Something goes bump in the shadows of the small-town setting of Dark Was the Night, the new horror film from Jack Heller (Enter Nowhere) that stars Kevin Durand and Lukas Haas. With Dark Was the Night now in theaters and on VOD from Image Entertainment, we caught up via Q&A with director Heller, who discussed blending creature-centric scares with psychological tension and much more.

Dark Was the Night seems to offer horror in both physical and internal doses. What elements of Tyler Hisel’s screenplay intrigued you the most when this project first came to your attention?

Jack Heller: The script Tyler crafted laid the foundation of opportunity to explore characters dealing with both external horrors and internal ones. When I came onto the project I was excited to work with Tyler to bring these elements to the surface of the script and ultimately the film we made. It was an exciting opportunity to dive into one of my favorite genres and do so through the lens of a character's emotional struggle with grief, and putting the pieces of his life back together.

You’ve gone into the woods to conjure up scares before in 2011’s Enter Nowhere. Did any of your experiences from that film affect how you approached Dark Was the Night?

Jack Heller: Now it seems crazy, but we made Enter Nowhere on an even smaller budget than this film, and did it all at one location in the woods. It was like graduate school, or what I must imagine working for Roger Corman in the ’70s was like. It was true hustle to make that film, and all of that hard work gave us the guts and knowledge to make Dark Was the Night. So much of my life has been spent surrounded by concrete. Woods are foreign, mysterious, and scary to me—which has made them a great collaborator in finding scares.

In this movie you worked with two highly talented co-stars—Kevin Durand and Lukas Haas. What was your experience collaborating with Kevin and Lukas and did they bring any improvisational actions or ideas to their characters?

Jack Heller: Kevin is infectious as I’ve said time and time again, he is someone you want to be your best friend the moment you meet him. As a collaborator in this process he was always up for anything, deeply committed, and a true professional. The same goes for Lukas, who I had in mind since the moment I read the script. Lukas and I worked a lot on bringing more texture to Donny and he crafted something memorable from it. While I always commit to my core direction for a character, I truly love to go back and forth with guys like Kevin and Lukas to test, try, and find the best way to get our collective vision across. I love letting actors try a few things to find their comfort zone to bring characters to life.

It looks like Dark Was the Night is a blend of creature feature and psychological thriller. Can viewers expect to see both types of horror in this movie?

Jack Heller: Viewers will most certainly get a mix of both from the film. The intention was to craft a narrative that wasn’t driven only by the physical horror or thriller elements. We could have easily gone only for scares, but we wanted to explore the characters' grief and complications as they dealt with the “creature feature” problems that plagued them.

Much of Dark Was the Night takes place in small-town America and the surrounding woods. Did you play with those somewhat isolated settings to enhance the horror in any way?

Jack Heller: We spent a lot of time making the town seem small—small enough so that when things get bad it truly feels like Paul Shields (Kevin) is the only person the town and his loved ones can turn to. We used the woods, small-town America, etc. to put him in the spotlight to increase his burden. And to speak more to the physical elements like snowstorms and a cold, stark atmosphere, we played that up whenever we could because we were shooting in the middle of winter with all of that motif surrounding us.

With Dark Was the Night hitting theaters and VOD July 24th from Image Entertainment, what projects do you have coming up that you can tease for our readers, and where can they find you on social media?

Jack Heller: I'm @hellerjack across the board on social media. I’m currently working on two new projects as a director—one is a comic book adaptation that’s fun, loud, and plays in the creature and horror genre with a dial turned up really loud! I’m really excited as it's something that a lot of fans are going to get excited about coming to life. I’m extremely proud of the western Bone Tomahawk I just produced starring Kurt Russell, Patrick Wilson, Matthew Fox and Richard Jenkins—playing cowboys with those guys was incredible, and then there is Some Kind of Hate, which my producing partner Dallas Sonnier led the charge on. It is such a special film with a fantastic creative team, cast, and crew led by director Adam Mortimer, who just nailed it. But for now it's all about Dark Was the Night!

  • Derek Anderson
    About the Author - Derek Anderson

    Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.

    When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.