Welcome To The Blumhouse: Interview With Filmmaker Axelle Carolyn For ‘The Manor’

The horror movies that take things from real life are, in my opinion, the scariest ones. I have always been afraid, not growing older, but of not being able to take care of myself or control my own body or mind. Of losing my mind mostly, and not being able to live in my own home. The Manor, the latest film from Axelle Carolyn, hits me in the feels and the fears. I cannot imagine being trapped in a place that’s supposed to be your home and not be able to leave. To celebrate the release of The Manor as part of Amazon’s Welcome to the Blumhouse, I chatted with Filmmaker Axelle Carolyn about her inspiration for the film, who she would love to collaborate with, and why she loves horror.

PopHorror: I watched The Manor, and I thought it was so good. Barbara Hershey is just phenomenal as always.

Axelle Carolyn: Isn’t she awesome?

PopHorror: She is! It’s so good to see her still making such great work. 

Axelle Carolyn: I’m so happy you liked it!

PopHorror: What inspired The Manor, and how did the project come about?

Axelle Carolyn: Well, first of all—and I think I’m not the only one—I’ve always found the idea of aging terrifying. Like the idea that your body, that you no longer have any control over it in the same way that we do when we’re younger. You get frustrated with what you can’t do, and you change, and you become someone different. And we always talk to older people like they’re almost a different species, like they’re not going to understand us the same way. So that idea of becoming something other like that was just really scary. And seeing my family becoming something other when I was little was really scary. Then I saw my granddad and my dad both end up in nursing homes, and you go into those places, and I don’t know if you’ve had that experience, but it really confronts you to your own mortality and makes you feel like we all end up in the same place if we’re lucky to live long enough. This is kind of what that is.

And so I’ve always thought that those themes were really interesting, because they scare me so much that they work for a horror movie. Then I was visiting my granddad one day, and I had my back to do the door, and he said, “There’s someone at the door. Who’s there?” I looked back, and there was no one there.

PopHorror: Oh, wow!

Axelle Carolyn: Automatically, I thought, “He’s seeing things, or his vision is not as good or his mind is not as sharp.” But he insisted that there was someone there, that he could see someone standing in the door frame that I couldn’t see. I found that so striking in the idea that straight away I just missed what he was experiencing. It really struck me as anything could happen in those places, and you will not be getting help. And that’s the perfect setting for a horror, so it’s thematically relevant, and at the same time, it’s a place where you can’t escape, and no help will come because no one will believe you.

PopHorror: If you think about all the deaths in those places, I can only imagine what kind of activity there would be in there. My mother was living in a nursing home, and I agree with the way they’re treated and spoken to, and I actually thought about that while watching the movie. A lot of times, they’re not spoken to like they’re adults or even people. I really appreciate that you said that, because that’s what was going through my mind.

Axelle Carolyn: It’s almost like we treat them like children or people who are not going to understand. It’s interesting trying to put that on screen, hinting at it because I didn’t want it to be… I think there’s a version of this that could have been very Hereditary, very dark and somber and depressing. And I think you just make the movies that come out of you and that correspond with your personality, and I guess I’m not like that. I wanted something that felt less depressing watching it and less oppressive. I didn’t push those aspects too much, but I did want to hint at them for sure.

PopHorror: You started out as a journalist and in acting. What made you want to flip that and become a filmmaker?

Axelle Carolyn: I think I always wanted to be a filmmaker, I just didn’t have the… You know, it’s something I’ve asked myself a lot. I’ve always known I’ve wanted to work in horror, and I always knew that I wanted to do something on set. I was writing as well, and I got the chance to write for Fangoria because I was visiting a set. That’s kind of how I started in that. I took every opportunity that I could to just… Acting was also never something that I picked. It was something that I got the chance to do, and then it just became one more experience to understand how film and TV gets made.

But honestly, looking back, I feel like the fact that everyone that I knew around me who was a director or wanted to be a director was a dude, and that probably made it unconsciously more difficult to project myself and see myself as a director. I think that things have changed a lot, and now I have a lot of friends who are women who are making great horror movies and great horror TV, but it’s something that the moment I realized had stopped the way I progressed in my career. I want to be very visible, and I want to bring women to shadow me and see this is doable. It’s become an important thing for me.

PopHorror: I think women are coming more and more to the forefront, and that we’re going to start seeing a lot more. I love that.

Axelle Carolyn: We have a little group of women based in LA, or sometimes women like Gigi [Saul Guerrero] who’s visiting from Vancouver, and sometimes we hang out in the graveyard across the street from me and talk about making horror movies. It’s pretty great.

PopHorror: That is so awesome! Sounds like a ton of fun. What is it that draws you to the horror genre?

Axelle Carolyn: I don’t know. I’ve always been obsessed with it. I’m sure you grew up with the same thing, right?

PopHorror: Yes!

Axelle Carolyn: You’d watch Disney cartoons, and all you’d see were the ghosts in the trick or treating episodes and the skeletons and all that stuff. That’s what stuck with me when I was little. I wasn’t allowed to watch horror, and my parents were very strict until I was in my late teens, but I would see pictures of horror movies and I read the synopsizes. Then I would make it up in my head. I had this vision of what Hellraiser was that I had completely made up in my head, so I think in some ways, it made some of them more exciting because I didn’t know. They were prohibited, but there were those great images and it was so fun.

PopHorror: That is so awesome! You have already collaborated with some really amazing people in the industry, but if you could collaborate with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?

Axelle Carolyn: Oh shit. You know, if I can go with dead, I’m going to go with… I would have loved to make a Hammer movie if I could have. I think that being Steven Spielberg is probably a really nice life, but being Terence Fisher making horror movies for Hammer with Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee and working with Ingrid Pitt, that would have been the dream. Nowadays, Guillermo del Toro is just amazing. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have Mike Flanagan in my life and that I got to work with him. I’ve done two TV shows with him, and I admire the hell out of him, so it’s like that’s a dream come true already. 

PopHorror: That’s so fantastic. I saw that you have recently directed some episodes of American Horror Story, but what is up next for you?

Axelle Carolyn: I just did two episodes of The Midnight Club, which is a new TV show for Netflix by Mike Flanagan. He’s got Midnight Mass coming out this month, and then he has another one called The Midnight Club, which is based on Christopher Pike books, and I did two episodes of that. That comes out next year. And then right now, I’m directing the season finale of American Horror Story. And I don’t know. I’d love to do another feature.

PopHorror: One last question for you today. What is your favorite scary movie?

Axelle Carolyn: Oh my God. I usually say The Fly, the David Cronenberg movie, because that’s the one that really showed me you can make something that’s genuinely scary and genuinely gory, but at the same time, make people cry. I remember the first time I watched it and it blew my mind. I was so grossed out but so sad. The one I can’t stop watching is Sleepy Hollow.

Thank you so much, Axelle, for taking the time to speak with us. Be sure to catch The Manor on Amazon now!