Ciarán Foy | Director of Sinister 2

 In 2012, Scott Derrickson unleashed a new brand of horror with his film, “Sinister”. Following a writer investigating horrific home movies, “Sinister” introduced a silent menace that terrorized families relatively unseen. “Sinister 2” sees the natural evolution of the mythology, as this time we see what causes the events that unfolded in the first film.

“Citadel” director Ciarán Foy takes the helm this time, bringing his own blend of atmosphere and terror. This time, Deputy So & So (James Ransone) investigates the mystery surrounding the first film, while a recently separated mother (Shannyn Sossamon) of two boys contends with an unseen force known as Bughuul. (Venture here for our review)

The Hollywood Outsider’s Aaron Peterson sat down with Ciarán to discuss taking the reigns of an established franchise, shooting those ‘kill films’, what he considers horror, and much more.

An insightful interview with a director on the rise. Listen or read on for our interview with “Sinister 2” director, Ciarán Foy.

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Ciarán Foy: Hey Aaron.

Aaron Peterson: Hey, Ciarán, how are you?

Ciarán: I’m good, thanks.

Aaron: Wow, I saw your movie yesterday. Are you happy, are you thrilled with it?

Ciarán: Yea…you know, the whole test screening process is completely new to me because I’ve only made one indie film before this movie, so we ended up having three test screenings altogether. But the last test screening was such a joy to experience with an audience. There was laughing and jumping and all that kind of stuff, and usually you get to experience that – well, certainly with “Citadel” it was opening night at South by Southwest was the first time I had ever experienced it with an audience which was a horrible way to experience your first movie – but this was just, to see that reaction, if the majority of people feel that way about the movie then that just makes me ever more joyed, cuz I think that as you go through the process of making a movie and you’ve watched it 200 times in the edit, you lose all sense of objectivity. You’re not really sure if you’ve got a movie that’s great or a movie that’s not so great, and so to see their reaction…yea, it was endearing.

Aaron: Since you bring up “Citadel” – and I really hope people find that movie, it’s a very unique movie – when it premiered at South by Southwest you established a very distinct style, and I really enjoyed how you took what I understand to be your own personal experience and expanded on that. Coming off of that, was it really hard to find your next project?

Ciarán: It was in the sense that, ya know, when it won the audience award at South by Southwest it sort of went on this – I ended up getting representation in Los Angeles – and it went on this kind of round trip around the world where it was picking up awards and I was being sent scripts from Los Angeles and, you know, most of them were terrible – found footage films and things like that – I assumed that this was the process. ‘Ok, I keep getting sent scripts and I’ll just wait until the perfect script arrives’. Not realizing that, in retrospect, you’re hot for two-and-a-half minutes, and by the time the next major festival comes along those scripts have dissipated and all that kind of stuff. What you realize is you really needed that follow-up script in your hands to say ‘Hey, this is what I want to do next’. I didn’t have that because my entire focus for the previous 4 years was just getting “Citadel” made and so, I began 2013 feeling I was back to square one, so I wrote two scripts that year, a science-fiction film and a horror film.

I was endeavoring to get them off the ground, and then 2014 came along and January 2014 I was flipping through Twitter one day, and I follow Scott Derrickson on Twitter, and he tweeted ‘Oh my God, I just saw this movie Citadel on Netflix!’, ya know he was kinda raving about it, and I was like ‘Well, that’s kind of cool’. So I just replied and said ‘Thanks!’, and then he started following me and asked me a bunch of questions about “Citadel” and said, ‘I’ve been looking for the perfect director for “Sinister 2”, and I think I’ve found him. Would you be interested in reading the script?’ So that’s how I got the project, it was weird happenstance between Netflix and Twitter.

Aaron: Wow, Twitter can be used for good. Who knew?

Ciarán: (laughs) Exactly!

Aaron: Well, now you’re directing “Sinister 2”, taking the directing reins from Scott Derrickson, whom I can only assume was a bit busy working on Marvel’s “Doctor Strange”. In “Citadel” you have a very distinct vision, and now you’re trying to merge your vision with an established universe. How hard is that for you as a director?

Ciarán: I mean, I think one of the reasons Scott gravitates toward “Citadel” is that we’re not worlds apart in terms of our tastes, our aesthetic. I enjoyed the first “Sinister” and I think that one of the things I admire about Scott’s take is when, a lot of genre films tend to treat the performances with a sense of reality and with a bit of whimsical winking to the audience that this is not entirely real and you’re on this for the ride and don’t take it too serious. But when you can bring a level of drama, just within the realms of a drama, to a horror film and you combine that with horror elements – ya know, like some of my favorite horror films like “Let The Right One In”, “Devil’s Backbone”, “The Exorcist”, in all those films the performances were so incredible that it just amplified any sense of terror and horror – so that’s something that I wanted to bring to this movie.

Other than I had to pay homage to the first movie’s aesthetics to some degree, but Scott was very supportive in the sense that he was like, ‘This is your movie. The script is its own beast and it’s not the same movie, it’s not a mystery with Ethan Hawke watching these movies’, the two central performers are 10 years old. So, it was kind of this combination of paying homage to the first movie, which I didn’t, from a directorial standpoint I would share a lot of those aesthetics and tastes anyway, and then bring in my own vision to it. That was kind of my process.

Aaron: This version of “Sinister” does something I found pretty interesting, you guys took a secondary character from the first film, Deputy So & So, and threw him into what I’d call a co-lead, because I’d say the kids are a major factor. Can you talk about what made you decide to keep the storylines connected and promote James (Ransone) to full-time?

