One of the big benefits that isolation has had is that, despite so few movies being released, those that are still managing to be released happen to be the ones that might have been swallowed by the big cinema release season. As such, a film like After Midnight, an indie inflected character piece that defies strict genre categorisation, can really find its audience, sitting in the comfort of their living room.
After Midnight is a horror inflected drama film about a man having a nightly battle with a monster, while coming to terms with his girlfriend leaving him.
I was lucky enough to get a chance to speak to the directors: Jeremy Gardner, who writes and leads the film, and Christian Stella, who also shot the film. We discuss its undefinable nature, performances and great horror jumps. I spoke to them from London, with both Jeremy and Christian based in Florida.
No Majesty: First things first let’s address the pandemic in the room, how are you both doing?
Jeremy Gardner: Oh God, it’s in the room?
No Majesty: It’s everywhere, it’s airborne, it’s like the Dustin Hoffman movie [Outbreak], it’s coming for everybody. But, are you both well?
Jeremy Gardner: I’m doing well. It’s up and down. I’ve had moments of “this is lovely, I get to watch things with my cats, and my wonderful woman”, and then I go “I hate everything, I’m gonna die!” So, you know, up and down. Yourself?
No Majesty: Oh, I’m absolutely fine, thank you for asking. We’re going through a heatwave in London, that’s where I am. So, it’s great being indoors.
Jeremy Gardner: We’re going through a perpetual heat wave in Florida.
No Majesty: Yes, I hear it’s perpetually nice in Florida, all the time.
Jeremy Gardner: No, no it’s not. But it depends on what you think nice is. But anyway, yeah.
No Majesty: Well anything that isn’t unpredictable is usually quite nice.
Christian Stella: Yeah, but what if it’s predictably one hundred and something degrees?
NM: Well, I’ll give you that. But, we’re not here to talk about the weather, we’re here to talk about your film. After Midnight is the film, obviously, you made it. I tried to explain the film, in basic terms, and I had trouble doing that.
JG: Perfect.
NM: It’s not a film that lends itself to “it’s a comedy“. How would either of you describe the film?
JG: Well people have been trying to get me to write bloglines and synopsis’ for three years and I still have trouble. That’s probably not a good thing. But it’s, as far as what it’s about or what it’s like, you know it’s very difficult. You know you’ve stumped me again. You know, it’s about a guy who’s lamenting his girlfriend leaving, and when she leaves something terrible comes out of the swamp and starts attacking his house. That’s the longline. But, it’s different than that, because there’s romance and there’s comedy, and there’s some scares. I dunno, we try to make movies that feel like life. You know on any given day you somebody could creep you out in the parking lot at night and then you go home and your cat farts, and that’s funny. There’s up and down. You know I think that people always say that we’re mixing genres, that we’re juggling all these genres and I always just feel like “no we’re just telling a story about people” and we always have a horror element to it or genre element to it but the comedy throws people off. People aren’t expecting as much levity in these things and as much as I love horror movies the ones that are just eternally bleak are just a slog. I’d rather just go up and down.
NM: I completely agree with you. In fact, I made three notes while watching the film. About three things I wanted to mention to you, and one of the them was the line Henry Zebrowski [who plays supportive friend Wade] delivers which is “it tastes like going blind”, which made me laugh out loud. Is that what you’re talking about, the comedy?
JG: Of course, and that’s on hundred percent ad-libbed.
NM: Really?
JG: Oh yeah, a lot of the stuff he says is scripted but I told him, the second we were lucky enough to get him on board, I said “just go nuts, go bananas, do whatever you want”. And, in fact, most of the notes we got, even though we had final cut, were “guys we know Henry is the funniest guy in the world but you can’t leave every joke he says in the movie” because we would have.
CS: There’s an outtake reel, on the – with the arrow set, and it’s ninety five percent Henry Zebrowski and probably a third of it’s from that scene, just like different versions of that particular line, specifically, and everything that happens after it.
JG: Yeah, we made him sit through about six minutes straight of just eating a bowl of those boiled peanuts and just riffing off the top of his head. The poor guy had so much salt.
NM: That scene in particular, you were talking about not being beholden to one genre, did feel almost like a Richard Linklater film for that scene. It felt like suddenly we were in Dazed and Confused for a little bit, and then we went into a John Carpenter film, and then we went into a Sam Raimi film, and then it was a Terrence Malick film. It did feel sort of like browsing a DVD collection for ninety minutes.
JG: That’s awesome. I mean, a lot of people might feel that’s too loose and not knowing what you’re actually trying to achieve, but that sounds perfect to me. Also, the Linklater thing keeps coming back because a lot of people compare it to the Before Trilogy.
