PopHorror Let's Get Scared
If you know me, you know that I love a good isolation horror movie, so it should come as no surprise that now we’re going to talk about the new film Pitfall, written and directed by James Kondelik, and starring Alex Essoe (read our interview with her HERE), Richard Harmon (Final Destination: Bloodlines), and UFC champion Randy Couture (The Expendables). I’ve said it before and I will say it again, the chances of finding me camping deep in the woods are slim to none, and thanks to Pitfall, I’m perfectly happy with that decision.
After a young man gets separated from his friends while in the woods, he falls into a 10-foot-deep pit of spikes, impaling him through the leg, and leaving him trapped. He quickly learns that his fall was not an accident.
To celebrate the release of the film, I chatted with stars Richard and Alex about what grabbed their interest in the script, night shoots, horror movies, and more!
PopHorror: I’m a huge fan and I really liked Pitfall so I’m super excited to talk to you guys about it today. When you first read the script, what was the exact scene or image that gave you chills and made you realize that this had to be your next project?
Alex Essoe: There were a couple moments. I would say the campfire scene with Gwen and Lars.
Richard Harmon: That’s mine!
Alex Essoe: No, what?!
Richard Harmon: Well, it’s true because it’s the one time Lars gets to actually show that he’s there for a legitimately sweet reason.
Alex Essoe: Yeah, yes, absolutely. And also the way that the scene turns because it starts in one place and it ends up in a far more sinister place, and I just really liked it. I just really liked the way it was written, I liked the dynamic, I liked what was revealed.
Richard Harmon: Yeah!
Alex Essoe: It was cool.
Richard Harmon: And I liked doing it.
Alex Essoe: I loved doing it. It was a really fun scene to film.
PopHorror: I love that. Horror requires maintaining an incredibly high level of adrenaline and panic across weeks of filming. What is your personal process for tapping into that raw, elevated state of fear take after take without burning yourself out physically?
Alex Essoe: Oh, I do burn out physically all the time.
Richard Harmon: Yeah, you just throw yourself at it and deal with it.
Alex Essoe: You just have to do it. Also, you’re not just doing it once. They want repeated takes of sometimes very high-octane moments and you do try to… It’s hard because you want to conserve but you also want people to believe it. You want the audience’s adrenaline up, you want their heart rate to go up and it’s hard to do that if you don’t believe the fear of the person you’re watching.
PopHorror: That’s true.
Alex Essoe: We are very sympathetic, empathetic creatures. We look at something and we’re affected by it. That’s what I want. I want to affect the audience so it’s to me worth just doing it and hopefully you’re working with a director who understands he shouldn’t exhaust his or her actors.
PopHorror: I read that this took about 18 days to shoot, is that right?
Richard Harmon: It was fast.
PopHorror: I can’t imagine having to shoot something so quickly and so physically without burning yourselves out. I can’t imagine that that’s even an option.
Alex Essoe: I can’t believe that was 18 days.
Richard Harmon: I don’t think it is an option, to your point.
Alex Essoe: No.
Richard Harmon: Not burning yourself out isn’t an option. You just do. You find your second wind, third wind, and you also find your love of it and your fun for it because it is fun.
Alex Essoe: You try to take care of yourself as much as you can or would, especially when most horror movies take place at night so a lot of scenes you’re filming at night and sleeping as much as you can during the day, which is not easy.
Richard Harmon: Oh god, and your body won’t let you sleep in.
Alex Essoe: I’m not 15, I can’t just sleep until 3pm nor do I want to. I heard that Robert Duvall got to a point where he just wouldn’t do a movie if there were any night shoots at all.
Richard Harmon: He was like, screw it.
Alex Essoe: He’s like, no they have to take place during the day, you can have maybe a couple splits and that’s it. I think that’s exactly the right idea.
PopHorror: You guys were in the woods too, right? You were really out in the woods in Canada.
Alex Essoe: And it’s the summertime in Canada so night is only like six hours long.
Richard Harmon: We have so much to shoot, so we have 18 days and six hours a day.
Alex Essoe: So much to shoot at night! We had to do like three weeks of night shoots.
Richard Harmon: I think we maybe got two days we actually completed everything. How we have a finished movie is beyond me, but we do.
