The Deeper You Dig – out now from Arrow – is a horror film with a difference: it was made by and stars three members of the same family. Husband and wife John Adams and Toby Poser and daughter Zelda created the film and chatted about its genesis and the challenges they faced in a Zoom chat with Paul Simpson

The Deeper You Dig In places was not at all what I was expecting… And I think that’s partly what makes it work so well is that you think it’s going one way and then it takes a hard left and does something else. I can imagine conversations around the dinner table while you were filming: ‘How are we going to kill you this week?’

John: That’s exactly what happens (laughs).

Before we talk about this one, how did the whole idea of the three of you – or in fact the four of you to begin with – doing the movies together come about? Was it just a shared interest?

John: The first movie that we made was an experiment. All of us were interested in making movies; we love watching movies, we love talking about movies.

Toby had been an actress for a long time but her career was waning. I had been on a TV show out in Los Angeles and the girls were interested in being actresses. So we thought it would be fun to try and write our own movie. We saw the technology  was working for people like us. We could actually do something like this and afford to do it.

About eight years ago we bought an RV and we set out on the road to just see whether it was possible. And by the end of that trip, we found out that it was possible. It was hard, there were a lot of things we learned, but it was something that a family could so and we all enjoyed doing it together. And this is our sixth movie.

And you’ve not stuck with horror the whole time though, have you?

Zelda: No, the first couple of films were all dramas, and then my dad and I decided to make an experimental horror film. I would say it’s maybe an hour long.

We figured out that we loved horror; we got into some festivals and the horror community was so fantastic. So we decided to further our making of horror movies and we love it now.

What’s the attraction?

Toby: Well, I’ve got to say that the horror scene is so wonderful. The attention that The Deeper You Dig got in the genre festivals kinda blew our minds, so welcoming. Everyone is so creative and it’s funny – for something where there’s a lot of blood and guts, the people are the most wonderful people in the world. So we had a great time.

We also think that the genre allows us a lot of creativity, it’s just so much fun. And so we’re making another one.

Rather than specific influences on this film, what sort of horror do you like? Do you like the Texas Chainsaw type or are you more Night of the Living Dead fans? Or is it more the gradual dread building up? There’s attention on The Haunting of Bly House on Netflix at the moment because it’s much more about creeping dread than the first Haunting. Which areas do you like?

John: I think we each like something different. My favourite horror movie is John Carpenter’s The Thing. I love the coldness and the paranoia. Obviously the effects are really fun and the gore is really fun but what I really love are the silent quiet moments of The Thing. I just love that whole idea of paranoia and coldness and aloneness but I also love the gore of good horror movies.

I love good gore, I think that’s a lot of fun so I’m all over the map with what I love about horror but I do know that I just love the way directors and the way movies show fear. I love the different takes of fear, whether it’s quiet dread or whether it’s somebody getting their head chopped off. I love the different ways we all try to express fear.

Have you found that having made your own horror movies that you look at the films differently now?

John: Absolutely.

In what way?

Toby: I’m always interested in the psychology of fear. So I’m always looking at the undercurrents of films that frighten me. I want to know what little minute things the filmmakers might have been thinking of to make me frightened that I might not have thought of before – aside from the technicalities that we’re always looking at ‘Why did they edit it that way? Why did they use that angle?’ which is always there.

John and I were watching The Haunting of Bly Manor last night, but for me I’m really thinking of the things that the writers, in particular infuse their stores with, so that we might not even notice but it gives us that extra prickle. That’s important I think.

It’s the same emotional manipulation that a Pixar movie does. Good horror has that same thing doesn’t it? It’s a different emotion it’s manipulating but it is manipulation.

John: Absolutely. I remember The Ring gave me tingles up my spine when I watched it many years ago. It wasn’t jump scares or anything like that, it was that creeping sense of that girl just right out of frame when the boy was messing around with the camera. I love that kind of creeping dread, I love that more than jump scares. The psychological stuff that feels like the darkness of your nightmares, I think that’s really fun if movies can express that kind of fear.

How did the writing for this one work? Did you actually work out a full script before you started shooting? Or was there a certain amount of “This is what this scene has got to be” and take it from there?

Zelda: I’d like to say that we have a basic idea of what we want to do and I think that normally we have a beginning, middle and end, and then we work on the scenes. When we’re filming I think that we improvise but we have an outline that we work upon. But Toby is our really big scriptwriter so she can answer it best.

