Exclusive: Thomas Dekker Talks Stepping into the Claustrophobic Chamber for Fear Clinic

From the Laid to Rest films to Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Thomas Dekker has played a plethora of memorable roles in the horror and sci-fi genres. His performance in Robert Hall’s Fear Clinic is no exception—in his third collaboration with director Hall, Dekker turns in a fascinating performance as Blake, a young man suffering from brain damage and PTSD after surviving a madman’s public shooting spree.

With Fear Clinic now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay, we caught up with the Dekker to discuss bringing Blake to life in non-vocal ways, his character’s chilling backstory, working with the legendary Robert Englund, facing his own fear during filming, and much more.

What were the challenges of realistically portraying a character with brain damage and PTSD? Did digging into that role require any in-depth research?

Thomas Dekker: I have to give a lot of credit to Rob Hall. Rob basically wrote the part for me. Rob actually has had some brain damage and physical damage to members of his family and people of his past, so I think the condition that Blake arrives with at the clinic is something Rob’s seen firsthand. Little things like Blake always having his hands curled up in the beginning and the direction of his mindless gaze—Rob really informed me of all of those things.

And once it gets into him regaining speech, he gave me a great note, which was to imagine it’s just a child learning to speak. And it is such a strange idea to have this grown boy who’s almost an infant. It was very much a collaborative talk with Rob. One of my favorite moments in the whole movie—personally in my life I have a lot of tattoos—and I’m in this short-sleeve thing in a scene with Fiona Dourif and I said to Rob, “What would be crazy is if this guy had no memory of getting these tattoos or why.” I said that to him right before we shot the scene and we added it. It’s a great little moment that sort of happened accidentally on the set.

Blake does a lot of talking with his body movements rather than his voice. Was it difficult to bring a character to life with so little dialogue?

Thomas Dekker: It sounds like a joke, but actually one of my favorite things as an actor is to not speak. I did another film a couple years ago called The Good Lie and there are massive amounts of the movie where I’m just sitting silently listening. It’s a really challenging thing to try and be present and be interesting without being able to rely on vocabulary. So, a challenge? I don’t know. A pleasure? Definitely.

I’d never gotten to play the regaining of speech and movement. The scariest part of that was I was always afraid that it was going to be too over the top with the stuttering and the sudden physical gestures and outbursts, but Rob assured me, "Take it as far as you want and then we’ll pick the most believable moments."

I specifically carved out that time to do it [Fear Clinic] because of Rob. There’s very much a sort of hidden language between the two of us. We had adjoining hotel rooms in Ohio where we shot it, so I would come to him at two in the morning with a question about the next day’s scene and he would show me something he’d cut together at three in the morning, so it was a great partnership.

Throughout the film, you get a sense that Blake has a dark past and comes from a troubled home. What do you think was going on in his life before his mother took him to the Fear Clinic? *Potential spoiler warning*

Thomas Dekker: We had conversations about it and we shot and wrote varying degrees at the time of the shoot of what his background was and why he’d done the things he’d done. We had a version that was very clear that dealt with his dark background, in which his trauma was due to the relationship with his mother and that he’d been badly bullied through his adolescence, and some traces of that are in the film.

At the same time, Rob and I are obsessed with this quote from John Carpenter about Michael Myers—that the scariest thing is when someone is a force of nature and it’s not easily explained why they are the way they are. That’s just the mystery of it. So, I think what we tried to do ultimately was split the difference. I think you can see he’s a very tormented boy who has this very overbearing, possibly incestuous relationship with his mother, and probably a very bad experience in his teen years with society.

We didn’t want to get into the details of it because ultimately we wanted the audience to be with the new Blake. One of the great mysteries of the movie is the compassion he receives—especially from Fiona Dourif’s character. We really wanted the audience to like the current, traumatized Blake who comes out of his shell.

As a fellow musician, what was it like working with Slipknot’s Corey Taylor in his first feature film role?

Thomas Dekker: To put it as politely as I can, Corey is the fucking shit. He’s the man [laughs]. I obviously grew up with Slipknot and even though my music is much more electronica, I was definitely a metalhead and that was very much my universe growing up and one of the things that Rob Hall and I bonded over. I was a bit intimidated to meet him, but we ended up hitting it off immediately. As per usual, I feel with people who play around in dark things or heavy things, they’re usually the kindest, most generous people you could imagine. And Corey actually lives part-time in Vegas where I’m from, so we kicked it off.

I shared a lot of my new album with him, that’s not out yet, and he gave me great advice. I think for a first-time acting role, he’s fucking great, and I wish there was more of him in the movie, I really do.

What was your experience working with the legendary Robert Englund?

Thomas Dekker: It was sort of twofold amazing. On the one hand, it was great because I’d met Robert once at Texas Frightmare when I was there promoting Laid to Rest 2 with Rob Hall. And I met him briefly and he was so lovely. I knew from several interviews at the time of the A Nightmare on Elm Street remake coming out that he had been really complimentary about me as an actor being in it, and he was a fan of the Sarah Connor Chronicles. I always felt that he was really gracious about me.

He’s so much more than just Freddy Krueger. He really is this fantastic actor and there’s a scene where he says, "It’s not the mask that scares you, it’s what it represents.” We kind of came up together with this image that I love, where he holds up half of the mask so that it covers the lower half of his face, and it’s just this weird scene that Rob gave the time for Robert and I to play around with. I just love working with him, he’s a great, kind man. Crazy, but very kind [laughs]. He kind of goes from your really loving uncle into Freddy Krueger every now and again and it’s really fascinating to watch.

If you were a patient in Dr. Andover’s Fear Clinic in real life, what phobia would you be treated for?

Thomas Dekker: Well, that is the most ironic question, because my phobia—and it’s quite serious—I do not deal well with claustrophobia. In the movie, what I found really unpleasant to shoot was getting in the Chamber, because it is really claustrophobic. The door on the actual chamber that we shoot in, you can open it from the inside, but it’s very heavy. You’re basically trapped in that box. When I first saw it, my heart sank and I was like, “Oh shit.” I did a few shots of whiskey and that helped [laughs]. My phobia would not really be helped by being in the Chamber [laughs].

It didn’t bother anybody else but me. Being claustrophic, I hate doing face casts and we had to do one for the film and I hadn’t had to do one in years, not since A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Rob came in specifically to do it himself on me because I really start to panic in there. You’ll notice that in the film, the mask’s mouth is slightly open because I couldn’t keep my mouth closed [laughs].

With Fear Clinic now available on Blu-ray and DVD from Anchor Bay, what’s on deck for you?

Thomas Dekker: My new television series, Backstrom, is airing on Fox. It’s on Thursday nights at 9:00 and it’s a great show, it’s nice to be back on Fox. It’s a very different character from most things people have seen me in. And I have a film premiering called Enter the Dangerous Mind with Jake Hoffman, Nikki Reed, Scott Bakula, and Jason Priestley, and that movie I think your readers really should check out. It’s a really intense, dark thriller about a schizophrenic and I sort of have the Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde thing going on and it’s a great movie, so be sure to check that out.

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