Severance (2006)
Ein blutiger Betriebsausflug
Interview with Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith
Christopher Smith which everybody on the team just calls Chris showed his second horror film Severance at the Piazza Grande in Locarno. He was quite aware that his film might be a little too hard for the artsy fartsy people at the main square of the little village that hosts the international festival. So he made several jokes about the fact that they might lose some viewers in the gruesome very first minutes of the film. Which would be a pitty, since his flick is much funnier than most films from the recent past about a group of mistfits that get lost in the forrest.
» Das Interview in deutscher Sprache.
OutNow.CH (ON): James Moran's original script for Severance has been spiced up quite a bit. Did you add all the edgy stuff?
Welcome to my foot museum!
Christopher Smith (CS): The script was brilliant before. It was always pretty funny. But I added for instance the girls in the hole, because I thought they weren't too many girls in the movie. And I added the terrorist angle. I wanted it to be a satire on the war against terror. Because you can't make a movie about Eastern Europe and say that they are all hillbillies. You can do this in your country but you can't say this about someone else's country because it becomes rascist. I wanted therefore the bad guys to have a kind of reason for hating these people because of what they have done to them.
ON: Therefore you had the backstory of Palisade Defence being a weapons' producer?
CS: That was already in the script, but they only found it out at the end of the movie as a sort of twist. I got rid of that problem right away at the beginning because it does work as a satire then.
ON: Was that Rashomon-like device of the three people telling their version of the same story also already in the script?
Sexual healing
CS: I came up with that. I get very bored in movies when a character turns up and explains you who the baddie is - like in Jeepers Creepers for example. It thought let's come up with that Rashomon-style of the three versions of the same story and give a little bit of information away in each one. All of which is a little bit true but as a whole is nonsense. I was also trying to play on the idea of the channel-flipping TV-culture we're in these days. Where you can flip between an old horror movie, war crimes and sex. This moment is sort of the tone-setting of the movie. Because it shows that it can juggle the three elements. It's causing a very weird mix, but it's also interesting.
ON: Why is horror and humour such a great combination?
Smith treats actors well, doesn't he.
CS: What you usually get is a horror movie with some comedy, or you get a comedy with some horror. What I tried to do in this film is going right down the middle. It's both funny and scary. Usually you get a lot of tension and then a joke as a relief. But I think it's because of the pleasure of that relief that people like the comedy elements in horror movies. You're being scared and then you're laughing. A movie like Wolf Creek, which I like very much, doesn't give you that relief. There the tension stays on.
Scene from Creep
ON: Your other movie Creep was more in that way. Would you be able to tell which of the two you liked better?
CS: Definitely. I much prefer Severance as a film, because I prefer doing the comedy stuff. I like the anarchy of this film. Creep is playing a bit of a straighter card narratively. What I love the most about Creep ist Creep himself and the performance by Sean Harris. And the twisted torture scene is my favourite bit.
ON: Will there ever be movies from other genres than horror coming from you? Like a straight comedy for instance.
CS: Yes, I find it to be very uplifting. If I do comedy it will be a very twisted one. I actually have this idea of doing a film about stalking. Because I think the idea of love and stalking are very close. Where does love end and stalking begin?
Chris in Locarno
ON: You end Severance with every character smiling. Why is that?
CS: It's a reference to The Deer Hunter. I felt that the characters where so sufficiently nice that I wanted you to realize that they are all dead. It's kind of an emotive moment. But it's also a trick that reminds you of some of the best bits in the movie. But it doesn't always work. I've seen it done in terrible movies, and then you go: "No. I don't want to see these guys again! Now I hate the movie even more."
ON: Thank you very much.
CS: Thank you.
