The best horror films are always the simple ones, and Frozen is simplicity itself. Pretty college student Parker (newcomer Emma Bell ) flirts her way into one last ski-lift ride just as the slopes are closing for the night (and the week) and sets off on the lift with her boyfriend Dan (Kevin Zegers) and his best friend Lynch (Shawn Ashmore). A shift-change mishap later, the three of them are stuck a hundred feet in the air, watching helplessly as the ski lodges lights are being shut off, the temperature is falling by the minute, and no one is responding to their screams for help. The film, which deftly explores a number of common fears, including extreme cold, perilous heights, being alone in the dark, and a final one that should remain a surprise, comes from lifelong skier and indie film wunderkind Adam Green, whose 2006 horror debut, the deliberately old-school boobs-and-blood slasher film Hatchet, stands as one of the most profitable films of its kind, ever. Green is currently in the midst of filming Hatchet 2 and recently called up SuicideGirls from the Sundance Film Festival, where Frozen is playing to sold out shows and critical raves.
Ryan Stewart: Let me tell you my solution to the main characters dilemma, and you can tell me if youve heard it before.
Adam Green: Tie the clothes together, right?
RS: Right! They should take off their clothes and tie their undergarments together like bed sheets, and use that as a rope to climb down.
AG: You know, we spoke to some Army Rangers about it, trying to shoot holes in the thing, and they said thats actually the worst thing you could do. First of all, just trying to undress up there? Trying to even get your clothes off when youre in a seated position like that? You could try it, but even if you did get them off the exposure to the elements would mean you wouldnt make it. Even if you did get to the bottom, youre then talking about at least a twenty to forty minute walk until you find anybody. Any people who are left up there with no clothes on arent going to make it, either. They said thats the last thing they would try to do. These were military people, and they said their first choice would be to jump, although you have to jump a certain way. Youre going to break your bones, but you have to just hope that you dont break them so badly that you cant then drag yourself down the hill. Thats what Dan says in the movie, Even if I hurt myself, I might still be able to make it down to the bottom. But if you fall in a way that results in a compound fracture of both your legs, thats kind of out.
The other option is to climb the cables, but in reality if you know anything about those cables you wouldnt even try climbing them, because they are so sharp they have to be, so that these metallic things can fit through the rungs and not come apart. They look like rope, but theyre really metal. MythBusters actually did an episode on this once, where they asked how you would get off a chair lift, and they tried climbing it and sliding on it with a jacket and it was impossible it slices right through it. In the movie theres a little bit of suspension of disbelief there, because Lynch actually does make it to the next chair, and in real life he probably wouldnt have. It would have cut into his hands and he wouldve fallen and died, but nobody wants to see that ending!
RS: Speaking of Lynch, I noticed the characters full name is identical to that of your fellow indie-horror director Joe Lynch. Joe must have been thrilled.
AG: [laughs] He was! So was my friend Dave Parker, who directed The Hills Run Red, and also my friend Dan Walker. Im just really bad with names when Im writing, and Ill stick in my friends names all the time with the intention that sometime before we actually shoot Ill go through it and come up with other names, but this time it was like, eh, why not? For the handful of people who get it, its kind of a funny joke when you hear those names go by, but the average person watching it obviously has no idea about that connection.
RS: Was there a real ski-lift tragedy that inspired you to write this, or did you just sit down and come up with something?
AG: I kind of just came up with the situation, because its a big fear of mine as someone who used to ski. The mountains I skied at, these places in Boston, theyre only open Friday through Sunday, and theyre really kind of crappy mountains compared to, like, what we have here in Park City. They dont really get a lot of business and you kind of feel like youre going on a carnival ride. Theres always that dude whos just standing there smoking a cigarette as hes sending you up. When we were scouting mountains we would ask them Could this happen here? and they would get very angry and defensive and say Not at our mountain, we take precautions, we do this, we do that. But if you persisted with could it, then they would say, Well, it could, because theres such a thing as human error. You could have a guy who just isnt doing his job right. I mean, how many times have you read stories about airline pilots that were drunk? How much trust do we put in strangers that theyre not going to do something that would kill us, you know? If you search online for stories of people being trapped, there are hundreds of stories every year. In fact, right here in Utah, one of the ski mountain people who came to our screening this afternoon said a kid recently fell fifty feet off of one of them he just slipped off. While we were shooting Frozen a gondola fell in British Columbia, killing about seven people. There was also a group of cross-country skiers in British Columbia that went off the beaten path, got lost, and wolves ate this guys wife. So, all of the things in the film could happen, though theyre not very likely. Likely is people getting stuck in an elevator. Movies should always be worst-case scenario. I think because the concept and the trailer seem to be getting under peoples skin, theres a knee-jerk reaction on the part of some to say Well, this is ridiculous, it could never happen. The fact of the matter is, it could.
