Q&A: THE BODY Co-Writer & Director Paul Davis on Taking the Leap from Short Films to Features and Kicking Off the INTO THE DARK Series

One of the best ways to get yourselves into the Halloween spirit is by checking out the very first installment of Into the Dark, the brand new original series from Blumhouse TV and Hulu, that will be delivering up 12 horror films, debuting on the first Friday of every month, over the course of the next year. Kicking off the launch of Into the Dark is Paul Davis’ The Body, which is based on his 2013 award-winning short film of the very same name, expanding this story of a killer who must transport his latest victim to a new locale, and thankfully it happens to be Halloween night, which means a guy walking down the streets with a corpse in tow doesn’t seem all that weird.

Daily Dead recently checked in with Davis (this writer has proudly been covering his work across various mediums since his Beware the Moon days in the late 2000s) to talk about getting the opportunity to revisit The Body and flesh out the initial ideas of the short into a full-length feature. Davis discussed collaborating with co-writer Paul Fischer as well as Blumhouse TV for this iteration of The Body, putting together his excellent ensemble (which includes Ash vs Evil Dead’s Ray Santiago), what’s next for him, and more.

Into the Dark: The Body is currently available to stream exclusively on Hulu.

How did you end up getting this opportunity to turn your short film into a feature?

Paul Davis: The opportunity really came out of nowhere. When my co-writer, Paul Fischer, and I made the short back in 2013, it was never intended to be a proof of concept for a feature.  We were actually very hesitant to revisit it, as it was literally one joke, and didn’t think it would stretch to a feature format.

Eventually, after a year of discussions, we broke down and wrote a draft that was completed around December 2015. Suffice to say, it was totally unfilmmable for a first-time director, so I didn’t do myself any favors. By unfilmmable, I mean a $40 million budget, a New York City backdrop with a car chase through Times Square, and an ending in which Daniel Radcliffe (playing himself) gets brutally murdered in a children’s hospital.  It was the same story, but of course, none of that was in the final version. It was bonkers! So, anyway, we sat on it for two years, and then finally decided to dust it off on spec and do a page one re-write that was more in the region of $5 million. We turned the script in to my reps on December 16th, 2017, and literally a week later (on December 23rd) I got the call that Blumhouse and Hulu wanted to make it.

After what felt like the longest holiday period EVER, I was put on a plane from London to LA to meet with Marci Wiseman and Jeremy Gold at Blumhouse TV, and then two days later with Hulu, and that was it. I was green lit to make the film. It was a complete whirlwind, but I was about to discover that the whole thing was about to go just as fast, if not faster!

How was the collaborative process with Blumhouse? 

Paul Davis: Blumhouse was a dream to work with. I honestly came into the project not knowing what to expect, but what made things easier for me was knowing that I was coming in at the foundation level. Because time was of the essence to get the first film rolling for the October release, I was already on this before many of the producers were on board, so we were all really finding our feet together. Blumhouse TV is an indie studio in every sense, and I think prior to Into the Dark they had only done The Purge and Sharp Objects, so getting the right team in place to create what are effectively 12 feature films over a year, took some time to perfect in the beginning.

By the end of March, everything was up and running. We all worked tirelessly for the four-week hard prep we had for the 18-day shoot across downtown LA. I was very blessed to get the crew on this that I did.  To name a few, my awesome DP Scott Winig (who shot Anthony DiBlasi’s Extremity), production designer Cecil Gentry, my producers Alexa Faigen, Tevin Adleman, and Alex Kohene, and of course, the amazing Emmy Award-winning Makeup Dept. Head of American Horror Story, Eryn Krueger Mekash and her amazing team.

What were the biggest challenges for you and Paul as you worked together to expand this concept introduced in the short in a 90-minute narrative this time around? 

Paul Davis: As I mentioned, we were very hesitant to do it in the first place, but there were a couple of things Fischer and I started discussing that eventually led to us taking the plunge. First of all, I was never satisfied with the ending of the short film, and hated that this guy just walked away after brutally murdering four people. Secondly, both Paul Fischer and I are huge fans of movies like My Man Godfrey, It Happened One Night, Arsenic & Old Lace—the great screwball comedies of the ’30s and ’40s, and loved the idea of at least trying to create that kind of odd couple romance scenario between the characters of Wilkes and Maggie. Beyond that, it was then a case of working out exactly how the expanded narrative would play out, and we got there after a very serendipitous double bill of After Hours and The Terminator. After that, it became a screwball, cat and mouse movie set over one bizarre Halloween night.

We were working on drafts of the script all the way up to the shoot date. I think the biggest challenge was consolidating a lot of the locations, as we knew we had 18 days to shoot 90 pages for under $2 million dollars. I think we started with 17 locations and got it down to 9 or 10. One of the biggest things for us was finding the funeral home in Altadena, CA. The whole sequence in the graveyard never actually took place there in the script. It wasn’t until we found that place that we decided to use it and write it in. The same can be said for the escape room/study at the party.  That venue really had a secret room behind a wall, which we loved and wrote it into the script because it felt in keeping with Ray Santiago’s character.

