What if you found out that the person you married isn't who you thought they were? Filmmaker Colin Minihan (It Stains the Sands Red, Grave Encounters) explores that harrowing question in his new movie, What Keeps You Alive, which follows a violent one-year anniversary between Jules (Brittany Allen) and Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson).
With IFC Midnight releasing What Keeps You Alive in US theaters and on VOD platforms beginning August 24th, Daily Dead recently caught up with Minihan and co-star Allen to discuss the unconventional casting process for the role of Jackie (which was originally intended to be a male character), filming near Allen's family's cottage, and the movie's exploration of how well you can really know the one you love the most.
Colin, because I know you wrote and directed this movie, where did you come up with the idea for this?
Colin Minihan: I've made three other movies that are all supernatural horror films. Grave Encounters is a ghost film, and then I made Extraterrestrial, which is like the epitome of every trope that has been seen in cinema in terms of alien abduction films, and is such a love letter to that. And then I made what I think is a really unique zombie movie called It Stains the Sands Red. So, I have had three villains in three films that don't speak, and can't really be characterized more than exposition of other characters, so I wanted to write a small film, first off, because I wanted to write something that I knew that I could produce as well, and it wouldn't have to wait five years and fight tooth and nail to get made because that's just not really my strong suit. I love being behind the camera and constantly making and constantly creating, and I'm at a place right now where I'm just going to make it on my own and sell it afterwards.
I started developing an idea about a couple that wanted to sabotage one another. At first, it was just Britt and I—we live together, so I'm constantly kind of saying, “What about this idea?” It didn't look like it was going anywhere, but I still liked the essence of deceit and not knowing the one you love the most, and I think that everyone can relate to not knowing every aspect of their spouse. How cool, crazy, and horrifying would it be if you were deeply in love and the person that you were in love with turned out to just be nothing like they said they were? And so I jumped off from that and this script just wrote itself.
Colin, this movie really hinges on the performances from Brittany and Hannah. How did you choose Hannah for this role and was she what you had in mind when you wrote the script?
Colin Minihan: The process of landing on Hannah to play the role of Megan was actually really random and happened just through a series of events. Initially, I had written the role for a man, a character actor who I love, and who I've worked with in the past and I just wanted to write something juicy for him, but ultimately he has a family and he has a kid and he needed the money that was being offered from a big TV series that was shooting for a full year and he was going to be a lead on it, so a month before shooting, he backed out in order to do this show, which I totally understand.
From there it was a bit of a scramble, and I explored a few other guys first, and ultimately I was just not feeling it. I went back to an idea that I kind of blocked out midway through writing because I had someone specific in mind, which was that this would be really interesting to hear these words coming out of a female's mouth. I first went to Kathleen Munroe, and she actually sings, and her original song "Bloodlet" is heavily featured in the film and in the marketing of the film. The way that that came about was in studying her work I came across her music, and I just felt like this song has such darkness to it, it needs to be a part of the film. Ultimately, Kathleen was shooting overseas and her shoot extended, so she couldn't do the film, either.
Having the curveball of her not being able to do it literally two weeks before our shoot date was set put us into a panic. Britt was shooting a movie in Montreal, and while she was in the makeup chair, asked the makeup artist if she could think of anyone. Britt described the character, and the makeup artist, Melissa Purino, suggested Hannah [Emily] Anderson.
Britt and Hannah were both in Jigsaw. They didn't have any scenes together, but Britt had met Hannah and felt in her brief encounter with her that the essence of Hannah could play the role. So, I had to really rely on other people's opinions at this point because I was already living out in the middle of nowhere, scouting and solving production challenges, so we just set up a call with Hannah and I just talked to her. I gauged enough from that call to take that leap of faith and cast her in it. And I'm so glad that I did, because she is amazing, and her and Britt got along great—their chemistry is phenomenal and the believability of their relationship is the best thing in the film.
Brittany Allen: Hannah and I both come at our work from slightly different places, or at least prior to filming this project we did. But we really complemented each other and I felt like I was able to learn from her strengths and she was able to learn from my strengths, and we challenged each other. I really loved working off of Hannah because she just has this subtle approach to her work and it's rooted in realism.
Yeah, it really requires trusting each other as it gets later on in the movie, but that chemistry that you mentioned is really needed. I'm curious, where did filming take place and how long was the actual shoot?
Brittany Allen: We shot it up in Muskoka, which is essentially cottage country for people in Toronto. I've been going up to Muskoka my whole life at my grandparent's cottage. When Colin and I first started dating, he came up to the cottage that my parents have been going to for many years, and along the long road that you have to take through the forest to get to this cottage, Colin, on the first drive, said to himself and to me, “I'm going to make a movie here.”
It really helped the fact that my parents had a cottage there and one of the producers had a cottage one lake over, so we all were housed at both of those cottages, and then we shot about a 40-minute drive from there at this incredible location that one of our producers found. We were so lucky to find it, because it obviously has so much character and history. We didn't really have to bring any set pieces or props to fill the house, and there were books on the shelves that were from the late 1800s that had writing in them from the original owners.
It was pretty special and the shoot itself was 20 days. We shot it over four weeks and it's always a very intense whirlwind working at that pace, especially when there are only two lead actors. Even though there were not many of us, those that were there were very committed and it was such a positive, fun environment to work in.
Brittany, I can imagine for some people that the material and getting into the headspace of this character could be grueling. Do you feel like the material weighed on you, or were you able to easily get into character and separate yourself from it after filming?
Brittany Allen: To be honest, I can’t completely remember. Maybe that speaks to the fact that I do go somewhere else when I'm so intensely working. I think I'm pretty good at letting it go. There were maybe days where my body would feel quite emotionally drained from going to that place for four days prior, and then needing to conjure up those intense emotions again, and so there are some days where it's a little bit more of a challenge. I like to bring the feelings up from an honest place, so I don't know if I’m unintentionally traumatizing my body in the process, but I look at it as an opportunity to cleanse out the deep emotions that are in there anyways and need an outlet, so it's ultimately a good thing for me.
Colin, as you mentioned, there were some big changes made to casting leading up to the film, but what about the story itself? Is the movie that you filmed pretty close to the script, or were there any major changes that came up during filming?
Colin Minihan: I feel like a lot of directors get bogged down by the vision that they had when they were writing the film or a location that they got in their mind early on, and then they ignore the new opportunities that present themselves while you're in production. My style has evolved to recognize when a new opportunity is being presented, and to not shut it out, just simply because it’s not what my initial vision was. In the very act of switching the lead character to a female, I was opening myself up to the world and the new opportunities that were being created. The cottage wasn't in my head when I wrote the film, however the dialogue and the scenes and the specificity of the key beats, those all stay the same, but it's the ingredients and how you get there that can change and can evolve as things progress.
With What Keeps You Alive coming to theaters and VOD on August 24th from IFC Midnight, what projects are both of you turning your attention to?
Brittany Allen: I'm just about to finish up shooting on a new show called The Boys. It's for Amazon and it's got the same team behind Preacher. It's a dark, comedic, poignant take on superheroes and celebrity culture. I'm also going to be in the new film by Nicholas McCarthy, who is the director of The Pact and At the Devil's Door. It's called The Prodigy and I’m going to be opposite Taylor Schilling in that film.
Colin Minihan: Well, I just wrapped production on another movie that I co-wrote and am one of the producers on. It's about a child who develops an imaginary friend that may not be imaginary after all. It's a dark genre film that we shot for 20 days in Canada.
Brittany Allen: And he's about to jump into pre-production on his next film, too, that he is the co-writer and producer of, and he has a couple of other films that he's building with his company, Digital Interference.
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