Toby: I love to really think through things and have a pretty decent template that’s really just a jumping off point. I like to have one because I think of a film as an intricate web and I want to know how every little thing is connected. So if I don’t write it down, I might miss a certain thread. But once we get started it can go in any direction and since there are three of us now directing our new film and we’ve always collaborated, we tend to do things in different ways. If we all see it differently then we’ll shoot it three different ways (laughs). But I’d like to have something written to start with and often it goes out the window.

Which begs the obvious question:  when you shoot it three ways, who’s in charge of the edit?

John: Actually, I put everything into the computer and I do the edits; however I love to say, and I really think it’s true, is that the clips don’t lie. It is always so obvious which clip or which idea is the winner, rarely do we have an argument about whose take to use. In fact I don’t think we know whose take it was when we’re looking in the editing bay. So really in the edits, the best ones just rise to the top and by the time we’re editing and putting that story together, I don’t think we remember whose idea was this exactly.

Everyone says, “Well, that was my idea” but you never know. (Laughs)

Do you edit as you go along or do you get the whole thing in the can, then sit down and do a chronological edit, or do you try and make a workpiece as you go along?

John: Definitely piece by piece. We’re very lucky that we’re just a crew of three. We shoot our scenes then we go home and I’ll do a rough edit. We’ll look at it and we’ll decide whether it flies, whether we need to change something, whether we like the way it looks and [if necessary] we can go back to that exact same spot and reshoot again. Sometimes we’ll shoot the same scene five times.

We definitely try to edit each scene as we go, so it’s not “put everything in the can and now it’s time to edit for the next six months”. It’s shoot edit reshoot edit.

How does it work directing a scene? Does it matter if you’re in the scene, you could still be directing it?

Toby: Yes. For The Deeper You Dig if Zelda was in school during the day and we wanted to use the saws to chop [her character] Echo’s body up. I would be shooting it while John is acting it but John would be setting up the cameras and really making sure that it looks great. Then, I might direct something and he might direct himself too, and sometimes if I wasn’t around John would shoot and direct and act in the same scene.

It’s usually a matter of who’s in the scene, who can run the camera, and then we all have a say in how we want to direct it.

So you’re going into a scene, you’ll try and get that footage that day and then work out between you who’s doing what bits? Apart from the obvious who’s doing the acting, everything else is assigned round what else is going on?

John: Yes. I don’t think we ever go into a scene assigning anybody any responsibility. I think what happens is, everybody does what they think they should do. Zelda will set up the camera the way she thinks the camera should be set up, I will act the way I think I should act then we’ll quickly look at it. Then I might say, ‘Hey, let’s change this camera angle’ or Zelda might say, ‘I think you look a little phoney, why don’t you act it down a little bit?’.

So I think it’s a really wonderful thing that we can look at the footage in the camera in real time and even edit and work and change and go with the flow right on set there. Because none of us is the director or the cameraperson or the sound person, I think that baton gets passed very quickly just depending on the situation.

Which makes it sound all lovely and wonderful and fluffy doves and everything, how much do you actually argue when you’re doing it?

Everyone laughs

Zelda: We don’t….

What’s the reality like?

John: Everyone loves asking this question.

It’s an inevitable question!

Zelda: I feel really lucky because I think we’re all friends. I don’t really think of us as “these are my parents and I’m their inferior”. I think that we’re all on the same level and that turns out really positively when we’re filming. And if we ever do have a disagreement about what we want to film, we’ll just say, ‘OK, we’ll shoot it three ways and we’ll see in the editing process which way turns out best.’

Toby: It’s usually pretty smooth. I don’t think we ever have any blow out arguments. We shoot it however we want, and if we have three different opinions then we duke it out in the editing and see, like John says, which rises to the top.

Zelda: The only person I get mad at is the weather. The weather can anger me sometimes.

John: Yes, there is a lot of sitting around waiting for a cloud to show up or waiting for the snow. We’ll see that it’s snowing really great and we’re like, “Oh my god we’ve got to start shooting”, and then suddenly the snow will stop… and now we have to sit in the cold and wait for the snow to kick up again because we already have some great footage with the snow. So there is a lot of arguing with the weather. I’ve screamed at a lot of clouds.

What’s the biggest challenge for you all making the films in this way? It obviously works for you but it is unusual.

John: Well, first of all I think we’re very lucky that we’re a tiny little trio. That’s all we’ve done, so we don’t know our disadvantages because all we’ve ever done is worked as a small group. So we don’t know what it’s like to work in a big crew and an actual editor and actual director, actual soundman…

To be fair, you and Toby have both worked with crews in your careers. So you’re aware of how that works.

John: Well yes. I actually found that incredibly difficult and drove me insane when I was on those sets. Everybody just had one job and mostly everybody was protecting themselves so it was a complete pain in the ass. I loved working with the people I worked with but in fact I felt sorry for each of us because everyone was just protecting themselves, it seemed.

