Interview: Director Hèctor Hernández Vicens on the Symbolism & Style of DAY OF THE DEAD: BLOODLINE

He took us into the morgue with The Corpse of Anna Fritz, and for his second feature film, Hèctor Hernández Vicens aims a morbid lens at a world gone mad in Day of the Dead: Bloodline. With the reimagining of George A. Romero's Day of the Dead coming out to theaters, VOD, and Digital HD beginning January 5th from Saban Films, Daily Dead recently spoke with lead actress Sophie Skelton, and we also had the pleasure of talking with Hèctor about the movie's twisted love story, paying homage to Romero's work while still telling a different tale, and incorporating symbolism into the living dead narrative.

Thank you for taking the time to talk about Day of the Dead: Bloodline, Hèctor. This movie is based on a beloved film by George A. Romero. Coming off your previous film, The Corpse of Anna Fritz, which I think a lot of horror fans really enjoyed, what interested you about doing a new version of Romero's story?

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Well, I love Romero's Dead movies. I think they are really great movies. One day I received a script from the producer with the title Day of the Dead: Bloodline, based on Romero's movie. I read the script and I saw that it's completely another movie, but with some similar events: the bunker, the military, and the zombie apocalypse. I thought that I could create a style knowing that it's a low budget, but I could enjoy creating the characters and their emotions, and making the movie was something that is great to me.

Yeah, it must have been really fun as a director to play in that world. You spent some time in the morgue with The Corpse of Anna Fritz and in this one, you go back to the morgue, but then you're also dialing up the story to this really intense apocalypse on a bigger scale. It was really exciting to see you go from a smaller, intimate film like Anna Fritz and then expand from there.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: I love movies that happen in a single space. In Anna Fritz, it was all in a morgue. In this case, practically the whole movie is in a bunker. So, a lot of things I made in Anna Fritz, I put in this movie, too.

Of course, Anna Fritz is my style because I was one of the writers and producers. In this case, it's the producer's movie, so my role was to make the movie that the producers wanted me to do. But, like in Anna Fritz, I had to create an atmosphere that involves the entire movie and to play with emotions of the characters.

I enjoyed the approach that you took to the zombies. They have these herky-jerky movements and they move quickly. When you were looking at it from that perspective, how did you want to portray the zombies? They turned out to be really creepy.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Well, the producers wanted fast zombies. I like both: fast and slow. You can create different kinds of actions and horror using a lot of zombies that walk slowly or a few zombies that run fast as hell. In this case, I had a zombie coach. When I was casting for the movie, we had the casting for the actors and the casting for the zombies, I liked one of the people that came in a lot and I gave him the role of zombie coach. In this case, I didn't want zombies running like sports players. In some movies, zombies run, but I wanted zombies to be fast, but at the same time be zombies. I created only one [style of] zombie with the zombie coach and from that moment, the zombie coach worked with all the zombies and created zombies that way.

That's a great title to have on your résumé: zombie coach [laughs].

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Yeah, "zombie coach" [laughs].

It was really interesting to see what you and Jonathan [Schaech] created with the zombie-human hybrid Max, because that's your version of Bub, the zombie from Romero's movie that everyone really loves. Max was intriguing on his own, too, and really creepy because he's so human-like and that smile that he has is so nightmarish. I thought that was really interesting how you guys collaborated on that. 

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Yes, I love to work with Jonathan. Jonathan has a great imagination and portrayed the character as hating the other zombies. He has to eat flesh, he has to kill people. And really, his life situation is bad luck. At the same time, though, he needs love.

I didn't want too much zombie movement with Max. He's [Schaech] an actor that, without talking, gives you a lot. He gives a lot to the screen. And after talking about his humanity, after a very few hours of talking about the movie, [Schaech] could work alone, and was always giving great suggestions.

Yeah, that was really nice to see, especially those scenes that he has with Sophie [Skelton], because Max had already loved her character, Zoe, before turning into a zombie, so it added that extra creepy factor and became a romance gone bad.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: He's like a ghost. A ghost is somebody who is dead. Some elements like hate and frustration are still here. A ghost is a part of somebody. I think Max is the same. He's love, hate, frustration, and happiness, and Zoe, of course, hates him because he was a motherfu**er when he was alive. And when Zoe sees him, Zoe remembers the past. And the past is that her family is dead, everybody is dead. All her friends in the university: dead. So, when Zoe hurts Max in the lab, Max is dead, Max is the past, and Zoe hates him for this reason. Zoe represents the life, she wants to save humankind and Max represents death. He wants to destroy everybody because he hates everybody.

And when Zoe faces her past when they capture Max, she is taking control of her own demons.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Yes, I think everything symbolizes something in this movie and in lots of zombie movies. In this movie, I like the character situations. For me, everything that happens in the bunker, it's life, it's our world. In the bunker, there is hate, love, people hating other people, people with hope, people without any hope—like in the world. So, we have very few main characters, but each one represents something. For me, the movie is a rendition of who humans are in our cities, towns, and wherever.

It's very diverse, and it's really cool that you got to film in Bulgaria, which is a type of environment that you don't typically see in a zombie movie.

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Yes, it was shot in the American studios in Sofia, Bulgaria. There are really great, big studios with great people there, and a lot of American movies are shot in Bulgaria. All the zombies are Bulgarian people.

So, you got to zombify the locals, that's cool. When you're making a movie that is re-imagining a preexisting film like Day of the Dead, were you always thinking of giving little nods to Romero's film, or were you more concentrated on making this its own thing, or a little bit of both?

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Well, this movie isn't like Romero's movies. I think the director usually never has to try to imitate another director, but at the same, the title is nearly the same title of Romero's movie. So, when I went to the studio, my first idea was to create the stage, to create the walls, to do the color of the walls of the rooms, and the color of the costumes and the color of the lighting of the movie, with a little bit of this Romero style. But only this, because then the characters are different and the script is different. But, at the same time, in Romero's movie, the characters have very strong emotions, and I tried to do the same in the remake.

With Day of the Dead: Bloodline coming out on January 5th, are there any other projects coming up that you can talk about?

Hèctor Hernández Vicens: Well, with Anna Fritz, I wrote and produced the movie. Now, I am preparing another movie that is also written by me. I love to write and to shoot. With Day of the Dead, it was an experience to work with a script written by other people, and I loved it. But, after Day of the Dead, after one year with zombies and blood—I love zombies, but I need to write again and to make another movie written by me. I am working on that right now.

Red band trailer: