This weekend Arrow Video FrightFest once more consumes the screens of Cineworld Leicester Square. This time around though it’s for one concentrated day of horror as it celebrates Halloween. Over the course of Saturday (29th October), the festival will screen six brand new genre offerings to the FrightFest masses. Of the six films screening it is perhaps the new film from Jen and Sylvia Soska, On the Edge, that people are most excited about. The sisters have a long history with the festival, one that goes back to their sophomore project American Mary. As with American Mary, On the Edge will receive its World Premiere at FrightFest, making the London audience the first around the globe to witness their latest original offering.
Set almost exclusively within the same four walls of a hotel, On the Edge joins family man Peter (Aramis Sartorio) who gets more than he paid for when he books a 36-hour session with the sadistic Mistress Satana (Jen Soska). Fitting somewhere between Jen and Sylvia’s other original movies, Dead Hooker in a Trunk and American Mary, On the Edge is sure to please longterm fans of the directors.
Whilst fans are very familiar with the work of Jen and Sylvia Soska, there is somebody else who has been heavily involved in all their productions. That person is musician, Kevvy, who has provided music in one form or another on everything that the Soskas have made. The whirlwind nature of On the Edge, which only began principal photography in August, meant that the Soskas wanted only those that they trusted most involved in the project. Naturally they turned to Kevvy once more, who this time, in addition to creating music and score, serves as a producer. With Kevvy also heavily involved with his band Fake Shark, and comedy label Comedy Here Often?, it has been a busy few weeks for the musician. Ahead of the World Premiere, THN spoke with Kevvy to find out more about life working with the Soskas and how the music of On the Edge came to be.
How did you and the Soskas meet?
I’ve known them since 2008. Sylvia was a mutual friend and they were working on Dead Hooker in a Trunk, and they were in desperate need of a bunch of music for it. My band I was in at the time, I just offered whatever they needed. There ended up being maybe five or six songs that we did and that I did on various projects in that movie. When that happened we started spending a lot of time together. Sylvia and I actually started working together at a shoe store together. It was so humbling because she was hoping to do the movie thing professionally, and I was hoping to do music professionally. We were just struggling and had these sad work days where we were, “one day we won’t have to do this.”
Flash cut to just becoming good friends that way and then a couple years later when they were starting to do American Mary, I was able to come in and make music specifically for that movie. I did maybe six or seven pieces of music for that. I actually did a cover of ‘Piggy’ by Nine Inch Nails, but they weren’t able to get it cleared. It’s a really cool cover, I wish we could have used it. American Mary cemented our working relationship and I’ve done music for every one of their movies since. For On the Edge I wrote maybe forty-seven pieces of music and I scored it, it was intense. Pretty crazy. I would say Jen and Sylvia are my best friends, so it’s really cool that we get to continue our working relationship this way and get to travel together, working on the same project, but also just getting to hang out.
I guess being friends, you were probably one the early people that they discussed this idea with?
I feel like I have a hard time keeping track of all their movie ideas. Every time I see them they have a new idea. There’ve been ideas that they’ve had around for like a decade too, so I don’t remember them telling me about the idea of it before it was already a script that was already being filmed. They have a movie that there’s been a script for that I think is going to be the next thing we work on. I thought that’s the one they were going to make. So when they said, “we’re going to start filming the movie. Would you like to help produce it? Do the music?” I thought it was a different movie. I don’t think they told me and I was already working on it before I knew what it was.
When you finally did get your hands on the script, what did you think?
I didn’t even read the script until I was already on set, talking about music and helping with filming. I caught up to speed once I realised what was happening. Most of the cast are friends of mine – I work in stand-up comedy too, I produce comedy records and run a label – almost the whole cast is comedians. I love that these people that typically do funny stuff are in this thriller film, a very serious movie in some ways, still still funny, but not what you typically see a comedian do. Once I started putting the pieces together for what the plot is and everything I was really excited. I really love when movies mostly take place in one location. I think it’s a really cool challenge and I was excited that that’s what this was.
I think people have this misconception that comedy is easy when it really isn’t. Often some of the best horror / thriller performances come from those that have a comedy background, Robin Williams in One Hour Photo for example.
