By BILL REICK
The ongoing V/H/S series is back with this year’s V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, which hit just in time for every horror fan’s favorite holiday. Anyone who has seen other entries in the series will find more to love in this sequel, as this installment joins earlier offerings in highlighting some of the genre’s most talented filmmakers. With unexpected names like Casper Kelly (of Too Many Cooks fame) and REC creator Paco Plaza at the helm, this film does not disappoint.
I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak with actress Sarah Nicklin, not only about her role in VH/S/HALLOWEEN, but also her love for and previous work in the horror genre. Throughout our discussion, Nicklin eloquently described her segment’s rich, nostalgic feeling. “Home Haunt” perfectly nails this “old-school” holiday sentiment, and I was really pleased with how its main actress conveyed why any horror fan should check it out. Sarah was so easy to talk to that our conversation stretched much longer than the segment’s runtime.
I couldn’t be more excited about V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, another great entry in that franchise. Would you give us a little bit of background about the segment that you appear in?
Absolutely. So, I appear in “Home Haunt.” It’s the final segment in V/H/S/HALLOWEEN. It’s directed by Micheline Pitt-Norman and R.H. Norman, and it follows a family as they do their annual home haunt. And they play a haunted record as the kickoff to the event, which makes the haunt come to life. Then, they have to go through a gauntlet of fighting the monsters that they created that are now real-life monsters.
And it’s phenomenal. I was super, super happy with it. I think it saved the best for last.
I felt like that, too. I mean, I might be biased, but…
Without casting aspersion on any of the other work that talented filmmakers and crews have done for V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, I liked this one the most.
I agree. I’m with you on that. It felt very nostalgic for Halloween. It had Halloween spirit to it.
Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to ask, that nostalgic feel, the way that it looks like a home movie, was that because of the equipment that was used on set? Or was that all post-production work to make it look a little bit grainier than it was?
It was post-production work. And then, they actually were talking about potentially releasing another version of it, maybe just without all of the filters. I don’t know if that would be official through Shudder, but I know the filmmakers would love to do that, just to have the full, beautiful, fully-realized version of what it was before adding those grainy filters.
But then, the nostalgic feeling of a lot of that comes from the set as well, and the props and the costumes that were used. A lot of which were from Micheline’s own personal collection and are legitimately from the ‘70s and ‘80s. That’s why they feel like old-school Halloween.
That definitely lends to the believability in everything that was created for the segment. Were you a big uh Halloween fan as a kid?
Oh yeah, I’m still a big Halloween fan. You never stop being a Halloween fan. But as a kid, yeah, I loved Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday. It was then and still is now, and I always looked forward to it every year, being able to dress up and go trick-or-treating.
Now that I live in Southern California, there are so many wonderful Halloween haunted activities that you get to do. And so, we’re celebrating Halloween for essentially a month and a half, which is absolutely wonderful. It’s my favorite time of year.
That little kid has to feel pretty fulfilled as an adult, being a part of some great horror projects, not just V/H/S/HALLOWEEN, but this year’s Popeye the Slayer Man, as well. Do you see your career continuing in the horror genre?
I’ve been working in horror for almost 20 years at this point. It’s also a really loyal genre. So, once you start working in it, a lot of people see your work, and they want to put you in their own horror films. And we also have such a wonderful community of fans in horror that I wouldn’t want to leave. So, I definitely want to continue to work in horror.
I also want to do more outside of horror as well, which I have done a little bit of, but not nearly to the extent of the amount of work that I’ve done in horror. I just want to continue to do a little bit of everything, and I like the spooky stuff. I’m drawn to those darker stories for whatever reason.
What is it about acting in horror that keeps drawing you back to that well over and over?
I think it’s one of the few genres where you actually get to do everything that you’ve been trained to do in acting school. You get to have some dramatic moments, some comedy moments. You get to have a lot of physicality. You get to do the emotional crying and the intense fear, and you get to use all of the tools in your toolbox and put that into a horror film.
Whereas I feel like with some other films, you’re a little more limited just because of the tone of it. And sometimes, a lot more mainstream films will play it safe, whereas horror is notorious for being able to take lots of risks and welcoming new concepts, new ideas, and you get to play with all sorts of different types of subject matter. And it’s endless, the amount of fun that you can have working on those genres. Those sets are super fun, too.
Absolutely. Particularly this one. Our readers won’t have the benefit of seeing the background of this Zoom call, but you’ve got the home haunt up there. That was definitely one of my favorite parts of your segment. How cool was that, showing up on set and having that built there?
Oh my god, the set! Like, every aspect of this set was absolutely incredible. My personal favorite was actually the witch’s bog. Walking into that set, I felt like I was on the set of Labyrinth or Legend, these dark fantasy movies that I grew up watching and that I absolutely love. And now, I’m in one! Then, obviously, the whole haunt was also incredible. I was like, “I want to actually go in this haunt; I want to go through this and enjoy it.” It’s probably the most elaborate set that I’ve ever been on, and I was so stoked. It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
And I don’t think you [the viewer] even get to fully enjoy the beauty of it as much because, you know, found footage, just the nature of it. We had that grainy filter on it; the camera is always moving. It was even more beautiful than what you see in the film to actually be there.
I definitely see the thought behind releasing a version of the movie that maybe puts those HD cameras to better use. Now that we know your favorite set in the segment, could you tell us your favorite kill?
