By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Grief has become a perennial subject in horror films of the 2010s and 2020s, but few have addressed it as directly, and ultimately frighteningly, as THE SURRENDER. Writer/director Julia Max drew on her own experience in crafting her feature debut, and discusses those inspirations and much more below.
Now streaming on Shudder, THE SURRENDER stars Colby Minifie (THE BOYS) as Megan, who is helping her mother Barbara (Kate Burton) home-care for her cancer-ridden father Robert (Vaughn Anderson). After he dies, Barbara, who has put her faith in holistic medicine, brings into their home a shaman (Neil Sandilands) who promises to bring Robert back from beyond–at a steep price. The consequences become more horrific from there, and THE SURRENDER transitions from a finely detailed and acted study of two women dealing with a personal tragedy in very different ways to a chilling descent into the occult. (Note: The following discussion includes MILD SPOILERS.)
THE SURRENDER is dedicated “For Susan”; can you tell us about who she is and how she inspired the film?
This film is a very warped love letter to my mom, Susan [laughs], but without her, none of this would have been possible, so… The story was loosely inspired by what she and I went through when my stepfather passed away. The mother-daughter dynamic, the first act really, is very true to our experience, while obviously making Megan and Barbara their own individual characters who aren’t exactly us.
My mother hired a death doula [an end-of-life guide] when my stepfather was passing, and I had no idea what that was, so of course my mind went to the absolute worst-case scenario of what that could be [laughs]. That’s what the film is, the worst-case scenario, but in reality, her death doula was wonderful, and I’m so glad we had her. It was very helpful to have someone walk us through the whole process, so we knew what to expect, because death is something we don’t talk a lot about in our society. There were a lot of things I wasn’t anticipating, and it was wonderful to have a guide through all of it, so we were able to pay our respects and honor my stepfather in a way that I think we would have been rushed through if we had done it on our own.
THE SURRENDER has an unusual structure for this kind of film. Usually, the resurrection ritual happens at the end of the first act, and then the next hour or so is the ramifications. Your story is structured very differently.
We did try a few different versions of the script in which we got into the ritual much faster, but the issue that I had with that was that so much of this movie is about the dynamic between the mother and daughter. And when you rush right into the ritual, you lose all of that. Personally, I believe the horror and the heartbreak of the third act only land when you actually care about the characters. So it was very important that we allow time to get to know these people and their motivations, so that we understand how they could get to this position in the third act.
Megan and Barbara have a very specific, convincing dynamic. How much of that was scripted, and how much did the actors bring to it?
We were incredibly lucky. Colby Minifie and Kate Burton are both seasoned theater actors, so they were very excited at the prospect of getting to rehearse and do a bit of scene study with this. We brought them out a week early so the three of us could rehearse and really delve into these characters and their relationship. In doing that, we were able to take what I had written, alter it and make it more specific to fit them, so it felt natural and lived-in.
When it came to Robert, how do you cast an actor who has to play dead for a good portion of the film, and do so without flinching or blinking?
You know, that was a really difficult role to cast; that might have been the most challenging! Because in the script, he’s nude for so much of the movie, and most actors were like, “You want me to be naked for how long?” [Laughs] No matter how much I explained, “We won’t be showing anything or revealing anything,” it’s hard to get it out of your mind when it’s written that way. Of course we needed someone who was comfortable; we wanted all of our actors to feel comfortable with the prosthetics, because I’ve heard horror stories from [makeup effects artists] Sierra Spence and Josh Russell where actors thought they were comfortable with them, but then on the day were very not, which could be disastrous. So when we found Vaughn Armstrong, that was a dream come true, because he is a prosthetic master. He has done so many roles on STAR TREK where he was covered head to toe in prosthetics, so we didn’t need to worry about him.
Spence and Russell’s work is terrific, and truly unnerving; how did they come aboard, and what was the process of conceptualizing the makeup effects with them?
They’re the absolute best; I love them! I’d worked with them before on my short film PIECES OF ME, and they did a phenomenal job. I really hoped we would get them on this one, but they had just done the latest HELLRAISER, which was a much bigger budget, so I was like, “I don’t know if we can afford them!” Fortunately, they’re still willing to do low-budget indie films, so that was a win for us.
Getting to collaborate with them was a dream come true. Sierra really led the charge on this one, and had so many ideas and was so willing to pivot with us when the concept changed. It was wonderful working with someone who so understands how to build these incredible prosthetics and all the ins and outs of fake blood and the different types you need for different scenarios.
You mentioned the prosthetic concept changing; can you elaborate on that?
