Top image: The Final Girls (2015) dir. Todd Strauss-Schulson

Premiering at last year’s SXSW festival, The Final Girls was met with rave reviews, made regular ‘best of 2015’ lists, and was heralded as a new cult classic. Now, being showcased at Somerset House on 13th August as part of Film4’s Summer Screens (with a double bill against Galaxy Quest, no less), the film gets ready to make it’s European debut, nearly a year after it’s initial release.

The plot is as follows: a young woman (Taissa Farmiga) grieving the loss of her mother (Malin Akerman), a famous scream queen from the 80s, finds herself pulled into the world of her mom’s most famous movie. Reunited, the women must fight off the film’s maniacal killer. Naturally, it’s easy to brand the film as just a ‘horror’, a ‘comedy’, a ‘spoof’, but what actually entails is something much more insightful.

We caught up with the film’s director, Todd Strauss-Schulson, ahead of it’s UK premiere.

Joey Levenson: So this was a script that you acquired. What drew you to the script?
Todd Strauss-Schulson: Well, it was a really important movie for me. I always tried a couple of ideas with Mark Fortin and Josh Miller [the writers of The Final Girls], just pitching things back and forth. Around eight years ago, they sort of suggested something like this, something fun like Last Action Hero, or Sherlock Jr., or The Purple Rose of Cairo. Then I never heard about the idea again and then years passed, and I booked my first movie, which was a very big and silly comedy called A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas. I was 29, and right before I made that movie my father passed away, and that was obviously an inflection point.

JL: Wow, for a 29-year-old to deal with that’s quite a lot in one go.
TSS: Yeah, it was crazy and difficult. As I was making that film I was dreaming about my father all the time, and they weren’t terrible dreams, they were beautiful dreams. He was with me and we were wandering around eating pizza. And as I was editing that first movie I had a meltdown, I had like a full-blown meltdown. And right in the middle of that, Josh and Mark sent me Final Girls. After eight years of never hearing about, they sent it to me and I was like, “oh my god, I have to make this”. I think for me – and all of us – what I engaged with the most was this idea of a second chance to be with a dead parent.  It was really personal filmmaking, kind of like autobiographical feelings cloaked in high-concept comedy. So that feeling was the most important part of it, and then everything else was just super fun and delightful.

JL: I can imagine. And that last scene between the protagonist and her mom, wow. I just loved it. I found myself so upset because it dealt with grief in such a way that was so unexpected.
TSS: It’s so nice to hear you see the movie and feel that. Like that scene you’re talking about, we were all on set for that night and it was very cathartic for me. It was me saying goodbye to my dad. That feeling really permeated the experience of making the movie.

JL: I read this article recently and it was talking about how in the indie film circuit, films with female leads are just near impossible to be picked up. Now, this film is nearly an all-female cast. Did you ever experience those kind of hurdles, where producers are not so sure they could trust the movie? Because it’s not really a love story, and it’s female-driven.
TSS: That’s an interesting question. I don’t think that the ultimate issue was that it was a female-lead movie. I don’t remember having a lot of push back about that. But the real problem was that it was a confusing movie for a lot of people. It’s funny, it’s scary, it’s everything. I mean it’s a challenge with all independent movies, in order to get the money you sort of have to give the studio a little bit of insurance with your cast. Like, for us we ended up in a situation with financiers who got so infatuated with my vision of the movie, they really believed in it. And we had a lot of actors attached who would drop out, and so the studio pushed the movie and everything fell apart, the movie fell apart many, many times until we ended up with this cast. Like Taissa [Farmiga], from American Horror Story, who has such a gentle energy, and then we got Adam [Devine] who is just downright hilarious and made the whole thing outrageously comic. Now, I can’t imagine the movie with any other cast.

JL: It premiered at SXSW last year and got really positive reactions, so I was surprised that it didn’t even get a European release. What do you think of the film’s ‘cult status’, because it’s kind of grown through sharing as opposed to distribution?
TSS: It was really disappointing, I’ve got to be honest. It was really sad. I mean we slaved, this was four years of my life, and I really cared about it. Mostly because I wanted to give the movie to an audience, I made it to be a real crowd-pleaser. It’s supposed to be fun to watch with a big group of people, you know like drunk, high, screaming, crying, laughing, and they’re gonna leave the movie feeling better. But then it was released for streaming, which was a purely financial imperative. And the bummer is, theatres don’t show your movie if it’s already available for people online. But in the aftermath, the fact that now it’s being screened and fans are putting it up and theatres are doing midnight screenings, it’s just amazing. So now, this kind of impact and feeling I wanted from the movie, it’s having it in a way that’s almost more meaningful. People are finding it and they are giving it to each other. And that means that they love it, you know?

JL: I noticed The Final Girls has a lot of fan posters, like different alternatives floating around in promo material.
TSS: Yeah, a lot of those come from fans and a lot of those are things I’m commissioning. That’s really cool because fans post art and I’m like, “Hey! You love this movie you’re so talented, make me a poster for ComicCon”. It’s really nice to have that fan interaction. It’s nice to make a movie that you can feel has a fanbase. I’ve never had that before.

JL: Its funny because it’s being shown back-to-back with Galaxy Quest this weekend at Somerset House.
TSS: Which is the coolest!