The biggest challenge working with Blumhouse was how fast they move. Now, I pride myself on being able to work pretty quickly, while still getting the results I want, but having to have my first cut of the film ready to turn in to the studio in ten days was a different beast altogether! I was very fortunate to have Nate Easterling cut The Body for me, and considering he started out as Patrick Lussier’s assistant on Scream 3, and went on to edit a lot of Scream: The TV Series, he totally got the tone of the piece. When I first came in to the cutting room, we were up against it from the beginning, as Nate was still assembling his version despite us starting work on my cut. It took a lot of early mornings and late nights, but we got that first cut in 10 days, and thankfully got a thumbs up from both the studio and the network. The first cut was around 85 minutes and the final cut was 82 minutes, so we were very close.

Can you talk about putting your cast together for The Body? Both Tom and Rebecca are great together and Ray was, of course, a really fun addition to the ensemble. 

Paul Davis: Everybody, except for Tom Bateman, came through a series of auditions with my awesome casting director, John McAlary. My folks at CAA initially mentioned Tom to me, but Fischer and I were a little hesitant at first because he was almost TOO good looking. We always envisioned Wilkes as an odd duck, inside and out, and at a glance we just couldn’t get beyond the image of Tom being Gaston with a knife. However, I knew that the relationship dynamic between Wilkes and Maggie was key in this version of the story, and I wanted the audience to be seduced by his charm just as Maggie is. In addition to that, Tom is a remarkable actor, so if anyone could make that work, it would be him. I met him at the Soho Hotel in London and was under his spell in seconds. He was so magnetic and charismatic that I knew he could sell this character. I pretty much cast him there and then. Once we were on set and he was bringing Wilkes to life, it was great to see Tom have so much fun with it.  He’d do the most evil thing conceivable, I’d yell “cut,” and then Tom would burst into fits of giggles.

Rebecca Rittenhouse came into our very hot and sweaty casting room on the very first day of auditions and just blew me away! There was an earnestness to her that became more intense as the audition progressed. We had a lot of great people come in and read for the part, but Rebecca wasn’t afraid to ask questions and take the plunge with her performance that others didn’t. She then got up and told us to get some "freakin'" AC in the room, and walked out. That was Maggie—she came in all smiles and left on a mission! She was an absolute trouper on the movie, though. She had to do all those cold night exteriors in her Marie Antoinette dress, and even got sick during the shoot. She never let it stop her from giving 110% to every scene she was in, though. I loved working with her—she was the best.

Ray Santiago was a beast! That guy has a great intensity to him, and is brilliant at improv. Before every take he would disappear, and then once you looked around, you’d see him sprinting down the street to get himself in the zone that Jack needed to be in. I saw him, Aurora Perrineau, and David Hull on tape and just fell in love with all three. There was something about the three of them that each had a hint of their individual characters about them, and once you got them all together, it just clicked. I had such a blast watching the three of them gel. I’ve since found out that they all went on to become great friends in real life, which I love. I also found out that every time I came in for a performance note, they would take bets on who the note was for, which I love even more. They were a great bunch and I loved working with them dearly. It was difficult with each passing day to kill them off in horrible ways.

How great does it feel to be the kickoff installment for Into the Dark?

Paul Davis: It’s overwhelming. I’m also not naïve to the fact that it’s both a blessing and curse. It’s always nice to be first out the gate, but with that comes A LOT of expectation. With this being the kickoff episode of a "horror" anthology, I knew that doing so with a dark comedy was going to divide people. And, as expected, it has. We’ve had some amazing reviews and some not so amazing reviews, but I look at it this way: as a filmmaker you have a specific vision and an intended way to execute that vision. I made the movie a very specific way, with a specific intention. Once it’s out there, it doesn’t matter how or why I made it. Every individual is going to see it his or her own way, with their own aspirations, sensibilities, fears, and sense of humor. That’s the way it is. With the good comes the bad. Yin and Yang! For those that didn’t like The Body, there are eleven more feature episodes to come that are all unique and different in tone and concept, from a range of unique filmmakers such as Patrick Lussier, Nacho Vigalondo, Daniel Stamm, Chelsea Stardust, Josh Miller, and Patrick Casey. There’s going to be something for everybody and I’m just humbled to be in such esteemed company.

As this is your first traditional full-length feature (not including Beware the Moon, of course), has this given you the bug to take on more directorial projects now? And does that somehow tie into Endangered Species (which I noticed on your IMDb)?

Paul Davis: Absolutely. Endangered Species is a script by Stephanie Jessop that came to me a year or two ago. It’s a horror/comedy that is pretty much Lone Wolf and Cub with a vampire. Shane Snoke, Casey Wolfe, and Jay Stern are producing, so we’ll see what happens there. I have a couple of other projects that I’m excited about, but it’s a little early to talk about those, but more is on the way. Hopefully The Body was just the first of many.