Make a movie about a killer clown, they said. But Jenna Kanell made something a little different.
Kanell co-wrote the film “Faceless After Dark,” which is playing at this year’s Atlanta Film Festival, with Todd Jacobs. When director Raymond Wood originally approached her, he said he wanted a movie about a killer clown. But Kanell, who is known for her role in the cult classic horror movie “Terrifier,” wasn’t really interested in making yet another movie about clowns that kill.
So, using the concept of a killer clown as a jumping off point, Kanell and Jacobs decided to make something a little more meta and a little less focused on the prototypical villain.
“So much of the focus in most horror films is on the villains,” Kanell said. “And I’ve faced a lot of people in the B horror world who will often try to devalue – not everyone – but some people will try to devalue the the characters outside of the monster, which I’ve always found very silly.”
“Faceless After Dark” stars Kanell as Bowie, a burgeoning actress who has found success as the star of a killer clown horror movie. But after an obsessed fan gets a little too close to recreating the film’s gruesome plot, Bowie finds herself spiraling out of control. The film is shocking, gory and darkly funny. It starts as one movie and then very quickly becomes something a little more subversive, the audience forced to reckon with Bowie’s choices as she descends further into herself and closer to madness.
“You’re supposed to wonder at what point should I stop rooting for her?,” Kanell said. “A big part of what we set out to do was to write a character similar to Travis Bickle in ‘Taxi Driver,’ or the Joker, or the character in ‘King of Comedy,’ or the other Joker. There have been a lot of stories about a character who starts at the protagonist and ends up as the antagonist. But I haven’t really seen that done outside of males as much, so that’s a big part of what we wanted to do.”
Rough Draft Atlanta recently interviewed Kanell ahead of the festival screening on May 1 at the Plaza Theatre. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you come onboard to “Faceless After Dark?” What drew you to the project?
Jenna Kanell: Raymond Wood, the director, and I have worked together a number of times before. An investor came to him, essentially, and said he wanted to make a movie that somehow involved a killer clown, and he knew that if he had a movie with those requirements that he could get it sold and he could get it distributed. Ray approached myself and Todd Jacobs, who was my co-writer at the time, and basically gave us that same prompt.
I’m the main character in the original “Terrifier,” and so I wasn’t super keen to make more clown movies. That wasn’t at the top of my list, necessarily, of my next move. But we were curious, and I trust Ray. Basically, Todd and Idecided to say, well, what’s a version of this that we could get behind? What’s a version of this that’s maybe more subversive and gives the character autonomy, and is almost a comment on the genre, and a subversion of the genre itself? How can we play with that and make it into something that we really love and are enthusiastic about? So we took it as a challenge.
It’s interesting that it stemmed from an investor wanting a killer clown. I feel like that’s a pretty small part of the movie.
Kanell: Which is so funny, right? It certainly is. We were basically trying to make it a movie that had a killer clown, but wasn’t a killer clown movie. And funnily enough, that investor – when the pandemic hit, we were still doing some revisions on the script, and we hadn’t gone into pre-production yet. The pandemic hit, and the investor suddenly didn’t have any money … but Ray was so in love with the script and was so hungry to make it that he basically said, “You know, well fine. We’ll do it without you.”
His production company ended up taking on a bunch of commercial clients and paying for it through their company. What’s even funnier is that then, that investor came back after – you know, we filmed two years ago. It premiered at Fright Fest in August in London, and then it’s been having a really successful festival run ever since. It has won a bunch of awards, people are really loving it. We got a sales representative at our first screening at the premiere, and got distribution, so that’s in process now to come out later this year. And after all that happened, that same investor then came back and offered to buy the movie from Ray. Which is so funny, how full circle that comes. Ray said, you can pay for the next one [laughs].
Yeah, this one’s already done. We got it.
Kanell: He basically said, you know, I could sell it and make my money back, but we’ve already got some money from the sales rep, and we’ll get more once it gets out there. We’re not gonna sell it now and not have it be ours anymore. I would only do that if I didn’t believe in it – and he believed in it so wholeheartedly that he was like, you missed your chance buddy. And he did miss his chance! But you know, hopefully he’ll pay for the next one.
You talked about the “Terrifier” aspects of this, and obviously this story has sort of a meta spin to it.
Kanell: There’s a bit of a wink.
When you’re playing a character like this – and obviously, this doesn’t pertain to some of the more violent aspects of what Bowie does in this movie – but how much are you sort of taking from your own life and experiences and trying to infuse that into the performance?
Kanell: One of the questions at the Q&A of our premiere was that same question. They asked, how much of this is drawn from your real life? And at the time, I said, “I’ve never murdered anyone.” [Laughs] Apparently, that wasn’t good enough for them, so I will expound for you as well. That is true. I have not murdered anybody.
