By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Classical music and a classic actor are key elements of the supernatural chiller THE PIPER, which opens in select theaters and debuts on VOD/digital platforms today. It’s one of the final films of the late, great Julian Sands, and the latest work by Icelandic filmmaker Erlingur Thoroddsen.
After making his feature debut with 2016’s CHILD EATER, based on his short film of the same title, Thoroddsen scripted and directed the 2017 supernatural/psychological thriller THE RIFT. THE PIPER, whose producing team includes Boaz Davidson and Avi Lerner of longtime action/horror supplier Millennium Media and RESIDENT EVIL veteran Victor Hadida, features a lush score by horror music maestro Christopher Young. Thoroddsen’s script focuses on Melanie Walker (Charlotte Hope), a flautist in an orchestra overseen and conducted by the domineering Gustafson (Sands). When Katherine (Louise Gold), Melanie’s former mentor who is providing a long-unperformed concerto for a fund-raising performance, dies under mysterious circumstances, Melanie volunteers to retrieve the composition. The concerto has a dark history, however, and a sinister influence on anyone who listens to it, and as Melanie attempts to reconstruct its final portions, it threatens her, her hearing-impaired daughter Zoe (Aoibhe O’Flanagan) and everyone around them. And as the title indicates, the music is tied to the Pied Piper of Hamelin–an especially monstrous incarnation of the legendary character.
After CHILD EATER, what inspired you to take on another mythical character who preys on children?
I’m from Iceland, a country that has a lot of scary myths and folklore, and growing up with those types of stories made me fascinated by them. I especially love fairy tales for children that are actually not very suitable for children, like The Pied Piper of Hamelin.
The spark for the film came when I reread that story a few years ago, and found it super-disturbing. The idea of this stranger stealing away all of a town’s children in the middle of the night felt very sinister, but also intriguing. I started digging into the origins of the story, and was surprised to discover that apparently it’s based on an actual event. No one really knows what happened, but in 1284 all the children in Hamelin vanished without a trace, and the fairy tale was born from that event. It felt like there was a lot of interesting mystery to discover there, and I kept thinking, “Where did those kids go?” That’s when I started writing.
Do you have a background in music that inspired the story, and if not, how much research did you do for that side of it?
I don’t have a musical background personally, aside from listening to a lot of it. But my dad is a jazz guitarist, so I grew up with a lot of music around me. When I was in my early 20s, I got a job as an assistant stagehand at the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, which was a fantastic experience. I’ve always been a fan of classical music, and working in that environment made me appreciate it even more. It also made me want to write a story set in the competitive world of classical musicians.
When it came to writing the PIPER script, I did indeed do a lot of research into different kinds of music and theory. All the dialogue about demonic music that supposedly possessed people in the Middle Ages comes from that research, as well as the philosophical ideas of chaos and harmony in music. I found all of it super-intriguing and tried to pack as much of that into the script as I could. Some earlier versions of the screenplay were a lot more philosophically minded, but I didn’t want people to feel like they were going to class. So I stripped a lot of that down to what we have now.
Theories and dialogue is one thing, but the person who then had to take all of that and turn it into real music was Christopher Young. The melody had to be at once simple, seductive and sinister, which is easier said than done. Chris was up for the task, and created something truly magical for the film. He’s been a hero of mine since I was old enough to watch HELLRAISER, and getting to work with him was a total dream come true. I’m obviously biased, but I believe this score ranks among his very best.
How did you develop your own variation on the Pied Piper myth?
It really just started with me wondering where those children in Hamelin disappeared to. Some versions of the fairy tale talk about the Piper drowning them in a nearby lake, which felt both scary and visually interesting. The fairy tale also includes a girl who was deaf and therefore immune to the Piper’s cursed melody, and able to alert the adults, and so of course I wanted to include that in the film as well.
At a certain point, it became more about fleshing out the character of Mel. Her struggles with balancing her family life with her job was something I truly related to. It’s far too easy to get lost in your work, especially for people in the creative fields. When that became the focus of the story, I tried to use the Piper more as a foil to her. He’s the force that makes her life more and more difficult, and I guess you could say in a metaphorical sense he represents creativity gone wrong.