NM: I certainly see that, funnily enough, there’s a sequence, I think it’s about half way through, which by my count was fifteen minutes, and it’s one unbroken shot, and that felt a lot like the Before films. Where it’s just you, Jeremy, and the Abby character [Played by Brea Grant] just sat on a porch, talking. And I was about eight minutes in before I realised it was an unbroken shot, I was just into that scene. It felt a lot like a one act play, in a way.
JG: That’s beautiful to hear, actually. That’s exactly how I hoped it would feel. It was written very much, even with the door frame as the proscenium arch. It was meant to be very theatrical, I wanted it to be that moment where Abby gets to kind of say her piece, explain herself and it to be two actors in the moment. Without being manipulated, you know, cuts and close ups and I thought that would be great and it turns out Brea had not done theatre, which i thought everyone did
NM: Really, that does surprise me, it felt like that, it felt like a play.
JG: Well, I think she was terrified to do the whole thing at once, but I don’t know why because when she did an audition video, actually, she didn’t think she was going to have to audition. So when she found out she did she was like “well screw this I’m gonna do it”, so she filmed herself doing that whole monologue in her audition video, which we didn’t ask her to do. So we were basically like ok she’s got this, then we did about fourteen takes, about twelve – thirteen takes of that long shot, and we thought we were going to have to get coverage. But by about take three, our producer Dave came over and said “so we’re only gonna do this in a oner, in a one shot, right?” And we were like “thank god” because we didn’t really want to do coverage. We were just going to do it to placate the producers.
CS: And it helped that we actually had an 8K camera to shoot with. That helped put a little bit of movement into the shot. Like, it’s zooming in over fourteen minutes, and you can’t actually see it when you’re watching it at regular speed, but it zooms in to double the size by the end, by like the ten minute mark.
NM: I only noticed that at the end, when I went back to see how long that shot had been. I realised it had zoomed in.
CS: Yeah it helps to make it a little more interesting. It’s like as they’re getting more, and the scene’s getting more intimate, the camera’s getting more intimate. That helped with just a little bit of visual interest
NM: Yeah, I genuinely thought that scene, the rest of the film could have gone absolutely visual effects crazy but I thought that scene really was the centrepiece of the entire film. There’s a tension throughout the film, I found, that Hank might be having a nightly encounter with a monster or he might just be projecting his own grief over his girlfriend leaving him. Was there a challenge in keeping the ambiguity going, not tipping the scales to one or the other.
JG: It was a little bit of a challenge for sure, but it helps that we didn’t have the monster for much, it’s almost like Jaws, the shark wasn’t working. We weren’t able to give the game away too soon because we didn’t have anything to show. So that kind of helped keep that ambiguity going as long as it did. But it’s funny, it’s definitely in there, but it was never of huge importance to me to make people wonder about if this monster was real. The monster was always real, to me. So, if people figured out it was real a little earlier it didn’t matter to me, I’m just actually shocked how many people weren’t certain it was real until you see it.
NM: It definitely felt like the Michael Shannon film Take Shelter, where you think is he crazy or is he the only one who knows it’s real.
JG: Now, Christian is not a huge fan of that movie, but I love that movie. It’s one of my favourites of [Jeff] Nichols specifically, I think that might be my favourite of his films. Yeah, very similar, except that that film is about mental illness so it gives it away very early if this guy is crazy or not. In this it’s not necessarily ever hinted that he’s crazy, but a lot of people also thought that Abby was the monster, which also surprised me.
NM: I did have that suspicion, at one point. I was thinking, is she the monster, has she turned into a creature, is this where this film is going.
JG: We’re just so good at disappointing people. No, it’s just a monster.
CS: I heard a great thing on a podcast that they thought the monster was real but it was manifested into the world through his grief. Like his grief was so powerful that he created a monster and it’s real and I was like “okay” you know?
JG: Come on, we all know that’s not how monsters really work.
NM: They just exist, they just come out the swamp after your girlfriend leaves.
JG: That’s it.
CS: There’s a line that Henry Zebrowski has in the movie about, maybe it’s a barrel of toxic waste, and then he has also says that maybe it’s panthers because they’re on the rebound. And there’s a driving shot in the movie and I was thinking “man, I really regret not just going in there with photoshop”, and photoshopping in one frame of two panthers breeding next to a barrel of toxic waste just so that if people freeze frame it at the right moment of this driving shot they could be like “that’s what the monster is, it’s panthers that got doused in toxic waste”.
JG: Well, I always talk about Tremors, because there’s that scene on they’re stuck on the rocks over night and they’re like “maybe the Government built them” you know “maybe they’re from outer space” they’re like trying to think up where these worms came from, and you never really know, and in the sequel they’re like “nope they’ve always been here. They pre-date the fossil records”, and I’m like well know it’s not as cool, you’ve told us where they’re from.