JL: I love that film! I just thought that’s such a genius idea to link the two films, because they’re so different in terms of tone but they both have this plot and theme about subverting movie tropes, breaking genre rules.
TSS: They programmed it so so well. I’m going to come and do an intro and a Q&A beforehand.

JL: When you’re making films, not necessarily just with The Final Girls, is that kind of idea of film cliches and tropes on your mind? Are you looking to subvert it or do you not mind putting in the good old cliche  just because it works for the film?
TSS: For me, personally, I am obsessed with finding unprocessed imagery. What that means is like, when I see Transformers or fucking Age of Ultron, I can’t tell them apart! The action, the design, the way it’s shot, I just can’t tell! It all looks like the same to me. Even if you could divorce it from the story, the imagery looks the same.

JL: [laughs] You have a point…
TSS: And so many comedies are all ‘point-and-shoot’, so dull. I remember seeing movies as a kid like Delicatessen, The Hudsucker Proxy, After Hours, and they just blew my mind. I just remember being so taken by film as a visual art, and then being brought in to worlds I’d never experienced before. So I’m very obsessed with watching as much as I can so that I can try and not replicate it. Or, to take something that I love so much and try to add to it or push it forward. You know?

JL: Yeah, because to me this film kind of looked like a horror film by Gregg Araki, it was that kind of visual.
TSS: [laughs] I love that! That’s one of the things that really inspires me about movies in general, to see things you haven’t seen before.

JL: Another thing I really loved about the film was the construction of the female characters. Were you conscious that this film contributes to the current zeitgeist on feminism? I feel that had this film come out even five years ago it would have had a different response, but it came out right at the perfect time for women in film.
TSS: Yeah! It was really conscious. And I have to give a lot of credit to Josh and Mark. That was really a big part of their original script, and a really big part of what they loved about it so much. It’s interesting that horror movies are the only movies with female protagonists that men can relate to. I think there was a real conscious effort, especially on their part and my part to flip every trope, every one of them, from the mean girl to the jock — the only character in the film to ever admit they’re scared. The women were friends, they were all working together, they weren’t hating each other, they aren’t fighting about the guy, they’re actually supporting each other.

JL: There’s a line which I love where the characters are struggling to come up for a reason why virginal girls survive and the rest don’t.
TSS: Yeah, I think you’re picking up on something really real. It goes back to that idea of unprocessed imagery, you know trying to flip every cliché and every trope. You’ve seen a mean girl but not like this, you’ve seen a final girl but not like this, you’ve seen the hunky boyfriend but not like this!

JL: The film did such a great job in constructing the perfect genre-bending horror, but personally, I don’t even think the film is even a horror. I felt it was more something else.
TSS: It’s really interesting to hear you say that, because one of the questions we always get is like ‘how do you make a horror movie like this and like that?’ But I think as we were making it, timing it, casting it, all of it, I did not feel like we were making a horror movie at all, ever. To me, when I read that script it was like Back To The Future. The horror movie just happens to be where these kids go, they just happen to be in the 80s. It just happens to be that, but really it was about these kids getting sucked in to a movie, end of. And what I thought was so brilliant about the central concept was there’s an element with the dead mother, and you get to see her again in the middle of a movie that doesn’t take death seriously at all. That was the hook for me. Can I tell a story about grief, that’s personal to me, and can I tell it in the middle of a world where death is not taken seriously at all — where the bigger the body count the more fun everyone is having? And I thought that was such a smart idea, and that’s why it’s a ‘horror’ movie. It could’ve been any kind of movie.

JL: Yeah, exactly, it works both ways.
TSS: I was actually really really nervous that the movie would be rebuked by horror fans, because it’s a PG-13 [12a], and there’s not a lot of blood.

JL: Yeah, but it got real high praise from them!
TSS: Right, I mean Sam Raimi has a quote on the poster! I wasn’t sure because it goes for emotion over lavishing kills. In fact, all the kills feel bad, you don’t want them to die. But it’s amazing that the horror community does love it because it turns out, they don’t just want blood and guts, you know? So that’s also a really nice feeling to be welcomed by a gigantic community of people. It’s real cool.

JL: I also noticed your online t-shirt business.
TSS: [laughs]

JL: One of them said ‘I felt the Bern but now I’ma cHill’, an obvious reference to Democrats Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. So I just wanted to know what your general thoughts are on this crazy election in the U.S.A.?
TSS: [laughs] I guess I was pretty excited about everything Bernie was saying. But, at least for me there was never a chance he was going to get the nomination. I think everyone was sort of waiting for it to be Hillary. But, now there are these pro-Bernie people with their protest votes and that is so infuriating. They say it’s their conscience vote but that’s bullshit because your conscience makes you do things you don’t wanna do. You need to act in accordance with the needs of your community, which is you know, maybe not electing The Joker [Donald Trump]!

JL: [laughs] I know what you mean. There’s such a great dichotomy in these candidates.
TSS: I thought you were gonna ask about the ‘Past is Male’ shirt.

JL: Well yeah I loved it, it’s obviously a play on ‘The Future is Female’. Do you identify as a feminist?
TSS: I guess so. I’m a sensitive guy and I’m not afraid of that stuff. I like my progressive t-shirts. I like that it at least stirs stuff up.

Buy tickets for the open-air screening of The Final Girls on 13th August at Somerset House here.