Vargas was in San Diego to accept a 'Top 10 to Watch' award from the San Diego Latino Film Festival when he sat down to discuss The Hills Have Eyes 2, directed by Martin Weisz and co-written by Wes Craven and his son, Jonathan.
How do you describe your character?
“He’s more the serious guy. He takes his position as a soldier very seriously. You’ve got to understand, we’re National Guardsman and we’re in training. We’re training to get sent off to the Middle East to go fight in this war. And when you’re a serious soldier, you know the guy right next to you has your back and you have his back. It’s important that you believe and you trust them. I really don’t trust and believe in my group. I think they’re a bunch of screw-ups. That’s not good. So I’m thinking, ‘Okay, these guys are not going to keep me alive.’ I think that’s my main motivation, my main goal, is I need to stay alive.”
And then you run into the mutant cannibals?
“We’re not aware of what’s going on and we think we’re going to rescue somebody that’s in distress because the camp is abandoned. We’re not quite sure what happened to everybody there and so we go on a search and rescue mission. We see a mirror signal, which is the code for distress. We go on this rescue mission unbeknownst to us, it’s actually a trap. We’re being hunted and we’re being trapped. These mutants are smart and they’re calculating, and so we’re going to be supper - and I’m afraid they like dark meat. You know because the fear is, like the joke is, usually the minority gets it first. So I’m like, ‘Okay, I’ve got to stay alive as long as possible.’”
You’ve done military training for a role before. Was physically preparing for The Hills Have Eyes 2 any different than preparing for Jarhead?
“Actually, it wasn’t different. It helped me. Doing Jarhead prepared me for The Hills Have Eyes 2 in a way, so I didn’t have to worry about that aspect of the character. It gave me a certain level of confidence that I knew what I was doing. I didn’t have to worry about how do you hold this weapon or how do you shoot it, how do you stand, walk, talk like a soldier. I could really focus more on bringing that emotional reality to the film.”
Is the mental preparation any different when you’re starring in a horror film versus a more dramatic movie like Jarhead or Traffic?
“Yes. For The Hills Have Eyes 2, the hardest thing was fear. What is it that scares you? Since you are shooting a film you know these creatures are men in makeup. You just had breakfast with them and shared coffee and shared a joke, and now they’re trying to eat you. So you have to really find something that’s going to put you in that emotional state. You had to really go deep in yourself and find out what am I actually scared of. And the challenge was, for me as an actor, was retaining that level of fear for long periods of time. We shot this film for two and a half months in Morocco but in movie time, it takes place over the course of one day, and so I had to retain that level for two and a half months. Your adrenaline’s pumping and your muscles are tense, you’re sweating, you think you’re gonna die. ‘I am dying today and how do I survive?’ And so to do that for two and a half months was pretty exhausting.”
It sounds as though this was one of your most physically demanding roles so far.
“It was pretty physically demanding. I compare it to just as demanding as Jarhead for different reasons. In this one, which I liked, was we got to do more action. There is a sense of horror/action in the film, and not Rambo-ish. It’s not like Rambo because we are National Guardsmen, but we’re still green. We’re training so we’re not really prepared for the situation.”
How can anyone be prepared for mutants?
“Right, and cannibalistic mutants at that (laughing).”
What fear did you tap into to get into character and keep your adrenaline level high?
“My big fear is the unknown. Like especially if it’s pitch black and you hear those noises and you don’t quite know what’s around the corner. Those are things that scare me. And the IRS scares me…”
So you just had to imagine the mutants were IRS agents…
“’Okay, I filed my taxes, the mutants come after me, they’re going to audit me for three years of back taxes and I may have padded it a bit.’”
What was it like to film in Morocco?
“It was a complete culture shock. It’s a Muslim country, so everything was very different. The customs were different. Men wouldn’t hold hands openly in the street, the women weren’t really around. They wore the burqas and there was praying twice a day. But also we shot right smack in the middle of Ramadan, which is their holiest month and so most of the crew that were Moroccan, they were fasting. From sunup to sundown, they didn’t eat or drink anything so it was really intense. You kind of feel, I guess, self-conscious if you go, ‘Hey, can I get a ham sandwich? I’m a little hungry. Can I get some Avian?’ You really felt like a diva.
But then again, when you did eat you got sick because the food was very different. Everybody got sick. I’m the one actor that really didn’t get as sick, but a lot of the cast members got really sick. We shot in a place called Ouarzazate, Morocco, so we jokingly called the condition the ‘zats’. Which is like, you basically lose control of your bodily functions and you have to like run off to relieve yourself and use the bathroom. But it’s violent - in a violent way. But we took that and it became kind of a running gag, a running joke on the set, because you knew you really couldn’t hide it. You just had to say, ‘Guys, I’ve got to go.’ Everybody kind of understood that if you weren’t in the scene, you were probably in the bathroom.”
