Offbeat horror flick Final Girl is out to own this week following its UK premiere at FrightFest. Photographer Tyler Shields helms this unsettling and worryingly stylish thriller about a seemingly-innocent young woman (Abigail Breslin) turning the tables on a gang of debonair murderers (led by Alexander Ludwig).
Among these besuited beasts is The Perks Of Being A Wallflower star Reece Thompson, who plays baseball bat-wielding Mommy’s boy Nelson. I sat down with him for a chat about working with Shields, getting his take on what exactly was going on out there in the woods…
The film is kind of unique compared to today’s horror movies. How did you come to be involved?
I became involved because there was another actor that was actually in my role and then he couldn’t do it because he was on a show. They were scrambling looking for people at the last minute, I went in for a meeting with Tyler and from that meeting that’s how I got the job. I got it the next day. I had the meeting on a Thursday and the following Thursday we started shooting.
So you had a very short space of time to acclimatize. How did Tyler brief you beforehand about what he wanted to do?
I normally would prepare more but didn’t have that time. I was trying to read some books as quickly as possible but that wasn’t really working out too well. (Laughs) And then I had started getting to know the other guys in the group, so the four of us, we all put our heads together and tried to figure out where the hierarchy was in the group and how that worked and how we could work off of each other.
Tyler mentioned you happened to appropriate some of your costumes and went out on the streets. What sort of stuff happened there?
(Laughs) I wanted to do that, really badly! Go out in character with the four of us.
Was that your idea?
I think it was my idea, maybe Tyler suggested it. But that’s something I like to do anyway, I’ve always liked going out in character. I think it was probably my suggestion. And everyone seemed down and then Alex (Ludwig) backed out, so then it was just the three of us, it was Logan (Huffman), Cameron (Bright) and myself. It didn’t turn out very well, cos we went out on a Tuesday night, we went to a club and I hadn’t been to a club in a long time and there was nobody there! I was like “Let’s go out in character and talk to women” and there were no women around! (Laughs) But we had a really good time.
Tyler said there was a lot of improvisation. How did that help you develop your character?
There was a lot of stuff we were doing off-camera that we’d blend into the shoot, so we might be laughing about something… I think there was a moment where Logan was singing off-set, and so we recorded that. Tyler’s like “Let’s roll on that!” It was very freeing, there was a lot of improv, but to say it was us doing it all would be incorrect. I think Tyler was definitely there, y’know… he was like “Go play boys!” and we’d just run out and do our own thing. Tyler was there the whole time, guiding it down the path it was supposed to go. He was always like “Yeah, do whatever you want”, which was pretty cool. He’ll cast you and then he expects you to bring it. And that was what he said in the meeting I had with him too. I realized this was not going to be a walk in the park.
How did he explain the trippier aspects of the story? (The guys are drugged for the last act of the movie.)
I still haven’t figured it out to be honest with you. My feeling about it is that it’s… like I was talking about the hierarchy in the group, I think it’s all displayed in those hallucinations. We’re all crazy killers, so I think at any moment we could off each other.
It was a concentrated period of time for you. Looking back, what are your strongest memories of working with Tyler?
We shot a lot of stuff that’s not in the movie. Tyler was constantly shooting stuff while they were setting up other scenes. We’d be blocking another scene and he’d be like “Reece, come over here!” and he’d start taking pictures, or he’d shoot something else, on B camera. We were shooting on the Watchmen set, which was so cool. It looked like an old New York.
What I was most excited about with this project was being in something that looks completely different from anything I’d seen before. Looking at his photography you could see this was going to be something cool and new. I can’t wait to see what else he’s going to do next to be honest with you.
Final Girl is out now on DVD.