RS: I was surprised to learn the whole film was done with practical effects, outdoors, and not on a stage. Im sure the producers werent thrilled about having no sets.
AG: Well, there were four different production companies that wanted to make Frozen, but the only one willing to let me do it this way was Peter Blocks company, A Bigger Boat. He understood that if youre going to make a survival thriller, it has to be real. You just cant expect the audience to be scared if they know theyre looking at a soundstage. So that was the first thing. The bond company that had to insure the film was not happy about this at all, because we didnt even have a single covered set in the original script. The compromise made was for me to move some of the dialogue into the lodge and have at least one scene that was on a covered set, so in case there was a blizzard or something wed at least have something to shoot that day. The other compromise was that the producers and I agreed to defer our pay, so that if we went to the contingency, it was our own money. So, that made the bond company happy, and the last thing we shot was that stupid lodge scene that they demanded we have as a safety. We finished on time, on budget, and never went into the contingency. But there were blizzards and hailstorms all through the movie, and we just shot through it. I lucked out, actually, because the weather actually cooperated. In the script its like a big storm starts and then it happened when we shot.
RS: You mentioned Peter Block he also produced the abandoned-in-the-ocean thriller Open Water. Youre probably already sick of hearing Frozen be compared to that movie.
AG: Not at all. I like Open Water, and I take that as a compliment. This definitely is a kind of Open Water, worst-case scenario, what-would-you-do movie. Some directors get pissy about that kind of thing, they always want to think that their movie is the most original thing ever and no ones ever done anything like it. Well, no ones ever done Frozen before -- no ones ever done a ski-lift horror movie -- but at the same time, just like with every movie, you get some degree of it being like this or that. With Hatchet, my God, everyone was like, this is a rip-off of Friday the 13th! Well, no, it was actually a rip-off of Fright Night and An American Werewolf in London, but people were too stupid to realize that. They just saw woods and Kane Hodder. With this, nobodys really called it a rip-off of Open Water, but I have heard the comparisons. Where I see it as being different, aside from the obvious things, is that Frozen is a very hopeful movie and its really a character movie, a performance movie, whereas Open Water, to me, was a gimmick of real people and real sharks. Once they were left behind, the whole time youre just waiting to watch them die. And then, in the end, they die. I liked the movie, and I think sharks are everyones worst nightmare, but I do feel like Frozen is that concept taken to a whole other intellectual level. I think theres a lot more going on in Frozen than they had going on in Open Water.
RS: When you were auditioning actors for this film, did you sit them down and drive home what a physical ordeal this would be? God forbid they get out there and then bail on you.
AG: Oh, yeah. Everyone who came in to audition, the whole first five minutes of it was me explaining what this was, and many of them walked out right then. Some said Oh, my agent told me only a portion of this would be practical and the rest would be soundstage. And I was like, No, none of that, and also, you cant come down. That chair only moves forward, so if you decide to come down, thats an hour out of our shooting day, so you cant go to the bathroom and you cant eat. Thankfully, the people I had were down for it, and even embraced it. Its a great opportunity for an actor ninety minutes of your face and the whole movie hinges on your performance. Theres no horror gags, no action sequences, its all about you. Because of that, we actually ended up getting the cream of the crop of young Hollywood coming in to audition for this. It got competitive. Some people wanted to be in this movie badly. Im sure that by night three our actors were kind of regretting it a little bit, but they never once complained and they never broke their stride or gave up, and now theyre seeing the rewards of that. To have every show at Sundance be sold out? To have a screening where someone faints? We had a screening this morning where two people vomited. The reviews have also been tremendous. Its all been worth it. The fact that were getting a theatrical release in this day and age thats not easy for an independent movie, so were very fortunate, and Im really grateful for all of it.
RS: What was Emmas audition piece? She really gives a raw performance. Did you coach her through the heavy emotional stuff?
AG: Her audition piece was the "starving dog" story. And no, she needed no coaching with the tears, she's that good. In fact, Emma was the very first person to audition for Frozen, for any role! I was so sold that I didn't even want to waste time seeing anyone else, but of course the powers that be made me do my due diligence. So, four weeks and a hundred actresses later, Emma Bell got the part. How's that for a Hollywood rarity?