Alex Essoe: Yeah, it was harrowing for sure.
PopHorror: What is one traditional horror trope you feel that this film successfully subverts or approaches from a fresh angle?
Richard Harmon: That’s interesting because I like the horror tropes that are attached, which is part of the reason why I did it because I am a fan of those horror tropes. I went out to make my character a horror trope because I like that type of horror trope that that character is so that’s kind of what I set out to make. I’m not saying that we didn’t subvert it in certain senses but in my brain because I went out so specifically to delve into a horror trope, I wasn’t looking for subversion in my own mind.
PopHorror: I can appreciate that.
Alex Essoe: I think honestly, it pulls off a lot of these horror tropes really well because the characters aren’t stupid. It works because they actually work. There is not just a script convenience that we blindly wander into traps or make stupid decisions or decide now is a good time to have sex. Even the supporting characters are not like that. We do try to be strategic, we do try to survive, we do try to do things the right way. That’s something I found very refreshing about it and that’s what I think is very different about it.
PopHorror: I love isolation horror and survivalist horror.
Alex Essoe: Yeah!
PopHorror: When I got the email for this and I saw that it was set in the forest camping, I thought, this is my jam! I am ready for this because islands, forests, when people are out and there’s really nowhere to go and they’re trying to survive, that is my jam.
Alex Essoe: I love that, yeah. Yes, I especially love island survival stuff, shipwreck stuff. My fave!
PopHorror: I love when they’re camping in the forest because I will never do that. You will never find me camping.
Richard Harmon: You’re safe.
PopHorror: I will just experience it through these horror movies. Speaking of horror, neither of you are strangers to the horror genre. Richard, obviously Final Destination: Bloodlines was a huge hit, and then also Puppet Killer, which I love.
Richard Harmon: You saw Puppet Killer?!
PopHorror: I did! I know Lisa and I interviewed her a few years ago, so I got to watch it.
Richard Harmon: Get out of here! Kind of fun, right?
PopHorror: So much fun! Alex, you were in various Mike Flanagan projects but also the phenomenal Starry Eyes. We still talk about that to this day.
Alex Essoe: Thank you!
Richard Harmon: People love this movie!
PopHorror: What draws you back to the horror genre?
Alex Essoe: Oh my god, the sheer creativity that goes into it. There’s so much you can do with it. It is limitless; I can play any kind of character; I can explore so much more about the grey area of the human psyche. It’s a very exciting genre for me.
Richard Harmon: I agree completely. I love it so much. It’s the number one genre that I will watch at any time of the year, at any time of the day. I just love horror because anything is possible in horror, and sometimes even if a horror movie doesn’t turn out as good as I hope it to be, I still enjoy it in other ways. There’s a million ways to enjoy horror.
Alex Essoe: Yeah, there’s a certain charm to it.
Richard Harmon: There’s a million ways to do horror. It makes you feel like a kid again, like you’re going out trick-or-treating. I love it! I can’t get enough of it.
Alex Essoe: It’s true; you really get to employ your imagination so much. It’s so much fun.
PopHorror: I love that so much. And for you to say that horror is your number one thing to watch, when you make horror movies and you know what happens behind the scenes and you know how they’re made, and you still enjoy watching them. That is the best thing to hear.
Alex Essoe: Oh, absolutely.
Richard Harmon: Here’s the thing, most of the time I’m not scared by horror movies anymore but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy watching them and just watching people try. I just like watching people try. Every once in a while, something will come along and I’ll be like, oh shit. That for me this year was Hokum. Hokum was the best horror movie I’ve seen in years. I was there, watching it, and being scared by it, and I couldn’t take my eyes off in the theater. My girlfriend at the time was watching me watch it and was like, “You’re eyes glazed.” So, every once in a while, it gets you. Japan’s got some great ones.
Alex Essoe: Japan has some beautiful ones. And that’s the thing, some of the horror gets you because it’s so heartbreaking, it’s so devastatingly beautiful or it accesses this primordial feeling that you can’t even describe sometimes.
Richard Harmon: There’s a romanticism to horror. I find I romanticize it in my head – romanticism in a childlike way, not in like a grown-up romantic way.
Thank you so much to Alex and Richard for taking the time to chat with us today. Pitfall is available on digital now!
