Review by Eric Hillis
Directed by Greg Swinson and Ryan Thiessen, Hunt Her Kill Her stars Natalie Terrazzino as a night shift janitor forced to fight
for her life when masked raiders break into the factory she's been
employed to clean.
We spoke to Swinson and Thiessen about their impressive low-budget
collaboration.
You first collaborated on 2006's Five Across the Eyes. How
was your partnership formed?
Ryan: Greg and I met in high school when I got cast in his
movie adaptation of the Mortal Kombat video game series. I was cast
as Raiden, Reptile, and probably one or two other masked characters.
We never completed the film but continued to work together on
various home-made action movies, including a pretty blatant rip-off
of The Crow. I also realised that I was a little better suited behind the
camera. After high school, Greg went on to film school and I went to
college, but we continued to work together in the hopes to make a
feature film one day. A few years later, we did – which was
Five Across The Eyes. And we've been working together ever since.
Could you give us an insight into how your co-directing process
works? Does one of you focus on the actors while the other
concentrates on the visuals or is it more of an equal
collaboration?
Ryan: Greg and I work together all throughout the writing
process. He is 100% the writer, but I help with the brainstorming
and feedback process as the script is written. So, when it comes
time to getting it on screen, we already have a shared vision of
what we are trying to accomplish. For
Hunt Her, Kill Her, Greg and I wore multiple hats during the production, so it was a
very divide-and-conquer mentality. I served as DP, so a lot of times
I would get the lighting set up while Greg gets our actors up to
speed on the next shot, scene, etc.. Then we would run the shot a
few times and tweak as needed. At the end of the day, it's really
about getting as close as we can to that original vision in the
script.
With Hunt Her Kill Her you've followed the advice of every
guide to low budget filmmaking and confined all the action to a
single location. Was the film conceived with the location in mind
or did you have to find somewhere suitable later on?
Greg: The factory has been in my family for years, so we
always had that particular location in mind. Scenes were
specifically written knowing exactly which nook, cranny and dark
corner to utilise. The factory was still in operation during
filming, so we'd come in at night after the day shift left and start
shooting.
The film seems heavily influenced by Die Hard with a
couple of what seem like explicit nods to that classic. Was it
indeed an influence? Did you have any other movies in mind while
making Hunt Her Kill Her?
Ryan: Yes, Die Hard was an influence. I see
some First Blood inspiration in this one, too. Greg is
a huge '80s and '90s action movie fan, so that influence tends to
make its way into our horror stories. We always considered it a bit
of an "action horror" movie, so we tried to do as much action as our
no-budget would allow. I think our lead, Natalie Terrazzino, really
did a great job with everything we asked her to do
there. We're also big fans of David Fincher, so we tried to draw
inspiration from his work for the actual shooting style.
The film features some impressive camerawork. I particularly
liked how the POV would switch between the predators and their
prey without cutting. Could you tell us how the many tracking
shots were pulled off?
Ryan: As many as we possibly could. Basically, we got a
dolly and a gimbal and used them anytime it made sense. Matter of
fact, as the camera operator, I got dumped off the dolly twice while
filming. We were working in a real factory, so one time the dolly
grip ran into a sanding machine and accidentally turned the wheels
causing me to roll off onto the floor with the camera in hand. It
was all about the tuck-and-roll to protect the camera on that
one.
Other times, we'd mount the camera on the gimbal and I'd run along
with the actors while trying to keep them framed up. Let's just say,
it was a very physical shoot.
And this isn't really a tracking shot, but our opening credits is a
true one-take dolly shot. We didn't stitch different takes together
but rolled it as one long shot. We numbered the lights so as we went
along, I called out the numbers and someone would flip that switch
to turn it off. After yet another dolly crash, I think we got it on
the 4th take.
It's almost unheard of today for a horror movie with a relatively
limited budget to get a UK cinema release, with most disappearing
into the VOD void. How did you get Hunt Her Kill Her into
UK cinemas?
Ryan: We were lucky enough to land some great distribution
partners on this film, including Welcome Villain in the US and
Screenbound Pictures in the UK. Screenbound decided to put it in UK
theatres, which totally blew us away. When we were making the film,
we never imagined that it'd get a theatrical run, so this is a bit
of a dream-come-true type scenario for us.
Hunt Her Kill Her comes to
UK/ROI VOD and bluray on May 27th following its theatrical release in April.
You can read our review
here.