RS: All the actors get chances to shine, I felt. I liked that little scene at the beginning where Lynch meets a girl, Shannon, and tries to memorize her phone number because he doesnt carry his phone with his ski suit. It turned a necessary cell-phone explanation scene into a little plot that may or may not get paid off.
AG: Yeah, that was two-fold. One, it gives Lynch something to focus on and remain hopeful for. He has his line about how if he ever gets off that chair hes going to just call her up and ask her to marry him. And of course it was there to explain away the cell-phone thing without resorting to Oh no, we cant get a signal! Most skiers that we spoke to said that whether or not they really bring their cell phone with them depends on the mountain. But with most ski mountains you dont get any reception while youre up there, so most skiers because phones these days are expensive iPhones and BlackBerrys theyll put them in the locker and go do a couple of runs, and then come back and check their messages. They generally dont ski with them when theres a chance theyll get broken. In fact, one of our actors had gone snowboarding about a month before we shot and he destroyed his iPhone. So, in my opinion that scene was a smarter way to get around the whole Why dont they just call somebody? thing. If one of them had pulled out a cell-phone up there and then it said no service youd be like, oh God, this is terrible. I dont know if you noticed, but we also got around the whole 555 thing by actually buying that phone number. We didnt include the area code, but if people go and figure out that Boston area code and call that number, theyll actually get that actress, Rileah Vanderbilt, saying Hi, youve reached Shannon, leave a message.
RS: There are a few scenes in the film where I noticed that you could have gone crazy with the gore, but you pull back a bit. Are you gun shy from your ordeal trying to get an R-rating for Hatchet?
AG: Hatchet 2 will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I'll go as far as I want with gore, with no regard for the MPAA and their bullshit. Nowadays, with the coveted unrated DVD release, no matter how much the MPAA castrates and abuses indie films, our vision still gets out there eventually. With Frozen, excessive gore would have ruined the film. It had no place in it and this was just not that kind of movie. Much like with Jaws, my biggest inspiration in Frozen, it was what you dont see that really scares you. Hatchet may have been super gory and violent, but Frozen is a million times more terrifying and, quite frankly, a much better film. With Hatchet we had cheers, laughs, and applause. With Frozenwe're having fainting and puking from the tension.
RS: Hows the Hatchet 2 shoot going? Ive heard Dark Sky is mapping out a franchise plan for even more films. Are we going to see Victor Takes Manhattan?
AG: Its going better than we ever hoped. It's gonna blow people away. We have the time and resources that we never had when we made the first one, plus the story is so much darker and bigger. Way more kills, way more gore. We used fifty-five gallons of blood on the first and have already gone through a hundred and twenty on this one. Its a better story, and has more suspense than the first. It's still a Hatchet movie and has humor and the same Adam Green tone of being fun and entertaining rather than morbid and depraved, but goddamn did we pull off some crazy shit that will blow your mind. Dark Sky is plotting many more films, much more theatrical support, and they are all having a blast working with us and becoming part of my Ariescope family. Victor Takes Manhattan? Hmmm, that's a great idea! No, so long as they let me steer I will try and do Victor and his fans justice. That's why I directed the sequel. I refuse to let someone make a shitty Hatchet movie after all the fighting weve done to get here.
RS: Have you seen a positive wind change for indie-horror after Paranormal Activity? Is there a bit more openness now than there was six months ago?
AG: Paranormal Activity was a huge victory for all indie genre filmmakers, but it hasn't really changed the playing field at all. If anything, it's now made things frustrating because now every studio wants their own "Paranormal Activity" and every meeting you go on has producers asking "Why spend money on a film when Paranormal Activity didn't and made a ton?" Much like with The Blair Witch Project, we'll see a few years of knock-offs that don't work and then it will go away. But goddamn, did I love Paranormal Activity. I was lucky to see it at home, years ago, and it scared the shit out of me. Best way to have seen it!
RS: As a horror fan, I'm as curious about the things a director in your position turns down as the things he takes. Have you had any wacky remake/sequel offers lately that you can share?
AG: I can't get specific, because to be totally honest, I'm flattered and honored that the big studios doing these remakes even know who I am or call me in to meet on their projects. I dont want to burn bridges by making fun of what I've turned down. But that being said, I've turned down a lot or used the "I'm unavailable, sorry!" excuse for all of them. I am not anti-remake, but when they give you parameters that make it so that you don't even have a chance at doing it right, why take the job? For example, it's like being called in for a remake of Hatchet and having them tell you not to use Victor Crowley in it. Fuck that. I feel bad for some of the directors who've received such backlash from the fans for their remakes -- if you knew what they were put through by the studio you would feel bad, too. Thankfully, I've had great success with my original projects to date and I now have my own production company, Ariescope Pictures, so I do what I want and what I'm inspired to do. I don't need to take jobs for the money and if and when I accept a studio project it's going to be something I really am excited about and something I want to do. I'm discussing a few now, so we'll see what the next few years bring.
