Exclusive Interview with Echoes Filmmaker Nils Timm

Feeling wide awake while asleep, she can't move... and she's not alone. Anna Parker's sleep paralysis strikes with a supernatural slant in Echoes, the feature film writing and directing debut of Nils Timm. With Echoes now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay Entertainment, we had a chance to talk with Timm, who discussed taking a unique approach to the haunted house sub-genre, portraying the different social masks people wear in real life, his personal brush with sleep paralysis during filming, and much more.

What attracted you to the subject of sleep paralysis?

Nils Timm: Before I wrote Echoes, I was researching a lot of stories about lucid dreaming. I was experimenting with that a little bit myself, read everything about it, and interviewed several people in circles of friends and colleagues about this. At least one out of every six or seven people would say, ‘Yes, I have sleep paralysis, or I had it in one of the other forms.’ It’s quite a frightening thing to imagine, so I felt it was a great point to start structuring a story that is really a fantasy about what’s real and what’s not. And I actually experienced it [sleep paralysis] during the shoot one time in this very mild form.

Can you talk a little bit about your personal experience with sleep paralysis?

Nils Timm: That was in the desert [Joshua Tree] when we were shooting the movie, and it kind of came as the main protagonist [Anna Parker, played by Kate French] experiences it. It’s something that comes upon you if you don’t sleep enough, have a lot of stress, or are dealing with a lot of things—that heightens the potential for you to get it.

But then there are certain people like Anna in the movie that are kind of prone to it, that have it on a more medical basis. There are people who can have it on a regular basis, so it really affects their lives. For me, it was just the one time and it was very mild. I just got a little bit of that feeling that you’re awake while you’re sleeping, and I was a bit paralyzed. I didn’t really notice it that much and it wasn’t that intimidating, but it was there.

I understand much of Echoes was filmed in California’s Joshua Tree National Park. How did you go about capturing both the beauty and the horror of the barren desert landscape?

Nils Timm: I’ve been in the desert a lot for photography. Landscapes in general are very interesting, and with the desert landscape being so desolate and so isolated it can be very beautiful but also very frightening. Most movies in the genre focus on the dark corners and the underground of a house, which is a great setting, but I wanted to go the other way and actually have the bright, wide openness that’s terrifying. It’s not so much claustrophobic in the sense that you’re locked into a small, dark room, but on the other hand you’re out there and you can’t escape because there’s nothing but a horizon in front of you and you’re all by yourself.

And people out there—if you meet a lot of people in the desert world—they’re very interesting folks and they have all kinds of features, a little bit too much of some in both a good way and a bad way. Definitely a lot of the characters and locations in the movie are based on that real environment.

You effectively set up scares in a gorgeous postmodern home. Did you anticipate having this beautiful setting for Echoes?

Nils Timm: On one hand, yes, but on the other hand you have to research, a lot of times provide connections, and be lucky enough—especially with a tiny movie where you’re not very selectable in terms of budget—to really find the things that fit. And getting the glass house out there was a perfect fit for it. I definitely wanted to have something modern, something that goes against the typical expectations of the old, broken-down, Victorian house that you have in this type of movie. I wanted to have the opposite, where it’s cold, sterile, designed, and sleek—something very clinical. The metaphor of being in a glass house obviously works very well in this story that’s about your mind.

In Echoes, you highlight the duality of people, showing both their benevolent and malevolent sides. How important was it for you to incorporate this “both sides of the coin” element in the film?

Nils Timm: That’s there in any form of psychology and how we live our lives these days. We all wear masks, we all have two sides or multiple sides and I always find that very frustrating. In your own life, you have a lot of experiences that can be both very enlightening and very frustrating if you feel you get much of the mask. I live in Los Angeles, and in Hollywood you get to see a lot of that. [laughs]

I want any character in any movie to be multifaceted and have a kind of superficial outside behavior, but then also have something hidden in the back. I think we’re all that way.

Billy Wirth, whom a lot of horror fans remember as "death by stereo" Dwayne from The Lost Boys, plays Joe, a quirky hypnotist in Echoes. Can you talk about casting Billy and creating both that fun character and his memorable nighttime hypnosis scene?

