In a special interview we caught up with director Johannes Roberts about his latest film called (yes you guessed it) The Other Side of the Door, which is at the cinemas NOW!!
HM: Firstly, Johannes, thanks for taking the time to talk to us.
JR: Pleasure.
HM: For ‘The Other Side of the Door’, which warped part of your brain the idea come from?
JR: From the left warped part of my brain. It came from a
mixture of things. Discovering this real village in India called Bhangra. It’s
totally abandoned, nobody knows what happened to the inhabitants, and it’s
fenced off with signs on the outside of the village saying don’t enter this
place after sunset. I just thought that was a crazy story. So that sort of
started the ball rolling in my head. Then obviously it has a lot of Stephen
King influences, some influences of The Monkey’s Paw and old fashioned ghost
stories.
HM: Do you think India’s the new hotbed for horror?
HM: Do you think India’s the new hotbed for horror?
JR: I don’t know if it’s the new hotbed for horror, but I wanted
a fresh place to explore. I just thought that for an audience to see a story
that is, in a sense is a familiar ghost story, but in a fresh way, is a very
scary thing.
HM: Are there any
underlining horror films from India that you’ve discovered that you think need
to be promoted more?
HM: If you had to choose
one, writing or directing, which would you choose and why?
JR: Directing. It’s a funny thing, creating the stories is what
fires me. To say this sounds horrendously pretentious, but I would, in my mind,
think of myself as a story teller. So the two things are kind of intrinsically
linked together but I would never write for someone else. I couldn’t think of
anything worse, or more boring. I only write for myself. Directing is just a
lot of fun. Writing, coming up with the ideas is cool but then it’s a real
slog. Directing you are king of the hill and it’s kind of cool.
HM: Did you envisage
Sarah Wayne Callies as the role of Maria when you wrote the film?
JR: She was, oddly, physically exactly what I had seen, but I
hadn’t had a particular actress in mind. Except I tend to I always seem to
invasion Jenny Agutter in everything, but that’s just me. Sorry Jenny.
HR: Storage 24 was a
great success; did you expect it? What has been keeping you busy since then?
HR: You’ve got your foot
firmly planted in horror writing and directing. Can you tell us how you got
into horror what you love about it, and how different it is now to what you
were watching when you were younger?
JR: They’re really, yes, that’s…
HM: Can’t get better than
that?
JR: Yes, exactly, I’m just totally, I just loved, I’m obsessed
with, I read my Stephen King still now. I read everything he does, and John
Carpenter I just absolutely love. I just think he’s a phenomenal director. I
love Alex’s work, so I was very lucky to have the chance to work with him. He’s
very much more, brutal is not necessarily the word, but his style of horror is
much more shocking than mine I think. If you watch ‘The Hills Have Eyes’,
‘Maniac’, and ‘Switchblade Romance’. But yes, I think the King thing is very
present in all my work.
HM: You directed one of
the world’s first short series for mobile phones.
JR: I did yes, Wow this guy’s done his [homework], he’s dragged
them out.
HM:
Do you think the
advancement in technology, things like social media, can help talented people
get their stuff out there and noticed more than perhaps 10, 20 years ago?
HR: So like webisodes
almost?
JR: Yes, webisodes. They were called ‘mobisodes’, they thought
that it was going to take off. I think we were the first people to do it and we
were the last people to do it. In the end it would cost you about like £15, and
people were like ‘what’s going on here?’ and it was just a disastrous idea.
HM: But a learning curve
perhaps?
JR: Yes. I mean I enjoyed it. It was fun to invent, because
nobody had done this before. We had to invent a visual language for a screen of
that size. What kind of shots you use, and editing style, and all that kind of
stuff. The world has changed now with YouTube and all that kind of stuff. You
look at the guys that did that great short film called ‘Lights Out’, which is
terrifying. I don’t know if you’ve seen, you click on the light and off, and
the ghost comes closer, it’s really really scary, and when I first watched it I
was like ‘that’s amazing’.
HM: A bit like virtual
reality?
HM: And finally, what’s
on the horizon for you for this year and the years beyond?
JR: Hopefully work. I have just finished a movie called ‘47
Meters Down’, which I think will be called something different when it actually
comes out because Americans don’t get meters. That’s a shark movie with Mandy
Moore and Claire Holt, which Dimension are releasing in America I think that’s
going to be a big movie. I hope. I hope it’s going to be a big movie. It’s the
first movie in the world ever to be entirely filmed under water so it’s just;
it was a crazy crazy movie to do.
HM: Thanks for that Johannes
JR: Pleasure, great questions,
The Other Side of the Door is in cinemas NOW, it's spooky, it's scary and it's pretty good.
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