Annie Marie Elliot’s directorial debut – short film Agonist – is a story of cults, acid trips and seven deadly sins – personified. Obviously, it’s a ride. The vision came to fruition after watching Ari Aster’s existential horror, Hereditary, mixed with Elliot’s own unorthodox upbringing: she attended a Christian school where ‘End Times’ and ‘Hell’ were on the curriculum. With ambitions to create worlds that blend reality with the surreal, the US actor-filmmaker twists, tweaks and translates tales of real-life complexities into stories of the fantastical.

Ella Joyce: You’ve recently released Agonist, which is super exciting. Can you tell us about that?
Annie Marie Elliot: It’s a psychological horror in the tone of Hereditary and it follows Tristan who is played by my boyfriend Devin Druid. I bring him to this new-age sound bath type of class which is like a full-on cult and each of the people there represent one of the seven deadly sins. We have pride, envy, lust, sloth, greed, wrath and gluttony.

EJ: I love the idea of using the seven deadly sins. Where did that come from?
AME: I knew I wanted it to be about a really bad acid or Ayahuasca trip and so I wrote a short about Devin’s character having a really bad trip, but he pushed me like, “Come on girl, this can’t be the whole short. You have to have a story.” I knew I wanted to tell it about religious trauma because I went to a Christian Elementary-Middle School and we would have to learn about End Times all the time. I was always hyper paranoid about the end of the world, being a kid in a Christian school having them tell me, “You’re going to go to Hell,” created that. I knew I wanted it to be about an acid trip, religious trauma, and cults so I combined it all together. [laughs] It took me about a year to create the concept.

EJ: Did growing up in that environment make you want to push against it in your creative work? What’s your relationship with it now?
AME: Growing up in a Christian school I was like, “Fuck this. These people are horrible.” But then when I moved to LA at the age of seventeen I didn’t know anyone here so I started going to this church – and it was pretty much a cult. I went there because I didn’t know anyone in LA, I was vulnerable and I was looking for a community of people so I went to a Christian cult for a little bit. [laughs]

EJ: How did you transition into filmmaking?
AME: I’m adopted and I was so shy as a kid that some people thought I was mute. I was in a really big family of brothers and they’re all older so it was very rowdy. I was always super artistic as a kid. I have super bad ADD so wasn’t the best in school. I knew I wanted to do something in the arts but I was too shy to pursue acting or directing. I started modelling at the age of fifteen, then I moved to LA by myself when I was seventeen with $30 to my name. Modelling was paying the bills for seven years, I lived in London modelling for a year or two, training with an acting coach and then I got deported. [laughs] It was traumatic but it’s fine. My work visa expired and then a day after I got deported I met my partner Devin, we’ve been together six years now and he gave me the confidence to get into acting. Then I booked an A24 pilot last year, and they’re shopping that around. I realised I like directing a lot more than acting.

EJ: How do those two things inform each other?
AME: In the few projects I have done I’ve learned what to do and what not to do. I never want to stress out my actors and make them think they’re doing something wrong. It was helpful to know how to talk to actors as a director, to make them feel comfortable and confident and to reassure them. Being a former model and an actor, some of my actors were like, “Oh my god Annie, you are the first director that has ever told me to put my neck up a little higher because you have a double chin.” [both laugh]

EJ: In terms of framing and aesthetics when making your films, which filmmakers do you look to as reference points?
AME: Definitely Ari Aster and Greta Gerwig. I didn’t even like horror films growing up but after I saw Hereditary I was like, “What the fuck? I’m so disturbed.” I had to go home and think about it and analyse it for weeks. I’m also inspired by Darren Aronofsky – I like filmmakers who make me feel a certain way, like how Greta Gerwig made me feel in Ladybird – it just stuck with me. A lot of
Ari Aster and Darren Aronofsky’s films are heavy metaphors that you have to go home and analyse.

EJ: You mentioned you didn’t like horror before Hereditary and you’ve now made a horror movie, what is it about the genre that appeals to you? Are there any other genres you’d like to explore?
AME: I didn’t like horror movies until Hereditary because I feel like it’s really easy to make a horror film cheap or make a slasher we’ve all seen before. I like horror films that have a surrealism to them and a psychological twist. I definitely want to do a coming-of-age story, Ladybird and Hereditary are my favourite movies.

EJ: I love Ladybird, when a coming-of-age movie is done well they’re just perfect.
AME: So true, Ladybird was so sad. I want to explore more films like that, which show the complexity of interpersonal relationships.

EJ: As a filmmaker I imagine your research is so much about observing people. Is your brain wired to pick up certain conversations you hear in public and analyse people in particular ways?
AME: It definitely helps that I come from such a fucked up crazy upbringing – that gives me a lot of inspiration in terms of characters. I don’t want to seem like, “Oh I’m going to use this,” but you can’t help but pick up certain things. My short film is heavy on metaphors because they all die in vain of their deadly sin. One of the characters, their mom falls out of an apple tree and he runs to go pick her up, and because he picked her up so quickly she became paralysed, and that actually happened to my dad growing up. I’ve taken little things like that from real life, weird stuff that has happened to my family or people I know. I definitely find it easy to draw inspiration from the world around me.

EJ: I was looking on your Instagram and noticed you have a page for photography, your images are great and they’re in such beautiful locations.
AME: Thanks! I got into photography in the past year, I always wanted to learn how to do it but when I was younger I couldn’t afford a camera. I’ve spent way too much money in the past year on all my cameras – I got a Fuji X100V first. I try to photograph as much as I can, whether it’s with friends or in nature.

EJ: Do you prefer film to digital?
AME: I do, I like the feel of film photos. My Fuji X100V is actually a digital camera but it has this filter that means you can manually go in and edit to look like film. I also have a Hasselblad which I think was made during WWII, and that one is really fun to shoot with.

EJ: I also saw you make oil paintings.
AME: I haven’t in a while but during the pandemic I was so bored, I was like, “What do I do with my life?” I was in art class as a kid and that was definitely what I enjoyed most at school, so my boyfriend was like, “You should try painting again.” I watched a Bob Ross tutorial and then I started. [laughs] My favourite artist is Claude Monet, I definitely want to get into more impressionistic
painting rather than just Bob Ross.