MATTHEW GOODHUE TALKS SLOTHERHOUSE

Interviewed by Culture Coast Talks editor Daniel John. Interview transcripts might have been edited for length and clarity.

Don’t rush, die slowly, really, really slowly. How did it come about for you to direct a film about a killer sloth rampaging her way through a sorority house. Are you as surprised and amused as we all are over this idea?

I received a phone call from my producer, Ryan Gibson, who produced my first film, 'Woe', in June 2021. 'Woe' was just about to be released, so I was stressing about that, and then Ryan asked me if I’d want to read a script about a killer sloth, called 'Slotherhouse'. It was not a movie I ever thought I’d make, but, the title and concept were very appealing to me, and I think because 'Slotherhouse' was the antithesis of my first movie, I wanted to take the swing. I pitched to Cady, Brad, Mark David, the producer and director of photography, and Ryan over a Zoom call. I was terrified, I hadn’t pitched before and I knew going in I was the least experienced director who was in the running. I tried to look at the pitch as practice, since I was not very confident I would get the job. But, a few days later, I got a phone call from Cady and Brad asking if I wanted to join the team. It was a huge surprise, but I was super excited to get the chance to make this movie. Am I surprised this movie exists? I have to say, I’m surprised this movie didn’t exist already. There’s a whole slew of animal-attack movies and it seems like they have hit just about every animal out there. With the popularity of sloths in today’s culture, it is a little wild this movie wasn’t already in the works elsewhere.

One can walk down many different avenues in this genre, and as said this one is quite a shift from the anxiety-ridden tone of your last feature. Was the tone of it on the page?

For me, the tone was already there in the script. It was satirizing and playing with the tropes of horror, from 'Halloween', to Chucky, to 'The Shining', but the concept, to me, seemed even more outlandish than those films, well, maybe not more outlandish than Chucky. I thought the best way to make this movie was to take this ludicrous concept, a sloth attacking a sorority house, and play it as sincere and serious as possible. The world of the movie is super silly, but the characters are playing it as truthful as we could. That juxtaposition, I hope, creates comedy in the film. A huge reason why I wanted to make 'Slotherhouse' was because it was so different than my first film. My first film was very personal. It was basically me trying to figure out my place in the world at that time. This was the opposite, the number one goal of the movie was to make something entirely entertaining and I, truly, did not know if I could do that, so I wanted to challenge myself to make something with the audience in mind all the way through.

Having two older brothers, did you see lots of horror films you perhaps should not have been seeing at an early age?

Oh boy, yes. Having older brothers, and I have a younger brother, who I wasn’t so nice to growing up, but I hope I introduced him to some weird stuff too, is the best. By the time I was around, I think my parents had a handle as to what parenting was, so I was able to get away with a lot of stuff. The first horror movie I remember watching, because my oldest brother Chris must’ve owned the VHS, was 'Scream'. And, that terrified me. It wasn’t a monster in my nightmares or an impossible-to-kill masked killer, it was two kids that you went to school with. That shook me, for sure. The other one that sticks out to me is 'Seven', I have a vivid memory of watching that in the basement, and it was the darkest, bleakest, movie I had ever seen. My mom is also a horror fan, mostly thrillers, so I remember seeing the VHS cover of 'Silence of the Lambs' laying around. The cover alone, with the moth and that white, shadow face, was enough to creep me out.

This is a throwback in more ways than one. Alpha for instance is a real and very old-school, straight out of a Joe Dante-film, animatronic?

From the time I got on board this project, Cady and Brad were adamant that Alpha would be a puppet. That was so, so, intriguing to me. I had no puppet experience, and wanted to challenge myself to learn how to make a movie with a puppet as the central character. I’m a huge Joe Dante-fan and I love his practical effects, and I watched the behind-the-scenes videos of him making 'Gremlins' to just try and grasp the practical nature of making a movie of this nature. It was challenging for sure, those sequences take a lot longer to film and require a lot of coordination and choreography between the puppet, the puppeteers, the actors, and the camera. We had three-four puppeteers surrounding Alpha at a time and used rods to control her arms, body, and legs. Then, we had two puppeteers using RC-control to move Alpha’s head and mouth. We also knew it wasn’t just about making Alpha move, but trying to convey thought and emotion through her movement. This was pretty daunting, as we can only create so much expression from a puppet. Greg Ballora, an incredible puppeteer as well as just an awesome guy, was an integral part in finding the right movements and mannerisms to really bring Alpha to life. Tony Carrillo and Jackson Pike from Creature Effects built Alpha, and are both also wonderful puppeteers in their own right, so having them each day was very instrumental, as they knew Alpha in and out more than anyone else. During post-production, we worked with Sean Leigh Hart and Don McCoy from SiloFX and did slight face-augmentation in certain moments to enhance Alpha’s facial expressions to help tell the story. This was tough, as it took a lot of time to find the right amount of augmentation to show the audience how Alpha feels, without looking too CG or taking away from the naturalism of the puppet. Sean and Don found a wonderful balance there, and some of those face-augmentation shots are my favorite in the film.

Making films can be a bit of a “sleuth-like” process in itself. Perhaps especially so growing up in Massachuchets?

I had a very idyllic childhood in Massachusetts. My neighborhood was filled with kids and we played sports and hung out all the time, summers especially was the best. Halloween was also a huge deal, awesome trick-or-treating and haunted houses and really is what first drew me into horror. At some point, when most of the families in the neighborhood owned a handheld camcorder, we started making little movies in the neighborhood. Funny enough, a lot of them had horror elements and included violence, I think because I was really into football and WWF wrestling at the time. I started playing music by the time I got into high school, and started messing around with editing. I just loved putting picture and music together. So I started filming my friends and I hanging out, doing stupid stuff, and then would cut together these little montages with music I liked. They weren’t very thoughtful edits, but it did capture something that felt special at the time, a little time capsule. I went to school at Boston University, where I had no idea what to study. I took an "Understanding Film"-course my sophomore year, and transferred to the film program my junior year. I loved those courses, but I still didn’t really know what a career in film could look like. My eldest brother who lived in New York had close friends who worked in different areas of media and through those connections, I was able to get introduced with some of the folks at MTV News. I had no idea what I was doing there, and was probably a horrible intern. But I learned how things got made, from writing, to production, to post. It was super informative and gave me the confidence to start trying to make little projects on my own.

It’s really been a long time since horror gave us a new character to truly fall for. Alpha might be an unexpected icon, but I can see her story going in so many directions, and I hope we get to see that. She’s such a fantastic creation, so here’s hoping people show up for it. If all goes well where would you love to see Alpha go next?

(Laughs) We definitely hoped people would fall in love with Alpha. As evil as she can be, she’s really just trying to defend herself and make it back home, so you can’t blame her! I’d love to see Alpha’s story continue, whether we get to see her in her natural habitat, or if she follows Emily into New York City for her first real job, or maybe Alpha decides to go after all the poachers in the world, wherever she goes, I’ll be rooting for her.