Writer/director Joe Begos recently spoke with “Breakthrough Entertainment” about his new horror flick “Almost Human.”
In “Almost Human,” which opens Friday, March 21, Josh Ethier plays a man named Mark who disappears from his home in a brilliant flash of blue light while Graham Skipper plays his friend Seth, who is the last person to see him alive. Now a string of grisly, violent murders leads Seth to believe that Mark is back – and that something evil is inside of him.
Listen to “Breakthrough Entertainment’s” full interview with Begos by clicking HERE. The following is an excerpt from the interview in which the writer/director discusses his inspiration for “Almost Human’s” story and tone.
“I grew up in new England. Essentially, most of New England is exactly like a Stephen King story. It is like these very dense woods with a very small town where everybody knows each other. Growing up, I would always watch ‘Unsolved Mysteries.’ And one of my favorite movies was ‘Fire in the Sky.’ One of the things that frightened me more than anything was alien abduction.
“I always had these ideas swirling around in my head about how I would attack an alien abduction movie. And I was also a fan of very brutal 80’s-style slashers. So when it came time to make my first movie, I decided to go back home and do an ‘Evil Dead,’ bad-taste style movie and just make the craziest kitchen-sink alien abduction movie that I could.
“When you have 10 minutes of such an intense pace and such an intense build … there is almost no other reaction that you can have than a funny break. When you have the audience in the palm of your hand, you try to figure out a balance of emotion. I see as many horror movies as I can. I am at the theater three times a week, just taking in the audience’s reaction and seeing what makes them tick.
“I was really thinking about that when I was constructing this screenplay because I wanted it to work best when seen with a group of people. To me, that is when horror movies work the best you – when you have a bunch of people around you and you can all kind of react off of each other. It is kind of like a domino effect. It gets everybody going. So it is important to have those screams and gasps and let the audience laugh a little bit so that you can get them white-knuckle again, gripping their armrests.” – Joe Begos