So in our segment, my favorite kill is when Judy gets her head cut in half. I feel like it’s really jarring. You’re not really expecting it in the executioner’s chamber there. The effect of that was so good – the head coming down and splitting open, and you see all the inside of the brains and all that stuff. It was executed so, so well.
Yeah. I’m no expert, but usually when you see an effect like that, you can kind of tell where the cut happens, and it’s not pretty! It’s a dummy with a gushy head that comes in.
This, by contrast, was seamless. It was really affecting, too. Judy’s husband? I was happy to see him go, but when it came to her death, I was a little sad.
Yeah.
So, you’ve been working in horror for 20 years. Which came first, the work or the fandom?
The work came first because I didn’t really watch horror very much growing up as a kid. My family was a little conservative, and I didn’t… Well, we watched Halloween and The Exorcist at a friend’s sleepover because, you know, it’s a fun, crazy thing to do. But I didn’t really have an understanding of the genre until I started working in it by chance. I didn’t necessarily set out to work in horror.
I got involved with a local filmmaker when I was living in Boston. – Richard Griffin, who did a bunch of horror movies that were really popular and went straight to the DVD market back when you could actually make money doing that. They all got distributed. Because of him, I got some local notoriety and even national notoriety, because there were horror fans and filmmakers out in Los Angeles who knew of his films. He would be written about in Fangoria and all that sort of stuff.
Because of that, the snowball just went. Then, I started to learn more about films as I was working on them, because I was surrounded by all these amazing, wonderful horror people. They would reference horror movies that I didn’t know, so I had to go and watch them and educate myself, especially if I was working in that genre.
I’ve definitely become infatuated with and love the genre at this point. It’s pretty much all that I watch now.
So, because of what you’ve learned, and your proximity to the genre, do you find yourself appreciating horror movies more, or do you sit with a more critical lens, going like, I don’t know if I would have made that move?
I think a little bit of both. When movies are done well, I really appreciate the things they do. However, I do think I’m much more critical of horror movies now than I was when I first started watching them, just because I’ve consumed so much of it at this point. I know a lot of the tropes and beats, and I can see when filmmakers are being lazy.
I also see when people make horror just because they know it can make money, without really understanding or loving the genre. It’s just a cash grab, and you feel that in the film. So I’m critical of those types of films. But if it’s someone genuinely passionate, and you feel that in the movie, and they did something interesting and different and made it work, then I can really appreciate the work that went into that.
Yeah, I feel the same way. It’s easy to overlook some rough edges when it’s a labor of love and there’s a clear passion for it.
Yeah.
So, you weren’t watching a ton of horror movies growing up. What scared you a lot as a kid?
Let’s see. I didn’t have many movies that scared me. Well, there was an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger that I watched with my dad that had this mountain man in it that I had nightmares about for weeks, which is such a weird, random thing.
What do you remember about this mountain man?
There’s just one shot of him. It’s a close-up of his face, and he’s just screaming into the camera. Something about that, at that age, was just horrifying to me.
That’s really interesting. It’s funny how that kind of stuff might not have been intended to scare us, but it sets us off on a path to sleepless nights.
Exactly. Walker, Texas Ranger!
I grew up in Connecticut at the end of a cul-de-sac, and it was pretty quiet. Your imagination can run away with you, thinking there might be ghosts or something out there around the corner coming to get you. And being in Connecticut, there’s a big history of Puritans and witches and all that stuff, so it’s got this atmosphere to it. Anything that was scaring me at that time was kind of just in your head – manufactured, paranormal, “what-could-be-out-there” type stuff.
Going back and watching more horror movies since then, has anything you’ve seen captured that Connecticut atmosphere?
That’s a good question.
Or if not Connecticut specifically, maybe that cul-de-sac childhood vibe?
I think Michael Dougherty’s Trick ’r Treat does a really good job of capturing the Halloween spirit, like my childhood experience with Halloween, the vibe that I had with the neighborhood, and how everything is lit up, and you’re going trick-or-treating. That movie, to me, is the best for capturing that.
Is there anything else that you’d like our readers to know?
Well, I hope they like V/H/S/Halloween. We really put our heart and soul into making this. It definitely was one of those labors of love. I hope people have as much enjoyment watching it as we did making it.
That hard work and passion were palpable. How long was that shoot?
The shoot was five days. The actual shooting days were five days.
You wrung a lot out of five days of work. That must have been a pretty tightly choreographed schedule.
Very tight and very ambitious, even to the point of, like, we did the witch’s bog one day, and then on the same soundstage the next day, we moved over to the crypt. While we were working on that day in the crypt, the witch’s bog was being torn down and rebuilt as the graveyard. That whole thing had to be built in a day, and there was no way to go back and get pickups if you missed something for the witch’s bog because that set was literally gone.
Better hit your screams!
Exactly. Very ambitious shooting schedule.
Are there any other upcoming horror projects in your filmography?
The next one I have is a film called If It Bleeds, which is playing festivals now. Hopefully, that’ll be picked up for distribution and released, maybe sometime next year. I’m also in a TV thriller movie in Atlanta. I just shot a couple of days of that last week, and I’m going back for the rest of it next week. And I’ve kind of got the bug now. I want to try to make some of my own stuff. I’ve got a couple of ideas I’m developing with some collaborators.