Frozen opens in select cities on February 5, 2010
Ryan Stewart: Let me tell you my solution to the main characters dilemma, and you can tell me if youve heard it before.
Adam Green: Tie the clothes together, right?
RS: Right! They should take off their clothes and tie their undergarments together like bed sheets, and use that as a rope to climb down.
AG: You know, we spoke to some Army Rangers about it, trying to shoot holes in the thing, and they said thats actually the worst thing you could do. First of all, just trying to undress up there? Trying to even get your clothes off when youre in a seated position like that? You could try it, but even if you did get them off the exposure to the elements would mean you wouldnt make it. Even if you did get to the bottom, youre then talking about at least a twenty to forty minute walk until you find anybody. Any people who are left up there with no clothes on arent going to make it, either. They said thats the last thing they would try to do. These were military people, and they said their first choice would be to jump, although you have to jump a certain way. Youre going to break your bones, but you have to just hope that you dont break them so badly that you cant then drag yourself down the hill. Thats what Dan says in the movie, Even if I hurt myself, I might still be able to make it down to the bottom. But if you fall in a way that results in a compound fracture of both your legs, thats kind of out.
The other option is to climb the cables, but in reality if you know anything about those cables you wouldnt even try climbing them, because they are so sharp they have to be, so that these metallic things can fit through the rungs and not come apart. They look like rope, but theyre really metal. MythBusters actually did an episode on this once, where they asked how you would get off a chair lift, and they tried climbing it and sliding on it with a jacket and it was impossible it slices right through it. In the movie theres a little bit of suspension of disbelief there, because Lynch actually does make it to the next chair, and in real life he probably wouldnt have. It would have cut into his hands and he wouldve fallen and died, but nobody wants to see that ending!
RS: Speaking of Lynch, I noticed the characters full name is identical to that of your fellow indie-horror director Joe Lynch. Joe must have been thrilled.
AG: [laughs] He was! So was my friend Dave Parker, who directed The Hills Run Red, and also my friend Dan Walker. Im just really bad with names when Im writing, and Ill stick in my friends names all the time with the intention that sometime before we actually shoot Ill go through it and come up with other names, but this time it was like, eh, why not? For the handful of people who get it, its kind of a funny joke when you hear those names go by, but the average person watching it obviously has no idea about that connection.
RS: Was there a real ski-lift tragedy that inspired you to write this, or did you just sit down and come up with something?
AG: I kind of just came up with the situation, because its a big fear of mine as someone who used to ski. The mountains I skied at, these places in Boston, theyre only open Friday through Sunday, and theyre really kind of crappy mountains compared to, like, what we have here in Park City. They dont really get a lot of business and you kind of feel like youre going on a carnival ride. Theres always that dude whos just standing there smoking a cigarette as hes sending you up. When we were scouting mountains we would ask them Could this happen here? and they would get very angry and defensive and say Not at our mountain, we take precautions, we do this, we do that. But if you persisted with could it, then they would say, Well, it could, because theres such a thing as human error. You could have a guy who just isnt doing his job right. I mean, how many times have you read stories about airline pilots that were drunk? How much trust do we put in strangers that theyre not going to do something that would kill us, you know? If you search online for stories of people being trapped, there are hundreds of stories every year. In fact, right here in Utah, one of the ski mountain people who came to our screening this afternoon said a kid recently fell fifty feet off of one of them he just slipped off. While we were shooting Frozen a gondola fell in British Columbia, killing about seven people. There was also a group of cross-country skiers in British Columbia that went off the beaten path, got lost, and wolves ate this guys wife. So, all of the things in the film could happen, though theyre not very likely. Likely is people getting stuck in an elevator. Movies should always be worst-case scenario. I think because the concept and the trailer seem to be getting under peoples skin, theres a knee-jerk reaction on the part of some to say Well, this is ridiculous, it could never happen. The fact of the matter is, it could.
RS: I was surprised to learn the whole film was done with practical effects, outdoors, and not on a stage. Im sure the producers werent thrilled about having no sets.
