Intruders: An Interview with Director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
You should probably read the review of this movie first, if you want this to make any sense. I mean, do what you want, but that’s my advice.
A: You were speaking briefly about the idea of emotional inheritance in the movie earlier. I was hoping if you could speak a little more about that.
JC: This movie comes from some investigation of something that I felt when I was a kid when I was having my first nightmares and, not at that time—later on, I realized that part of the nightmares I had had at that time were connected and related with some secrets of my family, things that my parents didn’t tell me. But those secrets were living with us and, because when you’re a kid you’re completely sensitive and picking up on so many things from your parents… well, they were trying to hide those things from me and I think it was a mistake to do that. I understand why they did it—because they were trying to protect me from the ugly truth, but the reality is that I think when you do that to your kids, they create something worse than the truth. So this movie is about that, how sometimes secrets become a monster and how sometimes your fears are inherited from your family, and then the fear becomes a legacy. That’s something that really drives me crazy on many levels and I felt that it was important to share that idea with the audience through this particular story.
A: Then movie was inspired by you reflecting on your childhood?
JC: Yes. I was working with the screenwriters, trying to create a kind of structure with the characters and in every single sequence I was trying to track those emotions from the past and try to use them as an inspiration for the movie. And I can tell you that the character of Juan, the Spanish boy, was a reflection of my feelings at that age because I knew that there was something strange in my house as a child and, in the movie, I used the fantasy of a boy writing a story as a sort of running away from that strange feeling which I think really shows that emotional part of myself.
A: Juan’s story also allows the creation of a monster that can be defeated, as opposed to a secret hovering around the house. It gives a definition and a shape, something that you can combat that your parents can protect you from instead of something that your parents are creating for you.
JC: That’s a theme in the movie for sure.
A: So, you said you had nightmares when you were young. In the movie, the two children’s parents deal with their offspring’s nightmares in very different ways. How did your parents deal with your nightmares? Were they frightened of them because it was like having their secrets come out, or were they dismissive?
JC: I remember them being dismissive and, yes, part of the movie is based on that attitude. But I’m not blaming my parents for handling it in that way, it was something that they did because they wanted to survive in a very difficult environment. But it was, for me, a very strange thing to grow up with that lack of truth.
A: So this movie is really addressing things for you?
JC: Yes, absolutely.
A: When did you realize that the nightmares you were having were connected to things going on behind the scenes with your family?
JC: I do therapy, and there was one session with my psychiatrist where we were talking about a nightmare that I had had. He had me imagine that I was waking up in the middle of the night and that there was somebody in my bedroom. Then my psychiatrist told me to go and face that person, so I stood up and started walking towards the person hiding in the corner and then he asked me, “Who is that guy?” I remember seeing the face for a second in my mind and it was me, it was me in the corner and I had the revelation: “Oh my god, it’s me— I’m my own ghost,” which I completely believe. Sometimes your nightmares and your dark side are connected, meaning that your dark side is you and your own problems. That boy in the corner wasn’t a ghost, he was a very scared boy trying to tell me that the problem, the fear I was experiencing, was connected with something else—the things I felt when I was a kid.
A: If you were your own nightmare, where did you get the inspiration for the Hollow Face character?
JC: The concept of mystery in the movie gives the emotional drive to the story. When we were thinking about the creation of an unique and special monster that would support that drive, the idea about the monster looking for his identity was something I felt was new and fresh and supported of that theme of mystery in a very visual way. Who is this monster? Why don’t we see his face? And it was the perfect reflection of logic and emotional drive for the main characters to want to know who he is. A monster without a face—if you want to defeat him, you have to see his face, you have to find the identity of this monster.
A: When I was watching it, the end actually made me feel really sad for Hollow Face. Was there any sort of backstory for that character?
JC: In the first version of the screenplay, we had a much longer version of the background, but finally we decided to compress it to make the ending more clear and understandable. I think, as an audience member myself, that we didn’t need more than those basics to understand the story. I really believe that if you put some small element into a movie, the audience will imagine the rest of the story. I really love those types of movies, the way they use elements and details that makes one feel that the movie has become a mirror that the viewer reflects themselves in to think about their own stories. So when we don’t develop certain things, we try to clearly play a note, a single note, and hopefully that note has a kind of a resonance in the audience’s mind and they build the rest of the story. So that was intentional with the monster.
A: Were there a lot of other scenes were cut from the movie?
JC: In this structure, which is very back and forth and jumpy, I would say not too many scenes were cut, but there are several sequences cut that I hope you will enjoy on the DVD. These were scenes that I thought “Yes, I would love to see that in the movie!” but finally decided not to keep them. As we polished the story, we cut some of the English scenes out because the balance of the English story and the Spanish one needed to be equal, more or less, and some of the English scenes didn’t connect so well with the Spanish story at times. And it’s funny, because when you’re reading the screenplay, you don’t notice, you think that everything flows so well. Then when you watch it on the screen, you realize that you can screw up so many things that you didn’t even think of and, yes, it was one of the things that I didn’t understand when I was collaborating with the writers to produce the screenplay, that the balance of the two stories needs to be about equal. And it was a pity because we had to pull stuff out of the movie—really good stuff, but I know the movie was better once we simplified the story.
A: So was cutting those scenes upsetting for you?
JC: W when you cut, it’s a moment of suffering, but then when I watched the whole movie without those pieces, I was happier because I saw how much better everything is when it’s clean and simple.
A: Were there going to be any different endings, or did you always know that the very last scene was going to be there?
JC: I think from the very beginning, the concept of revealing the story in this kind of fable-like tone was clear to me. Especially because the movie is about an unfinished story which is why, in the end, the father has to finish the story, and that was part of the concept from the very beginning. In the process of the development, we went through different ways of doing the ending, but finally we ended up with the one you saw, which is like an exorcism almost, and a very cathartic way to end the film.
Intruders opens in theaters on March 30, 2012.