In this case, it’s just us. We die or live by our own sword and there’s something really wonderful about that. We don’t have to hand this to anybody and say, “Is this good enough?” or “How do you like it?” We make our own decisions about that.

I would say the hardest thing is when we start to put the whole movie up in front of each other and watch it together at the end of the process. That can be hard because there’s where you see the blank spots. Now you have to go back and fix the;, for me that’s the most difficult spot.

When you put it on and you’re OK, how does the movie look? And you have an hour and ten of footage and you’re like, “You know what? We’re really missing something important here.” That happened with The Deeper You Dig and we fixed it.

I would say that’s the hardest part. When you put things together in small little pieces, sometimes the larger picture, you miss some things.

It’s not seeing the wood for the trees isn’t it? It’s a cliché but it’s actually true.

John: Correct.

Zelda: I’m sure some people could say that it can be a challenge not having access to a wider group of people for a cast and such but I think it’s pretty advantageous being all of us because we have access to the editing, the directing, the cinematography.

Having access to all those is really helpful towards making the whole because we’re all on the same page through all aspects of it.

Toby: Two things come to mind. One is when we do try to have a larger cast it can be incredibly exhausting and mind boggling when you’re wearing several different hats – you have fifteen actors that day and you have to be the producer that day and have everyone sign contracts and John you’re going to do this…That can be challenging and when you do have more people you have to really get into the zone, but other than that we don’t tend to have huge casts, the intimacy works for us. So we just use what works for us, we focus on our strengths.

I would say another challenge is we love to shoot outdoors. It’s a beautiful challenge because we don’t have fancy lighting or equipment, mother nature is our friend. She’s always throwing excellent stuff our way to shoot but we love to shoot in the cold and that can be really really really cold with a capital C. With The Deeper You Dig, we shot a lot in the snow, so there were some days where we were like, ‘Whoa I’m going to lose my hand for my art’, but it was worth it.

One of those ‘Whose stupid idea was this?’ days (laughs)…

Zelda: It’s funny because we always say “OK, only one more shot, I know it’s freezing but only one more shot “and then we end up doing fifteen more shots to get it.

You were talking earlier about the reception the film has had and how people have been. Has the reception that this has had on the horror circuit given you ideas for how you might do things differently? Has it reinforced certain ideas of how you do things?

Zelda: I think that people really like the relationship between me and Toby in The Deeper You Dig and I think the audience wanted that relationship to be developed a bit more. So in our next movie, that’s something we’re working on, developing a nice complex relationship between us so that people can really feel for our characters and what they’re going to go through.

Unless the audience cares about the characters beforehand there’s no point.

John: I think your question is great and probably the conversation we have the most is basically your question: What did we learn? What did we do good? What did we do bad? What do we continue? What do we stop? And what do we improve on?

I think Zelda’s answer is the best, I think that this next movie that we’re making is about a mother and daughter. We felt people would like more drama and more character development. I think people also really liked some of the experimental qualities of the film so we’re improving on that too.

Going around the festival circuit is a great learning experience, where you learn a lot. So we’re applying those lessons that we’ve learned.

So it’s a mother and daughter, and presumably John, you’re doing something to stop them being a mother and daughter?

John: Actually, in this case I’m stepping to the sidelines, I’m only in one scene in the movie. I really wanted to concentrate more on the behind the scenes stuff, with the editing and music and just facilitating these two who I think are terrific actresses.

I just wanted to enjoy that process and facilitate it.

Toby: It’s called Hellbender. (H6LLB6ND6R)

It’s about a mother and daughter. The mother keeps the daughter isolated on the top of a cold mountain, we’re led to believe, to protect the daughter because of an immunological weakness but you start to realise maybe it’s the other way around. That the world needs to be protected from the daughter.

That’s on the surface; under the surface I really think it’s about legacies of incredibly powerful women, strangely powerful women. There’s going to be a supernatural element there.

It’s about identity and how you may choose to turn a blind eye to your identity but in the end your nature is going to surface and it might be one that has a great thirst for blood and power.

You’re sort of getting into nature vs nurture?

John: Bingo!

Toby: We’ve been talking a lot about that. With a real hard slant to it.

John: A wolf is a wolf and a lion is a lion, and it’s good to be a lion and you need to be a lion if you’re a lion.

 

The Deeper You Dig is available now on limited edition Blu-ray from Arrow.

Thanks to Tom Hewson for his assistance in arranging this interview.

Click here for our review of The Deeper You Dig