AG: Well, there were four different production companies that wanted to make Frozen, but the only one willing to let me do it this way was Peter Blocks company, A Bigger Boat. He understood that if youre going to make a survival thriller, it has to be real. You just cant expect the audience to be scared if they know theyre looking at a soundstage. So that was the first thing. The bond company that had to insure the film was not happy about this at all, because we didnt even have a single covered set in the original script. The compromise made was for me to move some of the dialogue into the lodge and have at least one scene that was on a covered set, so in case there was a blizzard or something wed at least have something to shoot that day. The other compromise was that the producers and I agreed to defer our pay, so that if we went to the contingency, it was our own money. So, that made the bond company happy, and the last thing we shot was that stupid lodge scene that they demanded we have as a safety. We finished on time, on budget, and never went into the contingency. But there were blizzards and hailstorms all through the movie, and we just shot through it. I lucked out, actually, because the weather actually cooperated. In the script its like a big storm starts and then it happened when we shot.
RS: You mentioned Peter Block he also produced the abandoned-in-the-ocean thriller Open Water. Youre probably already sick of hearing Frozen be compared to that movie.
AG: Not at all. I like Open Water, and I take that as a compliment. This definitely is a kind of Open Water, worst-case scenario, what-would-you-do movie. Some directors get pissy about that kind of thing, they always want to think that their movie is the most original thing ever and no ones ever done anything like it. Well, no ones ever done Frozen before -- no ones ever done a ski-lift horror movie -- but at the same time, just like with every movie, you get some degree of it being like this or that. With Hatchet, my God, everyone was like, this is a rip-off of Friday the 13th! Well, no, it was actually a rip-off of Fright Night and An American Werewolf in London, but people were too stupid to realize that. They just saw woods and Kane Hodder. With this, nobodys really called it a rip-off of Open Water, but I have heard the comparisons. Where I see it as being different, aside from the obvious things, is that Frozen is a very hopeful movie and its really a character movie, a performance movie, whereas Open Water, to me, was a gimmick of real people and real sharks. Once they were left behind, the whole time youre just waiting to watch them die. And then, in the end, they die. I liked the movie, and I think sharks are everyones worst nightmare, but I do feel like Frozen is that concept taken to a whole other intellectual level. I think theres a lot more going on in Frozen than they had going on in Open Water.
RS: When you were auditioning actors for this film, did you sit them down and drive home what a physical ordeal this would be? God forbid they get out there and then bail on you.
AG: Oh, yeah. Everyone who came in to audition, the whole first five minutes of it was me explaining what this was, and many of them walked out right then. Some said Oh, my agent told me only a portion of this would be practical and the rest would be soundstage. And I was like, No, none of that, and also, you cant come down. That chair only moves forward, so if you decide to come down, thats an hour out of our shooting day, so you cant go to the bathroom and you cant eat. Thankfully, the people I had were down for it, and even embraced it. Its a great opportunity for an actor ninety minutes of your face and the whole movie hinges on your performance. Theres no horror gags, no action sequences, its all about you. Because of that, we actually ended up getting the cream of the crop of young Hollywood coming in to audition for this. It got competitive. Some people wanted to be in this movie badly. Im sure that by night three our actors were kind of regretting it a little bit, but they never once complained and they never broke their stride or gave up, and now theyre seeing the rewards of that. To have every show at Sundance be sold out? To have a screening where someone faints? We had a screening this morning where two people vomited. The reviews have also been tremendous. Its all been worth it. The fact that were getting a theatrical release in this day and age thats not easy for an independent movie, so were very fortunate, and Im really grateful for all of it.
RS: What was Emmas audition piece? She really gives a raw performance. Did you coach her through the heavy emotional stuff?
AG: Her audition piece was the "starving dog" story. And no, she needed no coaching with the tears, she's that good. In fact, Emma was the very first person to audition for Frozen, for any role! I was so sold that I didn't even want to waste time seeing anyone else, but of course the powers that be made me do my due diligence. So, four weeks and a hundred actresses later, Emma Bell got the part. How's that for a Hollywood rarity?
RS: All the actors get chances to shine, I felt. I liked that little scene at the beginning where Lynch meets a girl, Shannon, and tries to memorize her phone number because he doesnt carry his phone with his ski suit. It turned a necessary cell-phone explanation scene into a little plot that may or may not get paid off.
