Chances are, if you’re a genre fan, you know what SpectreVision is. And if you don’t know, you will soon enough.
Formerly known as The Woodshed and officially founded in 2010 by actor Elijah Wood and filmmakers Daniel Noah and Josh C. Waller, SpectreVision is a production company responsible for some of the most bracing and original genre films in recent memory – projects like Ana Lily Amirpour’s one-of-a-kind vampire movie “A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night,” Nacho Vigalondo’s Hitchcockian thriller “Open Windows” and Panos Cosmatos’ almost indescribable “Mandy,” which remains one of the best films of the decade.
They also resurrected “Belladonna of Sadness,” a largely forgotten anime from 1973, and oversaw the return of Australian filmmaker Richard Stanley, whose 2019 film “Color Out of Space” was his first completed feature in nearly three decades. (After abuse allegations were leveled against Stanley, SpectreVision cut ties with the director and said that all future revenue from the movie would be donated to charities.)
In the years since the company’s formation they have branched out to videogames, podcasts, publishing and consumer products, launching Mutant, a company run by veterans of Mondo, which releases best-in-class vinyl records, posters and other collectibles.
SpectreVision’s latest film is “Rabbit Trap,” an idiosyncratic horror movie starring Dev Patel that premiered at this year’s Sundance Film Festival. “Rabbit Trap” is now available on digital wherever you buy or rent your movies, which was a good enough excuse for us to speak to Wood, Noah and Lawrence Inglee, who joined as partner and president of production last year.
What is SpectreVision to you and what is your vision for it?
Daniel Noah: All three of us would answer this somewhat differently, but I think that it’s maybe a little bit unusual in “Hollywood,” because it’s driven primarily by a desire to express a point-of-view and to further certain values and beliefs that we have about cinema and art and the world at large. We started as a “horror company.” I think we’ve grown into something much, much more now. We’re genre agnostic and medium agnostic as well. What all of the projects have in common, as Lawrence always says, is that they’re similar only in their uniqueness. We really get up off the couch for filmmakers’ visions that are unique and uncompromising and really wanting to be the team that champions those kinds of mavericks in a system that doesn’t always make it so easy.
Lawrence Inglee: I think the way that Daniel mentioned, is the only way that we’ve really been able to think about describing how we how we govern the slate or the projects that we do. And if we’re doing it right, the projects should be similar only in their uniqueness that we’re striving to do something that’s exciting to us at the same time as we’re encountering it. Projects come from all over the place. We have a movie out now called “Rabbit Trap” that we shot in the north of England. We’re premiering a movie with our Norwegian partners at Fantastic Fest that’s entirely in the Norwegian language in a matter of days. And what do these movies have in common? They have in common their uniqueness, among maybe some other things, but primarily that.
We take that same approach to every aspect of the medium, not just the movies. And as Daniel was alluding to, we’re into publishing and comic books, and there’s a podcast network, and all of these things may feel a little bit disassociated, but they’re all underneath the same ethos. One of the primary things under that ethos is just our sticking together because it can be a very lonely business, and we’ve all been in it in different capacities for a really long time, and what brings us together on a regular basis is the sense of solidarity and knowing that no matter how bad we screw things up on any given day, we still have each other to retreat to and recalibrate and try again.
You brought up publishing and you’re branching out into all of these other areas, but what is the biggest evolutionary change the company has gone through since starting out?
Elijah Wood: It started relatively small and really hyper-focused in creating a sense of identity that was identifiable and clear. We were really hyper-focused on what those films would be. We were very much a genre company and we would know it when we would see it. A big change is broadening our horizons and allowing for anything to enter our world that we would engage with, as long as it feels special and different and unique. That’s a major shift I feel. And I think also creating new arms to the company – having the podcast division; Mutant being another arm of our company. We’re now expressing ourselves in ways that we weren’t really able to initially, because we were just really focused on building a sense of a brand identity. And now that we have, we feel the reins are let loose a little bit and we can explore, which is something that we’ve always wanted to do.
What’s the next big goal for SpectreVision?