NM: I completely agree, the ambiguity worked in it’s favour. As co-directors, Jeremy you wrote the film and you star and Christian you also shot the film, is there a dynamic to your directing? Are one of performance and one of you technical, or is it completely collaborative?
CS: It’s collaborative, at the beginning of the day or before we shoot, we talk over everything and it helps that we’re both on the same page naturally. That way once we get to shooting we can focus, he can focus on performances and talking to the actors and I can focus on technical and talking to the crew, and it helps us get through our days quicker, especially on a movie, an indie movie, you don’t have enough days, enough time, so it really really helps to have two directors at these budgets especially.
JG: Yeah, and if i’m going to act in them, which I probably won’t do forever, because people are going to keep calling me out for being an ego maniac.
NM: Well it worked for Clint Eastwood.
JG: Yeah, you know, that’s true. I’m Clint Eastwood. But, you know, if i’m trying to focus on my own performance and the other actors it helps if I don’t have to go over and talk about adjusting a light or reframing something. And Christian, you know, he’s a genius in that regards, I trust him, so I don’t have to worry about it. If at the end of the take and i’m happy with the performance and he gives me a thumbs up because he likes the shot, and the lighting and the colour and everything worked beautiful then we can just move on. We don’t have to get our noses in everything.
NM: To that end, not to give anything away, there’s a moment, a jump, that occurred during a song, that made me not just jump “oh I jumped” I physically lifted of my seat, it was so well timed, and I think that is a perfect encapsulation of how it was shot, and your performance. I was watching it on an iPad and I threw the iPad across the room.
JG: That’s awesome. I mean, it’s funny because we hear that a lot, and we’ve certainly seen it, especially at the world premier at Tribeca it was a huge jump. But, Christian, I don’t know if I ever talked to you, did you ever expect that?
CS: No.
JG: We knew we were doing that, but I think because we’ve lived with it for so long, and we’ve cut it, it never occurred to us how surprising that moment might actually be, and it’s really rewarding to see that. We definitely built in that song being so long that you just kind of give up as an audience you go “I guess that’s it, I guess there’s nothing else” and then it comes.
CS: I’ve had conversations since then like “god I hate jump scares” and “man jump scares are so stupid” and I go wait a minute there’s like six jump scares in After Midnight, including the big one , and I’m like oh, maybe I just don’t feel like when we were making it I didn’t feel like they were jump scares because we knew they were coming. We’re like “yeah and now this happens”. It doesn’t ever get us because we put them there.
JG: Well I also think there’s a difference between a jump scare that is divorced from the story, it’s just to goose a reaction of an audience, and a jump scare that is organically built in or meant to be like a reversal, those jump scares are fun, I love those kind of jump scares. It’s just like when you watch a horror movie and they’re like “we haven’t had a scare in a while, guess we better throw that cat in there” those are lazy, but I think the one you’re talking about and there’s one in the woods at night a little earlier, those two were in the script, those were built in as moments.
CS: But then we went in and put jump scares in basically every flashbacks, so it’s like yeah I wasn’t thinking about that. But it was fun to see it with an audience for the first time, and every time since. From that moment until the credits roll it’s pretty much—
JG: Laughter.
CS: Yeah, they jump and then they laugh, i think they laugh at how bad we got them, which is so cool
NM: I did laugh afterwards. I kept thinking “something’s going to happen” but it didn’t happen the way I thought it would and that’s what got me.
JG: And it goes long enough to where you just kind of think, if you know our work, this is enough for them. That it’s just a resolution to the character’s story, rather than the monster story. So, they kind of just resign to the fact that they’re gonna get that so that when the other thing happens it’s like, no no here you go, and it’s absurd too
NM: I have just one final question for you, which is, obviously given the current state of the world. People are watching films at home, and I think that really benefitted your film, because it’s such an indefinable thing, I think it would get swamped by bigger releases. Do you think there’s a place for films being released on streaming services or do you think that cinema is the only way, and this is a blip?
JG: You know, I was talking to somebody the other day, it’s going to get reduced down to a much more niche theatre, and screens, but I always hope for the movie going experience but obviously a lot more people are getting to make movies because of the streaming services. And that just bodes well for everybody. This is a movie that works great at a festival, because you’re got a hyped crowd and they’re primed to watch movies, but if this was just released on it’s own, I think lot people would be disappointed, it’s nice that there’s room for people to find movies of a different ilk, that might not bode well if they were released on twenty five hundred screens. So I think there’s room for both.
NM: I get that, and I felt that the title was like a serving suggestion, watch it after midnight by yourself. So, congratulations on the film, I really enjoyed it, and I thank you both for you time.
CS: Thank you.
JG: Thanks, it’s been a pleasure.