Good to know, good to know.
Kanell: Yes, I want it on the record that is not drawn from real life. There certainly are aspects that are drawn from my real life. Like you said, elements of the sort of B horror world, of doing conventions and having enough of a following that in a very niche community, people know who you are, but not enough of a following that it guarantees I can keep my health insurance every year. You know, sort of a weird balance of how we have to make it look like we’re doing on social media versus how things are going in real life.
Most of the fanbase that I have is wonderful and really lovely. And then there’s a handful that are not. I did have a stalking scare at one point, and I have had people make really inappropriate comments to me about my appearance in person and online. That’s fairly common. I am mentally ill in real life. Not to this degree … but depression, anxiety, these are definitely things that I do live with. When you take that and you combine it with, you know – we’re evolved to eat berries in a cave and now suddenly, we all have a computer in our pocket. If you’re an empathetic, compassionate person in any way, hearing about a genocide that your tax dollars are funding on the other side of the world, or about the rates of unhoused people, or like I said, about trying to maintain health insurance – there’s so much going on, and we’re not meant to necessarily know about all of it all of the time. Our brains aren’t necessarily adequate enough. We’ve evolved a little quickly for the circumstances that we find ourselves in. So that’s all drawn from real life.
Then also, I present as female most of the time, and so I do draw from [that experience]. Even little things, like in the elevator when the character’s on the phone – what it’s like to be alone in an elevator alone with someone, or to worry that someone might show up to your house, or to be followed and commodified in people’s eyes, and seen as accessible. Parasocial relationships are also very much something that feed into this in terms of, you know – we feel like the people that we consume in the media are accessible, and that we have relationships with them, and sometimes that line gets blurry. Which is really beautiful because it makes way for connection, but then it also can create a lack of boundaries.
You said you hadn’t gone yet into pre-production when the pandemic hit, and I think that feeling of being on your phone and seeing everything that’s happening really compounded over that period of time. Obviously, this character does some things that aren’t relatable – at least not to most of us – but that aspect of it felt relatable, and easy to understand.
Kanell: Especially when you don’t have a sense of community, because that’s the other thing. There’s an African proverb in the film that Bowie says. It’s a nice little boiled down summary of what, to me, the film is about, which is – the child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth. I do think that’s true. I think when we don’t have a sense of community, when it feels like the people in our lives, the people closest to us don’t see us and don’t see, necessarily, that we’re struggling and don’t know how to reach out and how to support, then it’s even more isolating. You can fall even further into this sort of rabbit hole of what we’re assaulted with digitally.
Speaking of some of the more relatable aspects, I found the underlying tension between Bowie and her slightly more successful girlfriend very interesting. Particularly with the tag at the end – I do want to discuss the idea in that tag, of commodifying violence for our entertainment.
Kanell: Kristen Stewart did an interview a long time ago about how someone told her if you come out, we can’t put you in a Marvel movie, or things like that. And I’ve heard more than one story about [that], and it’s very stigmatized for men, being queer in any way. And so it is this sort of thing of how much of yourself do you hide in order to move forward with what you do? Some people can compartmentalize really well, of this is my work self and this is my personal self. Clearly, [Bowie’s] girlfriend is good at that. But Bowie, not so much – partially because she’s not feeling fulfilled in any of those areas. I’m glad that you noticed that, because it is meant to be this sort of thing of, it’s hard not to feel competitive with people sometimes, even when we genuinely want their success. It’s hard to navigate, or it can be.
Yeah, absolutely. And again, obviously not to this extent, but it does drive you a little nuts sometimes, all of that compounding at one time.
Kanell: Yeah, absolutely. [Here, Kanell switches to the second portion of the question] Commodifying trauma, if it’s done with everyone having autonomy who’s involved, I don’t think that’s necessarily inherently bad, because it can build stories that make people feel seen, or that comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable, as they say. But it is funny, how we talk about things. I wish I had a better example, but the way that discourse around certain things that happen in real life, and then immediately or years later, there’s suddenly a movie about it. For example, Amy Winehouse.
I was just going to bring that up. The embargo was lifted, so I was finally able to see reviews of that movie [“Back to Black”] today.
Kanell: Yeah, I haven’t seen the narrative version. But I remember watching the documentary. And even the documentary – I mean, it’s beautifully done. It’s really, really good. But it’s this thing of, we love to say after the fact, oh man – if we only knew, if we hadn’t done XYZ. And very often, the people who are struggling are screaming for help in their own way. We just don’t listen or don’t know how to listen.
Yeah, it’s certainly easier to notice it all in hindsight.
Kanell: Oh yeah.
Switching gears just a bit – this movie is very gory. There’s a lot of very intense sequences. I’m curious from a production and physical standpoint, how do you go about filing those things? Like when you’re cutting off someone’s hand (spoiler alert), what is that like physically on set?