Nils Timm: It’s a really fun character and the movie also needs him at that point, because it adds a little bit of humor to the whole situation. The movie’s very serious for many parts and we have a little bit of a wink at that type of character. First of all, that is the common character in genre pieces. When I wrote it, I definitely wanted it to be someone who is really odd, with his little business card that he has and all these things. Billy really brought that to life, and that was a very lucky coincidence because I was nervous with that scene—you need someone to pull that off in the right way.

Billy and I worked on it quite a bit, but he came in on the project very last minute. We were very fortunate that our casting director could make that call to get him in. We had lost the other actor that was originally planned for that scene and we didn’t have that much time, but it turns out Billy was perfect for it and I couldn’t be happier with him, especially in that scene—how he kind of flirts with her [Anna, played by Kate French], it turned out very well. A lot of things that you really like, it’s something an actor does, you can’t really communicate these things. You can communicate what you want for a role, you can discuss these things, but for Billy’s role, that’s just him. He’s a very handsome man, obviously, and with it comes that charm, but mixed with his character, it comes across in a very sleepy, funny way. It’s great.

The supernatural entity that visits Anna during her sleep paralysis spells has a very creepy look that reflects the desert landscape outside the bedroom window. What influenced that entity’s sunbaked, cracked appearance?

Nils Timm: When we find out where this is all coming from—without spoiling it—it just feels like this person has been rotting away in the dust on the desert floor. When I started researching locations for the movie, I was looking very early on at some salt lake beds and you see all these cracks in there. So that was reflected [in the entity], it’s something that is so dried out that it’s mummified. Our makeup artist, Andrea Burish, did a great job with that. We looked at mummifications and figures that are thousands of years old that have been found, including a Danish person that is around 3,000 years old with preserved skin. It [the entity] becomes this combination of that and something that cracked up over time.

The suspense in Echoes comes from character development and atmospheric tension rather than gore—do you personally enjoy quiet horror over splatter scares?

Nils Timm: I’m a big fan of psychological horror, of atmospheric pieces. I really think that a lot of it [horror] comes out of silence. One of my favorite movies of all time is certainly Alien, in which you never see the creature. There isn’t a lot of violence going on in that film, it’s all constantly building that atmosphere. It’s the same with old Polanski movies or Hitchcock, where there’s this psychological building of horror rather than just the cheap thrills or blood splattering everywhere.

Those movies can be fun, but that’s not what we were going for here, with the implementation of these atmospheric settings and the music from Dre Nitze, who did a great job of at times giving the music that kind of ’80's, A Nightmare on Elm Street feel. I really believe in setting the tone with atmosphere, both visually and with sound. I love the old scores and sound work from the ’80s in these movies, when you can hear a single sound and it’s not 260 different tracks, but is something that stands out, like a ticking clock—it’s something that puts you in an uneasy moment. So I really recommend watching this movie with the speakers turned way up.

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"An official selection of the New York City International Film Festival and FilmQuest Film Festival, winning Best Actress, Best Screenplay and Best Director honors, the highly anticipated supernatural thriller ECHOES arrives on Blu-ray™ and DVD April 14th from Anchor Bay Entertainment. The feature directorial debut of Nils Timm (who also wrote the screenplay), ECHOES explores the murky realm between reality and dreams, and what could happen when these worlds collide. With a stellar cast including Steven Brand (“Teen Wolf,” The Scorpion King), Kate French (Channeling, “Gossip Girl,” “One Tree Hill”), Billy Wirth (“Chicago P.D.”, The Lost Boys) and Steve Hanks (12/12/12, Hold Your Breath), ECHOES will have viewers guessing until the final fade-out!

Struggling with horrifying, sleep-paralysis induced visions, Anna (French), a young writer, retreats with her boyfriend (Brand) to an isolated yet beautiful glass house in the desert. Hoping that the desert vistas surrounding her will spur her creative juices, she welcomes the opportunity to stay behind when her boyfriend must return to the city for urgent business.

However, Anna’s sleep paralysis does not abate, despite the calming environment. And now, her attacks are accompanied by a mysterious figure, caked with dirt as if it was made of sand itself. As the visions intensify, she finds herself on the verge of losing her mind...or is she being lead to uncover a life-threatening secret?"