[Aja] has a fantastic intensity that I think is, you know, in some ways something a young man who has not kind of put all of his rage and intensity onto the camera yet has. He had this vision of this village, this place, that was a completely original concept that I thought was terrific. He has a long long-term passion for horror in general so he approaches it with great seriousness and with no defensiveness whatsoever. To him it’s extremely important and should be done extremely well. So all those qualities put together with his experience and his family’s experience – because his parents are directors also – it felt like this [was right]. You plant the seed and you water it but you don’t try to get into the seed and make it work.”
Craven says the fact Aja’s French meant he brought a different perspective to the film. “Well it’s interesting, you know? Look at Ang Lee, that’s how I looked at it at least. You take somebody from totally outside the culture and sometimes they’re able to kind of see the culture in a fresh way because they are from outside.”
Wes Craven on Why Audiences Love Horror Films: “In some ways I think horror films reflect what’s going on with the popular culture in America. If you look at the kind of 800 pound gorilla in the room right now, it would be the kind of clash of cultures between radical Islamists and the United States. Where you have...it’s sort of the huge example of the telephone suddenly not working and the gun running out of bullets as far as technology is not working in these situations. You have the most militarily advanced country in the world with bombs that can be put through windows at 50,000 feet. And then you have some guys who have for like $100 have a used artillery shell and can put the bomb through the window because they’re willing to strap it to their bodies.
It just takes your head for such a trip. Or they will saw somebody’s head off in front of a camera and put it on the Internet. This kind of totally ‘otherness’ which I think a lot of horror deals with. Certainly ‘The Hills Have Eyes’ did it in the original and this one does too. People that are just completely ‘other’ and their rage makes them what we consider almost beastly but it has to do with us, that’s a very scary thing, you know? And I think that’s just what the times are calling for or maybe it’s more subtle than that.”
Both Craven’s 1977 version and this new one share the common theme of examining family issues. “Probably most families are more subatomic rather than atomic now. But you know this family certainly has a lot of tensions going on with kids that don’t really want to be there and are talking about doing grass and things that can’t parents can’t believe that they would even consider talking about. I think it’s been brought up to date but I think one always wonders about the family because it’s one of the basic building blocks, not only of our individual lives, but of our culture.”
Wes Craven’s Special Request: When I interviewed Aja he told me the only thing Craven requested was that Aja include the two German Shepherds, Beauty and Beast, in the film. Craven laughed when I told him what Aja had said. “Yeah, we did have a little affectionate tie to them and it just served as kind of the little clue that even within the core of the family that was All-American and supposedly very gentle and everything else, there were both halves. Both dogs - you know? You know there’s something beautiful and something beastly.”
Other than that special request, Craven allowed Aja to develop the story. “I thought that was the smartest way to go. There’s an old expression that I heard in Texas once that you can’t push a rope. You can’t push the director in the direction he doesn’t want to go and you’d be stupid to even try. If you’ve chosen a director who has his own very original thoughts and his own great abilities, then you just nurture those or you just get out of his way, is how I usually put it with this film. Certainly tons of tons of notes and arguments and everything else, but once he started shooting it was just let him do his thing.”
When “The Hills Have Eyes” filmed in Morocco, Craven wasn’t on the set. “No I wasn’t but in all honestly I couldn’t have because that was exactly when the post for ‘Red Eye’ took place. I thought as I’m sitting in the editing room wanting sometimes to be there, that I’d probably be the 800 pound gorilla in the room, you know? And what young director wants to have the guy who made the original film sitting there watching what he’s doing? I certainly wouldn’t (laughing).”