AG: Yeah, that was two-fold. One, it gives Lynch something to focus on and remain hopeful for. He has his line about how if he ever gets off that chair hes going to just call her up and ask her to marry him. And of course it was there to explain away the cell-phone thing without resorting to Oh no, we cant get a signal! Most skiers that we spoke to said that whether or not they really bring their cell phone with them depends on the mountain. But with most ski mountains you dont get any reception while youre up there, so most skiers because phones these days are expensive iPhones and BlackBerrys theyll put them in the locker and go do a couple of runs, and then come back and check their messages. They generally dont ski with them when theres a chance theyll get broken. In fact, one of our actors had gone snowboarding about a month before we shot and he destroyed his iPhone. So, in my opinion that scene was a smarter way to get around the whole Why dont they just call somebody? thing. If one of them had pulled out a cell-phone up there and then it said no service youd be like, oh God, this is terrible. I dont know if you noticed, but we also got around the whole 555 thing by actually buying that phone number. We didnt include the area code, but if people go and figure out that Boston area code and call that number, theyll actually get that actress, Rileah Vanderbilt, saying Hi, youve reached Shannon, leave a message.
RS: There are a few scenes in the film where I noticed that you could have gone crazy with the gore, but you pull back a bit. Are you gun shy from your ordeal trying to get an R-rating for Hatchet?
AG: Hatchet 2 will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I'll go as far as I want with gore, with no regard for the MPAA and their bullshit. Nowadays, with the coveted unrated DVD release, no matter how much the MPAA castrates and abuses indie films, our vision still gets out there eventually. With Frozen, excessive gore would have ruined the film. It had no place in it and this was just not that kind of movie. Much like with Jaws, my biggest inspiration in Frozen, it was what you dont see that really scares you. Hatchet may have been super gory and violent, but Frozen is a million times more terrifying and, quite frankly, a much better film. With Hatchet we had cheers, laughs, and applause. With Frozenwe're having fainting and puking from the tension.
RS: Hows the Hatchet 2 shoot going? Ive heard Dark Sky is mapping out a franchise plan for even more films. Are we going to see Victor Takes Manhattan?
AG: Its going better than we ever hoped. It's gonna blow people away. We have the time and resources that we never had when we made the first one, plus the story is so much darker and bigger. Way more kills, way more gore. We used fifty-five gallons of blood on the first and have already gone through a hundred and twenty on this one. Its a better story, and has more suspense than the first. It's still a Hatchet movie and has humor and the same Adam Green tone of being fun and entertaining rather than morbid and depraved, but goddamn did we pull off some crazy shit that will blow your mind. Dark Sky is plotting many more films, much more theatrical support, and they are all having a blast working with us and becoming part of my Ariescope family. Victor Takes Manhattan? Hmmm, that's a great idea! No, so long as they let me steer I will try and do Victor and his fans justice. That's why I directed the sequel. I refuse to let someone make a shitty Hatchet movie after all the fighting weve done to get here.
RS: Have you seen a positive wind change for indie-horror after Paranormal Activity? Is there a bit more openness now than there was six months ago?
AG: Paranormal Activity was a huge victory for all indie genre filmmakers, but it hasn't really changed the playing field at all. If anything, it's now made things frustrating because now every studio wants their own "Paranormal Activity" and every meeting you go on has producers asking "Why spend money on a film when Paranormal Activity didn't and made a ton?" Much like with The Blair Witch Project, we'll see a few years of knock-offs that don't work and then it will go away. But goddamn, did I love Paranormal Activity. I was lucky to see it at home, years ago, and it scared the shit out of me. Best way to have seen it!
RS: As a horror fan, I'm as curious about the things a director in your position turns down as the things he takes. Have you had any wacky remake/sequel offers lately that you can share?
AG: I can't get specific, because to be totally honest, I'm flattered and honored that the big studios doing these remakes even know who I am or call me in to meet on their projects. I dont want to burn bridges by making fun of what I've turned down. But that being said, I've turned down a lot or used the "I'm unavailable, sorry!" excuse for all of them. I am not anti-remake, but when they give you parameters that make it so that you don't even have a chance at doing it right, why take the job? For example, it's like being called in for a remake of Hatchet and having them tell you not to use Victor Crowley in it. Fuck that. I feel bad for some of the directors who've received such backlash from the fans for their remakes -- if you knew what they were put through by the studio you would feel bad, too. Thankfully, I've had great success with my original projects to date and I now have my own production company, Ariescope Pictures, so I do what I want and what I'm inspired to do. I don't need to take jobs for the money and if and when I accept a studio project it's going to be something I really am excited about and something I want to do. I'm discussing a few now, so we'll see what the next few years bring.
Frozen opens in select cities on February 5, 2010