Noah: We want to just keep leaning into where we’re already going, the direction we’re already going. We always talk about how when you’re making a movie, the world is teaching you about the movie as you make it. And I think the same is true for a company like this. We first sat down and started talking about this 15 years ago, which is mind blowing. Elijah and I both have gray hairs that we didn’t have at that time. Lawrence joined us about two years ago and I feel like I learned about SpectreVision, which isn’t just movies anymore, it’s kind of transcended a medium to become more about a message. Reaching a certain type of person is the way that the system is generally designed for institutionalized popular media, it makes it very difficult to get anything through that is idiosyncratic or that doesn’t necessarily have the promise of being a four-quadrant blockbuster. That leaves an enormous swath of people not being spoken to, who are valid and deserve to have material made for them. Even if they’re not going to support something at the level of Marvel movie, they’re still real people, and it’s still a real market. And I think what I feel like I’m learning about SpectreVision is I think we were here to be a catcher in the rye for the projects and the voices that maybe wouldn’t find their way without having to reshape themselves in ways that would really interfere with the authenticity. Whenever we meet people who are fans of what we do, it’s always so moving to see just how passionate they are and how intimate the relationship is to the work. I think that’s because they’re just not really getting it consistently anywhere else, at least not from a single brand that is so dedicated to speaking in a certain kind of language.
How important is the theatrical experience to that goal?
Wood: The industry is going through a shift, as it always does and always has. A lot of it is technologically driven and in that mix up of confusion as to where things really land, there’s a lot of opportunity and theatrical is, I think, becoming important again, and I think it never will go away. People will congregate and have a communal experience over cinema that might not have the sway that it once had in the ‘80s or the ‘90s, but it will always be significant, and it will certainly always be important to us that there be some theatrical experience with the films that we make, because we just believe in the sacredness of that experience. And it feels like there are new avenues for distribution, there are new people in the field, picking up that mantle, and there always will be. We look at the shifts and the changes in the industry as opportunities and with a great deal of positivity.
Inglee: I love the way you put that, Elijah, it’s true. There’s tributaries we’re talking to, and it’s almost like we’re talking about theatrical like vinyl –specialized, it’s interesting, and there’s a place for it, and there are people who want it, and that experience can be made available to them, even for our particular brand of movies. It’s exciting on that level, there’s a new way of looking at the actual distribution.
Noah: Just building off what these guys are saying is that we were all of a certain age where theatrical was the defining mirror to our lives and it’s very sacred to us. But that’s not necessarily true of younger generations and that’s okay. We don’t want to be like the New York taxi drivers who are burning Ubers. I think that’s part of why we’ve diversified so much. As we’ve gotten into the podcasting space, it’s been really interesting to see how that works, and that there’s a whole culture of “Internet content creators” who have been looked down upon by the industry whose work is reaching millions of people because they speak a language that younger people understand and is familiar to them. I think this is part of what’s so thrilling about having so many different modes of expression, is it’s what I meant earlier when I said it’s more the message than the medium. We’ll meet them wherever they are. We’re not holding on tightly to any one particular way, although, of course, we have our personal loves and proclivities.
What was it about “Rabbit Trap” that spoke to you all?
Wood: “Rabbit Trap” came to us from Elisa Lleras, who’s one of the producers on the film. We’ve worked with her many times before and she knows our interests and our proclivities, and came across [writer/director] Bryn [Chainey]’s look-book and script and sent it to us, and was like, “This is so your shit, so supremely you guys.” It’s set in the 1970s and is centered on a female electronic musician. We’re obsessed with that era, and certainly that kind of music, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and these sort of incredible artists from that time, and then marrying that with really exciting folk horror, which is a genre we love, that sound is a primary component to the distillation of that horror, it had us singing, just reading that look-book. And then meeting Bryn and hearing him pitch so eloquently and so clearly what his vision was for this, we were in. It was very easy.
Are you surprised that “Mandy” has become this beloved cult artifact?
Wood: I’m not surprised, which isn’t to say that it’s like we knew all along. But I think we were so blown away by what (Cosmatos) did with “Beyond the Black Rainbow.” And the way we met him is we found out that he was going to be in LA, his movie was screening at CineFamily, and we cornered him, and we’re like, “We have to have a meeting.” And we’re like, “We’ll make anything you want to make.” And it happened to be “Mandy.” I don’t know, like the iconography within the context of that film, Nic Cage’s performance, the way that all came together, I’m not surprised that people continue to go back to it and continue to fall in love with it. It’s so singular and so special.
We could use a 4K disc.
Noah: That is a hot topic of conversation. The 10th anniversary approaches…
