Fede Alvarez Thinks We’re All Perverts – In the Best Possible Way
The history of the horror genre, before blood and gore could be shown, relied more on the psychology of fear, rather than the showing of what those fears could perpetuate. Do you think you could have worked under those restrictions and how do you think Don’t Breathe would have been different?
Fede Alvarez: I think a lot of it would work under those restrictions. If you asked someone what they thought the worst thing that happened in the movie was, it’s more psychological and harder to pick up. It was more the things they feared were going to happen. Most of the fear is psychological, like the whole infamous scene in the cellar where nothing really happens except what you fear is going to happen. What really happens? Nothing. If anything, the blind man [Stephen Lang] gets the worst part of the thing.I do that all the time. I like playing with the idea of hope versus fear. I try to create a hope in the audience in a scene and then get them terrified when something else happens.Or even introduce a third option they haven’t even considered.
A lot of early filmmakers, like Polanski, all thought the same thing: the audience are perverts, but in the best possible way. Let’s say I show you the trailer to this movie. What does it promise you? It promises to show people suffering and probably dying. That’s what it shows you and that’s why people show up to the theater. You don’t show up to the theater saying, “Oh, I don’t want anybody to die.” The reality is that If nobody dies and nobody gets hurt, they’d want their money back. That is the perversion. You do want to see it even if you say you don’t. There is something in your mind that needs to witness these things.
Almost like a voyeurism.
Yeah, you want to see how people react under those things. During the [scene with the horror climax], you don’t want it to happen, but there is a part of you brain that is stimulated by the whole thing, in terrible ways, but human beings are complex. I’m aware of that and I try to deliver on the promises that my films makes.
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