Ciarán: Well, I think Scott and (C. Robert) Cargill felt he was the only character left alive from the first movie (laughs), so they wanted some sort of thread, some sort of daisy chain that connected the two films, so he was the natural fit. But I think what was interesting to me was the fact that they’d taken this essentially comic relief character from the first movie, and given him a central role in this second one. So what you get is the character, that I think from the first movie audiences found very endearing – not just from the perspective of him being very funny, which James naturally is – but also that he IS the audience. He’s not your atypical…horror heroes tend to come in either incredibly dumb and overconfident or your atypical action hero who is gonna take charge of the situation where most of us would run a mile, and I think James’ character is frightened to death of this whole thing. But in spite of himself, he still continues on his quest to do the right thing and I think that’s why we love him.

So making him a lead, it meant that there was going to be some more comedy beats, which I think this movie has got a little bit more levity in moments than the first one. But I think it works because it naturally comes out of James’ character, as opposed to ‘Hey, let’s write in some jokes!’ I thought that was interesting, and yea, I agree, he’s kind of in the background doing his own investigation and tying the first movie to the second, but I think the mom and the two boys are the center of the drama.

Aaron: Yea, Shannyn (Sossamon) is an actress I’ve been a fan of for a long time.

Ciarán: Yea, me too.

Aaron: It intriguing to see a large portion of the story unfold from the perspective of the kids that our Boogeyman is tormenting. And how that manipulation plays into the relationship between Shannyn’s character and her sons, especially Dylan. Why was expanding that portion of the mythology so important?

Ciarán: One thing that I really enjoyed about the script when I first read it was the fact that they had taken what presumably happened behind-the-scenes in the first movie – not to spoil the first movie for anyone who hasn’t seen it, but there’s a kid who kills his parents at the very end – and we realize it’s these kids who are doing these murders. But we never see the journey she’s taken from being a relatively normal kid to being this killer, so I thought that this was interesting to show the kind of manipulation that goes on behind-the-scenes and how, in many ways, the disciples or the foot soldiers of Bughuul are actually the ones who end up doing this. As opposed to Bughuul himself, it’s not a spell he puts on people, it’s more this game whereby they get the kids to watch the kill films, and there is a cumulative effect in watching these, a kind of hypnosis that happens.

I thought that was cool in that, obviously one of the components of the first film that people enjoyed were the kill films, so they need to bring them back, and it would have been just a little bit redundant just to have a character watching them – the first movie was a mystery, so this can’t be the same thing – but the fact that the kill films had a purpose apart from the whole voyeuristic aspect for the audience, they had a purpose and an effect on the characters. So that was something that I really responded to. In a weird way, it sort of makes you look back on the first movie and see things in a new light. That final scene, where Ethan Hawke sees that the projector has been on, we get now what must have went on.

Aaron: I agree with that. Actually when I walked out, I thought the same thing. So what’s more challenging – directing the home videos where you need to pretend like you’re an amateur, or finding creative ways to showcase a villain who is more a presence than a true antagonist?

Ciarán: Sure, yea, yea. I think the first, the kill films, were challenging more from the point-of-view of the cameramen who were shooting it. Because, like you say, you have to suddenly become amateur, you know, there’s a 10 year-old behind that camera, so a lot of the camera guys have spent decades ironing out anything in their work that would seem amateur. So that was a challenge to just give them that feeling of – obviously each of the kill films have a visual effect element to them – so they have to be shot a certain way and proper, some of them had blue screen elements and some of them had markers in there where creatures would be. So there was a very professional process in making them, then in the shooting of them, you have to make it look like shit. (laughs) That was a process. That was a hard one to do.

I think, to answer the second one about Bughuul, finding novel ways to have him be this specter in the background, it was something that myself and Bill Boes, the Production Designer, spoke about a lot. If you watch the movie, there’s a lot of shapes happening in the house, in the church, that would echo Bughuul, you know he has a very definitive silhouette – especially in his eyes, they’re sort of like perfect triangles – and so we brought that shape into a lot of the production design. I sort of did that with “Citadel” as well, made the terror block shape be something that was prominent and we trapped the characters within rectangles a lot of the time, and most of the audience should never notice it, but hopefully it has a subconscious effect on you so that you feel, in many ways, he’s ever-present.

Aaron: When it comes to horror, so much of it today is based on jump scares or gore, but you seem to rely a lot more on atmosphere, I’m curious what kind of horror, or terror as the old Hitchcock analogy went, in film gets to you the most?

Ciarán: Well, I’m glad you made an observation. I think, for me, atmosphere is key. All of my favorite horror films sort of drip in this atmosphere. It’s not an easy thing to do, because every department has to be singing from the same hymn sheet. So it’s not just your sound design, it’s not just your music, it’s not just your production design, it’s not just your angles and how you’ll shoot it, or your performances – it’s everything.

I think, for me, I really respond to horror films that leave me with that feeling whereby it gets under your fingernails and it sticks with you for days. Where I think if you watch a movie that is full of just cheap jump scares, then as soon as the credits come up you forget about it. Maybe you had a good time and it’s more like a rollercoaster journey, but I love the horror films that stick with you. For me, like some of my favorites – “Mothman Prophecies” is an underrated horror film – that’s what led me to Tom (Hadju) and Andy (Milburn), they scored “Citadel”. “Mothman Prophecies”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, movies like that where it stays with me and sticks with me for many years after I’ve seen them.

Aaron: Thanks for your time, Ciarán. I’ve got to let you go. I know you’ve probably got a junket to finish.

Ciarán: Yea (laughs)

Aaron: Thanks for everything and I wish you the best on the movie. It’s really good.

Ciarán: Thanks man. I appreciate it. Cheers!

“Sinister 2” releases to theaters nationwide, August 21st.