This looks like your biggest movie yet, so what were the specific challenges of that?
Yes, it was indeed the biggest film I’ve done. I went from making two micro-budget features, CHILD EATER and RIFT, to this much larger production. It was still fairly low-budget in Hollywood terms, but this was the first time I was able to build sets, for example. So it was a pretty amazing experience for me.
I think the main challenge going from something small to something of this size is that the small productions are often lighter on their feet, which I had gotten quite used to. On a bigger production, things can take a lot longer and there are many more people to answer to. And in spite of the scale being bigger, we still didn’t have very many days to shoot, and the script had some very complicated sequences. We had a whole symphony orchestra, 500 extras in the audience, heavy prosthetic makeup, rats… Those are a lot of elements to juggle. But ultimately, I was working with an amazing team and an amazing cast, so we were able to get everything done.
How was it working with veteran producers like Boaz Davidson, Avi Lerner and Victor Hadida?
It was great getting to work with the entire Millennium team on this. They brought decades’ worth of experience to the table, so I feel like I was constantly learning something new every step of the way. Even though they make huge movies, it’s a relatively small operation, so everyone was quite involved from the get-go. Once we got to filming, it was my lead producer Tanner Mobley who oversaw the production. He was the one who originally found the script and fell in love with it, so the two of us worked very closely together on developing the story further and making sure we had what we needed to shoot it.
How did you find the auditorium and your other locations?
The film was shot in and around the Nu Boyana studio in Sofia, Bulgaria. The locations were a mix of finding real places that fit what we needed, using already-built sets that existed at Nu Boyana, and lastly we were able to build a few of our own sets, like the inside of Katharine’s mansion, and Mel’s apartment.
We had a great team in Sofia, and they took me to see some awesome places, including several music halls and auditoriums. The auditorium you see in the film is actually a combination of a few locations. The main stage, the backstage, the exterior…they’re all different places. It became a bit of a puzzle to make it all work seamlessly, but I think in the end we managed.
How did Julian Sands wind up being cast, and what are your memories of working with him?
Julian was my first pick for Gustafson. I’ve been a fan of his since I saw ARACHNOPHOBIA as a kid, and he had been on my mind when I wrote the character. I was able to get the script to him and he liked it, so we arranged a Zoom meeting; this was at the height of COVID. It was such a great call. We hit it off immediately. We shared a love of music and movies and he could tell that I had some interesting ideas I wanted to explore.
During that meeting, he taught me something that I will forever remember and try to live by, which was that when he decides on a project, a big part of it is whether or not it will be an adventure for him. Will it take him to new places, will it bring him to collaborate with interesting people, will it be enjoyable? All questions that seem like they should be obvious, but often in the stressful grind of filmmaking, we end up losing sight of how lucky we are to be able to do this for a living. He wanted to have an adventure with me making THE PIPER in Sofia, and I’m forever grateful to have had the chance to work with him. He was an amazing person, generous, funny, delightful. I really miss him.
How did you approach the makeup effects for the Piper character?
The big thing about makeup effects is that they’re extremely time-consuming to accomplish on a film set. We didn’t have a whole lot of time to film THE PIPER, so we tried to use those things sparingly and only when we really, really needed to. The whole idea was always to keep the Piper himself hidden for most of the film and save the big reveal for the third act, which definitely helped.
I’m super-proud of the makeup effects and the look of the Piper. We worked with a UK-based company that coincidentally is also called Millennium. They came up with the design based on references I gave them, and created the prosthetics that the Bulgarian makeup artists applied to Boyan Anev, who played the Piper. I think it came out fantastic, and Boyan brought the makeup to life with his awesome physical performance.
Anything else you want to say about THE PIPER?
I just want to say that if you are able to see the film in a cinema, I very strongly recommend that you do. We made the film for theaters, with a big, lush score and grand visuals courtesy of the masterful Daniel Katz, our director of photography. I really think it’s the way to get the full experience of THE PIPER.
