do these interviews, I mean, like, I’m kind of wondering, like, are they going to be focusing on me or a zit I’ve got on my nose or something like that?…That’s why originally I just wanted to do things via email. And it’s hard to explain to people because it’s not just me being sensitive. It’s like, I also want to do good interviews. So, it’s also like a professional thing.
Mary Beth McAndrews: Yeah, I know. No, I know what you mean, especially because like a lot of the time I’m conducting interviews. It’s very weird being on the other side…
PopHorror: Jamie Alvey not only wrote the script but also stars in the film, so how did that dual role influence the storytelling and the onset dynamic?
Mary Beth McAndrews: Yeah, so Jamie had been kind of occupying the mindset of these characters for so long and I think she did so much work with the script that, even when we hit pre-production, we were greenlit and weren’t going into direct pre-production, but we’re still prepping.
And she was still working on the script even then just to get it to fit our budget, our budget level. And she was so ready to finally get to play Claire because I think it was really her dream to get to play Claire. These characters were so close and dear to her heart. And so, I think what happened when she came to set was that we had a conversation about needing her to go into actor mode. I said, you know this story. You need to be an actor now. Can we have trust? If we need to make changes, I can do certain things on the fly.
We had that shorthand together, so we don’t have to do things by committee. It’ll be easier for you to get into character. It’ll be easier than having to go back and forth. And there was a lot of trust there because she knew how invested I was in this movie. I wasn’t some random person who had been hired.
So that, I think, was really helpful. That relationship was really helpful when we got to set. So she could really memorize lines and get into the beats and really be an actor and let the writing side of herself never go away, obviously, but help bring actors to the forefront and then trust that any changes that we had to make…I wanted to do nothing more than do justice to this script. And I think she knew that. Not to speak for her, but I’m pretty sure she knew at least the passion I had for it. Not just the script, but the topic and the situation. I was a person who had experience with this, so it wasn’t like I was going to treat it…
Visual Style
PopHorror: So, can you share your vision for the visual style of the film and how it enhanced the narrative?
Mary Beth McAndrews: Absolutely. So Chance Madison was our DP, and he was incredible because he came like the first day, we I think it was the first day that we got to the shooting location which is also where we lived for three weeks. He came to talk to us about what we were seeing and what movies that were maybe inspiration and you know wanted to kind of just pick our brains between me and Jamie because again Jamie had been writing this for so long and had a lot of thoughts.
I had a lot of thoughts and so the big inspiration, particularly when it comes to the color palette and how we were filming the woods at night, I wanted him to actually watch Violation, which is a 2020 rape revenge film directed by Madeline Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli. One of my favorite movies of all time, and I love that film, and I love the way they film violence.
The nighttime sequences, which are much dreamier in that movie than ours, but I loved how they filmed night and I loved how they filmed woods. I wanted a movie where you could see everything. I didn’t want a darkly lit movie. I didn’t want it to be dark and brooding. It needed to be bright. Because this movie is bright. And it was, again, trying to negate the idea that this was going to be a very dour meditation on trauma.
And so between that and also Brian Bertino’s The Strangers, which is just like one of the best movies ever, but that also for interiors and … I know this is like very obvious but like really playing with the cool and the warm between the interiors of the cabin versus the cool tones of the woods, and just really playing up that visual contrast between the two…
Keep It Practical
PopHorror: What role did practical effects play in this movie? Because I know that a lot of horror fans prefer practical effects over digital ones. So how much was that emphasized?
Mary Beth McAndrews: All. Every effect in this was done in camera, which was my goal. I really didn’t want CGI. Look, I get people who have to use CGI blood and fire, but I personally think they look terrible most of the time. And I knew with the budget we had, we were not going to get good looking fire and blood for CGI. And so, I was very adamant…
There are some fire moments, I won’t spoil it, but I wanted it to be real fire. And I was told that’s not possible. And I said, can we talk about it before we say no? Like, can we just like discuss it? Like, I understand. And we found a solution to using real fire. It was a really interesting camera trick. It wasn’t, I didn’t know what action outlet on fire because we didn’t have…we were too small to safely light a man on fire. Let’s just put it that way. But we found a way to do it. And I was so proud of that. And our practical effects guy and our production designer, Ben Miller, was just a godsend. He accomplished all of these effects essentially on his own. There’s a scene where we shoot someone and there’s blood splatter. That was one take. We only had one take to get that right. And we had no idea if that was going to work.
And it looked amazing on the first try. We were trying not to like loudly cheer behind the monitor to fuck up the sound because we were so excited with what it looked like. So everything was done practically. There were a couple things that we had to use it for, to get rid of tubing so you couldn’t see the tubing that we used, obviously. But all of our blood gags, all of our kills, everything done practically.
PopHorror: Alright. Well, I guess I’ve taken up plenty of your time, so I don’t know if you have any more comments or anything like that you want to make.
Mary Beth McAndrews: Please see Bystanders. Please come see it. Go see it. It’s going to be on VOD.
Thank you, Mary Beth, for your time. Bystanders is available now to rent and own on Vudu/Fandango and other digital platforms.