Kanell: It’s so much fun. I love practical effects. Practical effects all day every day! It’s interesting that you use the word gory, because I guess everyone has a different sort of barometer for where that is.
Sure. I’m a little squeamish.
Kanell: Okay, well thanks for making it through! [Laughs]
I love horror movies, but I’m usually more into ghost stuff, I would say, rather than the blood and guts of it all.
Kanell: Psychological stuff is my favorite. I’m not usually into torture porn. Even if I’ve been in them, that’s not what I would choose to watch always, necessarily.
We did a lot of practical effects. The number one thing that sells any sort of gore is sound design, always. Our team, between the onset sound mixers and boom operators to the post sound mixing … sound is what sells it. So like, a snapping carrot, or stabbing a melon – those are the things that make it really, really visceral.
I wanted to discuss the Atlanta Film Festival a bit. I know you said you premiered in London, but how are you feeling about bringing it back to Atlanta?
Kanell: I’m excited that it’s coming to Atlanta. It was amazing to see it in London, obviously. I mean, it was on an IMAX screen, which is bigger than I ever want to see my face again. It was an over 700-person theater that was almost entirely full, and all of that was amazing.
It’s nerve wracking in a different way to bring it home, because that was a roomful of strangers reacting to it. The Brits, I think, enjoy that sort of dry dark humor. It’ll be a completely different beast to screen it in Atlanta with likely an audience of mostly people we know. In a way it’s nerve wracking, because I’m going to have to see all of them afterwards [laughs]. But at the same time it’s really exciting, because it’s people we know. And it’s hopefully a lot of people that want to see us succeed and are excited about the film, having already known our work.
At the same time, it’s really cool because, like I said, we filmed it two years ago, and all of the people that worked on it here haven’t been able to see it yet. It’s played all these other incredible places, but I’m excited for it to play here where the team that put it together and made it happen and got it off the ground can actually watch it.
I don’t really know what the normal gestation period is, but two years feels like a bit of a long time to see something you worked on.
Kanell: Usually it’s about a year. So two years is a little longer. Again, COVID certainly didn’t help. I mean, we filmed when we were still having to test everyone regularly, and the crew was all masked and everything. Which, I will say – I meant to say this before in terms of filming with special effects – safety was also a huge thing. Brent Bernhard was our stunt coordinator, and he was amazing about this. I’m really big on safety too, because I also have a production background. That’s a huge thing, especially when you’re doing stunts, when you’re using weapons, even if they’re fake. I mean, we saw what happened on “Rust,” with what happened to [cinematographer] Halyna Hutchins and Sarah Jones [a camera assistant who was struck and killed by a train on the set of “Midnight Rider” in 2014]. There’s no reason for that to happen. Even on something this indie, there can always be time for safety and it can always be prioritized. That was a big part of it too, making sure that everyone felt comfortable and there were safety meetings and demonstrations of whatever it is we were using.
It’s funny you bring up COVID and filming. On smaller films, I feel like it’s a bit harder to tell, but the fact that it took place, it looked like, mostly on one set, and you’re in the house for the majority of it – it felt very contained in terms of the environment.
Kanell: Which is fun because it feeds the story, in this case. It’s meant to feel like the walls are closing in and that it’s very claustrophobic. Funnily enough, we actually shot in three different houses, so Ray will be thrilled that you thought it was one, because that was the idea. Fantastic! He’ll be so excited.
Because it was indie, because their company, RCR Video [Marketing Group] ended up having to pay for it themselves, we were shooting in pieces, basically. So the ideal would be to shoot something like this over the course of a month, back to back. But instead we filmed all the stuff in the house over two weeks, and then a couple months later, we came back and got the rest of the house over a week. And then there’s a bunch of random inserts and pickups that Ray and I would just get on our own, or for the convention scene, he just came with me to a convention I was actually working and filmed. We just ADR’d the whole thing, because the sound was awful, but he just filmed at the actual convention, then he VFX’s all the signage.
Is that difficult for you? To come back with a couple of months break in between?
Kanell: A little bit, it can be. I find it difficult just because every project I do, it sort of feels like this chapter. So sometimes you have to kind of lock back in. Often, you’ve done several other projects in between, so it’s a little bit like, who am I? [Laughs]
That’s why it’s helpful to have the whole team. For Ray, this has been his whole life for several years. Even though he’s had other jobs, this has been so much of his focus … like a good director, he has a sense of the whole big picture and can kind of help anchor and remind everybody where we’re at, while at the same time giving everyone space and ownership of the project, which is one of my favorite qualities in a director. Our crew was diverse, both racially and in terms of their performances and sexualities. It was a very queer set behind the camera in addition to in front of it.