Initially, we had this idea of the otherworldly space being kind of a River Styx situation, so we were playing around with concepts of deep-sea creatures. But then when I went to their studio, because they work on multiple projects at the same time, I saw that they were working on a lot of similar kinds of sea monsters, and thought, “Damn, this is in the zeitgeist right now, and everyone’s doing this. We need to pivot!” So Ian and I spent a whole weekend just looking at different paintings and sculptures for inspiration, and we came up with a new idea, and I showed it to Sierra and said, “I am so sorry, this is totally different from anything we have discussed before, but would you be on board with going in this direction?” And she was like, “I love it, yes! Let’s do it!” Within two days, they’d sculpted a new mold for the prosthetic piece, and it was amazing.
THE SURRENDER opens with a flash-forward to one of the more graphic moments; was that done intentionally to let the audience know this will not be a genteel look at grieving?
Yes, I see that opening as a promise to viewers, like, “If you stick around, I promise it will get wild and derailed!” But it’s a slow burn, and you need that slowness at the beginning in order for the end to land.
How much of the occult material was the result of research, and how much did you invent for the film?
A lot of that was based on research on many different cultures that I kind of stole and mixed and matched, because I didn’t want it to specific to any one particular place or religion. We also had a fantastic occult consultant, Kevin Wetmore, who you’ve published in RUE MORGUE many times, and was really fantastic to have! It was hilarious; I actually texted him when I started getting to the chants, asking, “Hey Kevin, do you by any chance have any resurrection rituals lying around?” And he was like, “Oh yeah, I’ve got Babylonian, Sumerian–take your pick, I’ve got dozens!” And then he followed up by saying, “By the way, who is this?” [Laughs] I loved that he was just so on board to text-message random people about resurrection rituals.
THE SURRENDER’s central house becomes kind of a character in itself, with a real contrast between the bedrooms we see early on and the big room downstairs where the ritual takes place. Was that a real house, or did you shoot on sets?
That’s actually the Boddy House at Descanso Gardens, which we were incredibly lucky to get. They normally don’t let people go up to the second floor, but the first floor is open for guests to come and peruse, so if you’re in LA I highly recommend checking it out. And you’ll see that the house is completely empty, so we had a phenomenal production designer [Tahryn Justice Smith] who really filled it and made it feel lived-in.
There’s an undercurrent of humor running through THE SURRENDER even as it tackles serious subject matter, from the very funny bits involving Alexa at the beginning to some darkly comedic behavior as the movie goes on. How did you approach that?
I think it’s so important to seed humor throughout dramas and horror films. Life is never just one thing, and grief is not just one constant emotion all the time; it is a rollercoaster. Personally, I view grief as being when you emotionally have no filter anymore, so every thought that pops into your head hits you like a wave, and you can’t control it. When my mother and I were going through it, we would go from laughing hysterically to sobbing in the span of a minute. It’s constantly experiencing every new feeling that passes through you, and I wanted to incorporate that into the movie.
Did any of your crew have similar experiences to yours that they shared, and that found their way into the movie?
My husband and producer, Ian McDonald, who wrote WOMAN OF THE HOUR, was with me through that whole process. He was a wonderful support system, and it was very helpful getting his feedback at the script stage sharing his experiences, because he was looking at it all a bit more objectively than I was; there was just a little more distance there. And it has been very interesting throughout the process; I feel like the people who came on board had either experienced something similar themselves, and it struck a chord with them and they tapped into it emotionally, or they hadn’t gone through it and the project has kind of forced them to think about what that will be like, because unfortunately, this is something we all have to deal with at some point in our lives.
Since the movie has been out in festivals, have you been approached by others who have gone through similar experiences?
Yeah, it’s been really touching. I’ve had quite a few people come up to me after screenings and say, “I’m going through something similar to this” or “I just went through something similar to this. It really resonated with me and made me feel less alone. It felt like my experience was up on the screen.” That was so much of the intent of this film, because when you’re caregiving, it’s a very isolating process, and it can really feel like you are on your own and don’t know what you’re doing, and it’s really scary. So I want people who have gone through this to walk away from this movie feeling less alone, and like, “You’re doing a great job just getting through day by day.”
There have been a number of horror films in the last decade exploring grief as a key theme. Why do you think it has become such a popular subject for genre filmmakers in recent years?
I think grief has always played a part in the horror genre, simply because people always die in horror movies. As soon as one person finds out, “Oh, my best friend died,” there is an element of grief; usually, it’s rushed through [laughs] and it’s not the main focus. But it was only a matter of time before filmmakers decided to actually focus on that aspect a little more, because grief is pretty terrifying. It is a horrifying experience really processing death, especially the death of a loved one, so it does seem like a natural fit for the horror genre.
What’s next for you? Do you have any other horror projects in the works?
So many horror projects in the works! So many movies that I love, and are absolutely horrific. I will say that none of the other ones deal with grief; I feel like I’ve done that [laughs], but we will see gets going next. It’s always a bit of a crapshoot, isn’t it?