I feel like all of my favourite horror directors are able to have comedic moments that are just as good as comedy directors. Like, Sam Raimi is so funny. His editing and his ideas. Drag Me to Hell is so over the top and ridiculous and I love that kind of thing. One thing I’ve noticed about people’s perception of comedy is that everyone thinks they can do it.
You were present on location, but you weren’t always on the set. I imagine that must have been a strange experience being to hear all this screaming and shouting without necessarily knowing what was going on?
I can’t believe we only got one complaint. The weird thing is, we’re in a hotel room for weeks with a guy just screaming, and no one said anything until one day someone was playing music off their iPhone. Then there was a complaint. I’m starting to understand the priorities of the people in this building – someone’s being murdered, that’s fine, but I will not listen to Kanye West. It will not overhear that.
The rough cut of the film features reference pieces of music, how do you go about working from them into the finished version? Do you already have pieces ready before, or do you interpret from the reference?
So it’s a little bit of both. I will sometimes have an idea, and usually I would just make it and then just run it past the girls. But sometimes they would have an idea and a reference already and so I’d just do something that kind of sounds in that vein. Then sometimes both those things happen and they still don’t work so we gotta figure it out. Hence why there ended up being so many different pieces of music. It seems like it’s kind of different every time, there was originally in the end credits, a pretty hard industrial rock song that was a reference and I didn’t feel like that fully encapsulated the emotional content of the movie. I made something a little bit different for it and I think it works better.
When it comes to composing, how do you get into the right headspace?
To get into the mood we talked about references of other movies, and the music from those movies. I’m on this crazy David Fincher kick and so to make the music for this I watched Seven. I really like the music in that, and so there’s elements of that, sort of glitchy, dirty. electronic music in it. Then we also discussed certain moments from 28 Days Later. Once I have a sort of framework of references, it’s kind of easy for me to just sort of be, “okay, well the beginning of the third act of 28 Days Later was very epic, and it gave me goosebumps and I want to make a song that makes people feel like that.” So I made a song that feels like that and it’s in the movie. Seven’s opening credits, it’s like this weird dirty industrial music that’s very minimal. I wanted to make a piece like that so there’s a piece like that in the movie. We wanted to have opera throughout different parts of the movie so I sampled different bits of opera singing, and cut that into the cinematic dirty music too. It sort of forms as you make it, and it becomes obvious at a certain point what will work and what won’t.
On the Edge came together very quickly so I guess that means it was very tight for you to get the script, get the film, and work with it.
It’s crazy too because I had all these other deadlines at the same time. My band was following up a song that was a hit at radio, and so we had to follow it up with another song to go to radio with. I’ve been finishing our album as well as doing this movie, as well as a couple other things. It was so crazy. I would be working on that in the daytime, and then go to the shoot overnight often, and then back and forth. So basically I just didn’t really sleep for a month, but I’m going to sleep in England after the premiere, that’s the plan.
On the Edge debuts at FrightFest, how are you feeling about the screening?
I can’t wait. I actually have been to so few of these kinds of things, so I’m really excited, even just to see the other movies on.
Are you going to be in the screen watching along?
Oh yeah, I want to see the audience react to it. Jen was saying that the British audiences, they’re very vocal, and so I want to see what happens. I’ve just listened to the music and score that I’ve made on my little monitors at home and at my studio, so I’m excited to hear it in a big room like that. It’ll be really cool.
You and the Soskas appear to be bound for life. Are you going to continue working on their future endeavours?
Oh yeah, we’re already going on to the next one after this. Actually the next two, so we will never get rid of each other. It’s too hard. We hang out too much.
Outside of the film, you mentioned several other projects. What else have you got in the pipeline?
My band, Fake Shark, just released a new single called Paranoid, and we have a new album coming out. BBC 6 in England has actually been really supportive of us. They premiered one of our songs not long ago and we’ve toured in the UK a lot. I produce, I have a comedy label called Comedy Here Often? and our most recent release, she just went on James Corden yesterday. I think everyone’s mad at him right now, but she went on there and that’s a big deal for our label. Her name’s Andrea Jin and she’s in On the Edge – she’s the maid. Then just all the various Soska stuff I’ll be doing in the next, rest of my life.
On the Edge will have its World Premiere at FrightFest Halloween on Saturday 29th October.
