SXSW 2015 Exclusive: Director Karyn Kusama on the Power of Grief and More for ‘The Invitation’

Last week, Karyn Kusama’s (Girlfight, Aeon Flux, Jennifer’s Body) The Invitation, premiered at the 2015 SXSW Film Festival. To celebrate the worldwide debut of her gut-wrenching exercise in horror, Daily Dead had the opportunity to speak with her about the project, collaborating with her talented ensemble and how the horror genre works best when it confronts some of our most basic human emotions.

Congratulations on The Invitation, Karyn. The film is fantastic- what was it about this project that caught your eye before you came on board to direct?

Karyn Kusama: Thanks so much. I think what it was that I hadn’t read a piece that intersected with genre but ultimately operated with this authentic sense of drama as well. So I thought that was really interesting and it’s what my favorite genre movies are doing these days. I just had the sense that I would have the opportunity to do something here that would be a great horror movie but would ultimately function on some deeper emotional level too. That’s what really appealed to me.

And I think that the emotion of grief is such a powerful concept to explore, especially since it’s such a unique emotion for everyone so to see how you explored it here was really fascinating.

Karyn Kusama: Oh, great. Thank you. I think the thing is that most of us don’t really like to deal with our own grief at all because it is too painful so I thought there was something interesting about this group of friends who have been sort of reunited but have seemed to collectively wanted to move on and move forward. There is something terrifying about moving on from feelings of that kind of intensity so it sets up our main character Will to not be able to trust anyone.

Because this film also explores the ideas of cult mentality or even ‘success programs’ like The Secret, were those concepts fascinating for you as a filmmaker to explore?

Karyn Kusama: They were. It’s something where we don’t live in a world right now where people are simply present anymore- with their discomfort, with their unhappiness, their boredom, their rage- we don’t like uncomfortable feelings. I definitely thinking working in film is kind of like working in a dream factory and a distraction business at the same time. I’ve come to terms with the idea that I would like to do something more substantial than to just distract with dreams and nightmares, but actually go to a place where I actually make something that connects with people and burrows into the crevices of their brains and makes them think about the life that they’re in right now.

And it’s hard; it’s a hard world to live in right now with so many technological distractions so it’s not easy to always be present. As I get older, I’m beginning to feel that has to be the goal of my life, that I need to find myself more invested in this world.

Not that I necessarily want to bring up past difficulties but it really seems that you are much happier with your experiences on The Invitation then perhaps you were on some of your more recent studio projects.

Karyn Kusama: Well, yeah, I have had dealings with the studio and there are a lot of lovely people that I have had dealings with over the years. The issue was more about the nature of working on bigger movies with much higher budgets where the success of my film was only just part of a slate for a multi-national corporation and I just started to feel like, “Why are we really making these choices and these changes to the movie? Is it actually improving the movie?” And I think there were times that if I had gotten to be honest with myself, I would have said that those things we were doing weren’t really serving the movie but were just more about making changes for something entirely else.

And that’s okay in a way because we all love big spectacle movies, myself included, but I just knew that on this movie I wanted to make something smaller and faster and more personal. I wanted this film to be allowed to be itself and I hope that shows through.

I want to talk about the cast for this film because everyone is exceptional and one of my favorite things is having John (Carroll Lynch) as part of this ensemble because I’ve been a big fan of his since his Drew Carey Show days. The way you utilized him here was astonishing, especially that monologue he gives- it was insane. So I really enjoyed how you allowed your actors to just dig into these characters, never allowing them to be stereotypes, and they all worked so incredibly well together.

Karyn Kusama: Thank you so much. We didn’t really have a lot of time on this to rehearse; I wanted a week and we only got two days. A lot of people as it happened had already worked together so I think that was something that really benefitted the performances here. So there was this sense of some history between these people already and so it was really interesting for me to work with these actors who were so skilled and could develop that shorthand as quickly as they did.

Logan (Marshall-Green) is someone else we should just discuss because he’s such a strong actor and I think he was someone who was underutilized in Prometheus so it was great to see him get a chance to lead a film for this and show some real depth to his character. Watching him was just astounding.

Karyn Kusama: I know. He really did some great work in the movie and he was very committed but showed up with a smile every day. It wasn’t like the environment was heavy like the tone of the film was. We all bizarrely had a wonderful time working on the movie together, even if it doesn’t necessarily seem all that happy in the final product.

I wanted to ask, because your approach to all the genre elements of your story are so natural in The Invitation, do you feel like stories explored in that manner- as opposed to more exaggerated scares- is a more effective way of connecting with audiences and getting under their skin?

Karyn Kusama: You know, that’s an interesting question because I actually think horror, even the more overtly theatrical statements, are still based in some kind of primal, authentic human place so I do think there is something to that. And I don’t necessarily know how people are going to perceive the film in the end, whether they’ll see it as horror or more of a suspenseful drama, so it’ll be interesting because I just don’t know yet how people will ultimately view it.

But I definitely think genre movies are definitely more successful when they’re getting into something that lives deep down in our gut, the most basic of human emotions that we all face every single day, because those are things that terrify us all in some way or another.