Warner Bros. will be releasing The Apparition this Friday, which involves a group of students who are able to create a spirit during a parapsychology experiment. This is the first feature film from director Todd Lincoln and I had a chance to ask him about his start on From Dusk Till Dawn, the true story that inspired the film, and setting this movie apart from your average ghost story:
I understand that you first worked on the set of From Dusk Till Dawn. What was your involvement with the project and how did that experience convince you to pursue career in filmmaking?
Todd Lincoln: I had always wanted to become a filmmaker and had been into horror movies and the macabre. During my senior year of high school, I had read that Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino were going to begin production on From Dusk Till Dawn.
I contacted their production office and kept bugging them. They said that if I could make it out there, they would let me work with them. The day after graduation, I loaded up my car, skipped my high school graduation party, and started working as a production assistant on From Dusk Till Dawn.
The unique thing about that experience was that it was a non-union film so people wore many different hats and did a little bit of everything. It was a great environment to learn in a trial by fire kind of way. I'm credited for visual effects, but I worked on in the office, the art department, the creature FX department, and I also directed extras for second unit locations.
The entire experience was so much fun. I already had the bug for filmmaking before then, but this made me realize that this was the place I wanted to be. Each step of the way made it seem more reachable and possible.
Let's talk about the story for The Apparition, which you wrote. How long have you had this idea and why did you feel that this was story you wanted to move forward with as your first studio film?
Todd Lincoln: I'm always keeping files with bits and pieces of ideas. I had been reading a paranormal website and came across a story called the Philip Experiment. It was about a group parapsychologists in the 1970s that set out to create a ghost. They had this idea that people experience haunting because only because they believe in it. To test this, they invented a person who never existed. They named him Philip, and came up with this whole story about him, including how he lived and died. This group would meet together and think about Philip, call out to him, and really focus on his life. For weeks, nothing happened, but eventually they would get a knock on the table and it got more aggressive.
I was blown away by the thought of it and I even found some footage online of them doing this. Other people have continued different versions of the Philip Experiment throughout the years and have amped this thing up with new technology. I thought this idea was great and have never seen it done before in a movie. It was a fresh way to get into a horror film.
We're not pushing this as based on true events, though. This idea was the early seed or dropping off point and things kind of evolved from there. I even brought in a paranormal investigator in as a consultant, named Joshua P. Warren who has done his own versions of the Philip Experiment.
Did you run into any challenges when pitching this project or was it a relatively easy process?
Todd Lincoln: I pitched this to Joel Silver at Dark Castle because he had been looking for a new horror movie at the time. I talked to them about the Philip Experiment and they loved it. We developed it from there and everything came together very quickly. After years of development on other projects that didn't move forward, I had the opposite problem where something was happening almost too quickly [Laughs]. We got the green light after the second draft, so it was great and exciting stuff for me.
Aside from the Philip Experiment part of the story, how did you plan to set The Apparition apart from the steady stream of horror films released each year?
Todd Lincoln: Many horror films seem to live in this constant horror world or bubble. I just try to treat everything as serious, grounded, and logical. I wanted to capture slices of life and America as it is today. To me, some of the best horror movies capture moments of every day. I always think that it helps with the scares and the horror if you can relate to it. If it looks like your life and the places you drove past going to the theater, we can make the experience more authentic.
The actors also brought a lot to this movie. We had a smart crew and all of us would ask things like "at what point would the character leave the house?". It took us to more interesting places and scenes, which was good because I really didn't want to make the film feel too isolated and tiring.
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Interested in learning more about The Apparition? We've included the trailer below and you can check out our collection of clips and a large photo gallery at:
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