The last time we see Mika Amonsen in Eli Roth’s recent Black Friday-themed slasher, Thanksgiving, he’s having his neck snapped 180-degrees. Typical Roth. It’s something Amonsen is getting used to – on-screen murder – his next two roles see him as an internet influencer being chased down in an abandoned prison by a murderous inmate, and a student cursed by an ancient Aztec death whistle. For someone who confesses to not really watching horror movies as a kid, Amonsen is finding himself living them out for real.

Alex James Taylor: Thanksgiving is such a fun movie. Can you take me back to how you first got that role and what it was like working with Eli Roth?
Mika Amonsen: I was actually quite sick when I auditioned for Thanksgiving and I didn’t anticipate that I’d get it. I was recovering from a surgery that was quite obvious on camera, so sent the tape and forgot about it. Then I got the callback and booked it.

AJT: They liked the sick look. [both laugh]
MA: I think they wanted Lonnie to be this sort of despicable, rough-round-the-edges type, so it only fit him more. But it’s funny because by the time I met Eli I’d recovered and he was like, “Oh, you look less sick.” [laughs] Also, I’d been working on a Boston accent since forever [Mika’s character is from Boston], inspired by all the actors I’ve looked up to, like Matt Damon, Casey Affleck, and Eli, so I’ve had that in my back pocket for a while. Working with Eli was an amazing experience, to work with one of my icons in was amazing. He’s such a calm and specific director who knows exactly what he wants and has no hard time conveying it. And he’s just a hilarious guy.

AJT: Yeah, people sometimes sleep on Eli’s comedy, he’s so witty and clever.
MA: I think in this one his comedy was much more overt than in other movies, it’s very comedy-forward.

AJT: Even the tagline: ‘white meat, dark meat, all will be carved.’
MA: [laughs] He just went so over the top. Him and his friend, Jeff Rendell, who he’s spoken about quite a lot on social media, they co-produced and co-wrote the film, he’s so hilarious himself and absolutely unhinged – I love that man. So a lot of the crazy ideas also came from him. It’s this childhood dream they had to make an unconventional horror movie [they co-wrote the film when they were eighteen years-old], because Christmas had horror movies, and Halloween obviously, but never Thanksgiving. They were like, “Wouldn’t it be funny if there was like a turkey but a human all bent up and cooked?” They went off that crazy idea and made it.

AJT: It’s knowing how far to push it, letting it hang over the edge.
MA: Oh, we pushed it quite a lot, man. We actually pushed it way more than what’s in the film, we had to cut back because people got too disgusted with some of the details – I’m not even sure if I’m allowed to share them. Some scenes just went the extra mile and we got the call saying, “You need to reshoot this, it’s fucking disgusting.” [both laugh] I’d love to see a director’s cut of Eli’s version, unfiltered.

AJT: It’s interesting, slasher horror movies seem to be bigger than ever, but they also never really fall out of trend – there’s always an audience desire for these fun, gory stories. Especially that 80s influence.
MA: I feel like a lot now are the spawn of Stranger Things, it brought back the retro vibe people love, the synths, music, no cellphones, kids running away from monsters. It’s easy to put on camera because it’s so cinematically beautiful.

AJT: And teen slashers have such a place in US culture – you see a group of teens in a diner in varsity jackets and you know some of them aren’t making it out alive. [both laugh] Did you grow up on horror movies as a kid?
MA: That’s the thing, no, I’ve been terrified of them. However, I’ve shot so many of them this year that I’ve started to watch them to gain knowledge and have an understanding. When I was working on Thanksgiving I was like, “OK, I need to look into these films Eli is suggesting and try to get a sense of the world he’s building.”

AJT: You’ve got two other horrors coming up, Fresh Meat and Whistle. That’s three horrors in a row, It must be interesting to see the similarities and differences between them.
MA: They were all so different for so many reasons. In Thanksgiving, I felt like Lonnie was almost in his own movie. It didn’t feel like a horror movie for me because my death was so abrupt and I feel like a lot of the time he’s just bullying these teenagers and being a despicable human being. He’s so aloof to the plot. Then when I did Fresh Meat, there’s a lot of running and screaming because I’m stuck in a prison with this terrifying thing that’s ripping us all apart. It felt like the movie Barbarian. I actually struggled with that as an actor, it takes me a lot to get to that place. I find it, but I have to be in a dark corner, pace, and get my mind in a certain state. So that was much more challenging but very fulfilling to see the results.

“Some scenes just went the extra mile and we got the call saying, “You need to reshoot this, it’s fucking disgusting.””

AJT: It’s funny because if a role requires you to be happy or sad or anxious, you can relate to these things, but being literally scared for your life is something hardly anyone has experienced. So as an actor doing horror movies, you have to conjure something you probably haven’t felt before.
MA: Yeah, I tend to take it back to some of the Meisner exercises I’ve learned, where it’s a little bit of memory recall, but it’s almost false memory recall. So there was one scene where we needed to get out of the building and I couldn’t find the panic, so I imagined there was this reaper killing my father outside the door and if I didn’t get to him, he’d perish. Creating that in my brain reflected the panic I’d need to feel to get out of the building with that strong of a motive, the stakes being that high. Sometimes you have to play with your brain to get there.

“I imagined there was this reaper killing my father outside the door and if I didn’t get to him, he’d perish.”

AJT: Speaking of your father, I did want to speak a bit about your family. Your mum was a dancer and your dad was very into his music – so you always had music and art around you as a kid?
MA: Yeah, my mother was a dancer, but by the time I was born she was a stay-at-home mother and a student, I never really got to see too much of her dancing and she didn’t talk about it too much. The most I got to see was her dancing to Prince in the living room, or if she’d had too much Pinot Grigio at a party and started feeling good [laughs]. My father built homes, he was an artist that way, an architect, but he was very into rock ‘n’ roll music – it was just always on. I was home-schooled and was surrounded by these artistic influences. We formed the band after a three-month trip to the United States [Mika was in a band with his brothers], we toured the East Coast and my brothers and I became very influenced by blues and rock ‘n’ roll, and by the time we got home our dad had loaded up the entire trailer with musical equipment – it was just all amplifiers, guitars, drums. We recorded a ten-track album and opened for Canadian icons like Kim Mitchell.

AJT: Nice, do you still play guitar?
MA: I do. I still play and sing. My lovely girlfriend and soon-to-be-wife is a very talented musician herself and we play together constantly.

Feature originally published in Heroine 20.