Exclusive – Trevor Matthews Gives Us a Tour of Girl House
Best known for playing the titular character in Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer, Trevor Matthews has worked both in front of the camera and behind the scenes. He makes his directorial debut with Girl House (review) and recently sat down with Dread Central to discuss the movie.
In addition to acting, Matthews has done his share of producing with his production company, Brookstreet Pictures. With Girl House, Matthews took his first shot at directing, and he did a quite respectable job in his initial outing.
Matthews gave us a quick overview of what viewers can expect from Girl House. “It’s a Halloween-style slasher film that was made for the digital age,” Matthews said. “It follows a beautiful, young college student who needs money and she decides to find that by becoming a member of an X-rated website, Girl House, a high-end house that streams X-rated content. She crosses paths with two people in her life. One is an old childhood friend that recognizes her on the site and that’s always loved her and represents love for her in the story. And the other is a psychotic serial killer named Loverboy who has a dark past and a history of obsessing and psychopathic behavior. So when this person becomes obsessed with her, he infiltrates the house and he executes his malicious plan to seek revenge on all the women in the house.”
So how did the director’s chair feel to Matthews? “It was awesome,” Matthews said. “I did co-direct this with Jon Knautz. He had a big hand in the directing that took place in Ottawa and a lot of the stuff in the house. And I had a big hand in all of that as well, so I was co-directing. Jon ended up working on another project. He had another project come up and we said, ‘Go, take it, man if you’ve got an opportunity to go do something else.’ He went for that and I finished up with Girl House. Certainly, it was a co-directing experience. For me, there were a lot of scenes and a lot of parts in the movie where I was full-on directing the scene and it was a great experience. I really enjoy directing. I really enjoyed being able to present an energy on set and keep everyone a part of that energy and set the pace for the day. It was really exciting. It was a lot of fun. I’ve been on sets before that were really slow and they get a little tedious and long days and you can feel morale sinking. And I’ve been on sets before where you can feel the excitement and adventure of filmmaking. You could really feel that it was flying by and everybody was moving and kicking and engaged. And I wanted to make sure, when I was directing, that I was setting that kind of pace and setting that energy where it didn’t feel any low morale, but rather good energy, good people and that we were doing the best thing we could.”
One of the greatest strengths of Girl House is brilliant casting. The houseful of beauties each bring something unique to the film. “Everyone at the core company at Brookstreet Pictures were integral in all the steps of development, production and post-production,” Matthews said. “I’ve got a great team that I’m working with here, and casting was a fantastic process. We’re really proud of all the girls that we picked for the film and feel they really represent the characters as they were written in the script. You read a script and you imagine how a character will look and feel and sound, and then when you meet these girls, it clicks when somebody fits the role. I really feel like we picked the best people we could for these girls.”
And as wonderful as each girl in the Girl House was, the antagonist of the film may have been the most important piece of the puzzle. Actor/musician Slaine filled the role of Loverboy. “Slaine, in particular, was amazing,” Matthews said. “He was awesome to work with. I think a lot of people watching the movie may actually sympathize for poor ol’ Loverboy when the girls are making fun of him, which is pretty amazing. When you’ve got this Michael Myers-type character, this scary dude, and you sympathize with him and the experiences he’s been through in his life… And that comes out in his performance. At one point he’s even crying, which was pretty amazing. We were really stoked with Slaine. He’s an awesome person and he got right into character on set and he was awesome to work with.”
Matthews discussed how Slaine prepped for some of his more intense parts in his role as Loverboy. “Slaine said he went to a pretty dark place when the girls were making fun of him in the movie before he snaps and is going to exact his revenge on these girls,” Matthews said. “That moment before he snaps, Slaine said he went to a pretty dark place and some real memories in his life in order to bring out that performance. And you could see that in his face. He was pretty method.”
In addition to some spot-on acting performances, Girl House is loaded with tons of impressive special effects. “There were over 350 onscreen effects that we did with all the onscreen replacements and the iPhone cameras,” Matthews said. “Even though it seems like simple stuff, it was technologically pretty advanced. It took a long time to get all that screen replacement and green screen stuff right. As for all the practical F/X and the action and the blood and guts, we pretty much went all practical. We’ve done that with the feature films I’ve made before this and we’ve always preferred to work with practical special effects as opposed to doing it inside a computer. If you can do it right, there’s an art form there and it’s looks better. If you can do it practically, it’s always the right way.”
Matthews then talked about how Girl House came to be dreamed up. “When I first opened an office in L.A., we started to develop a lot of material,” Matthews said. “One of the writers that we hired I got along with really well. His name was Nick Gordon. He wrote an original screenplay for us and was in the process of working on that screenplay and we brought him into the company as a development executive. He started acting as the head of development for the company and he was also able to write screenplays if we needed them. Or, if we had an idea internally, he was the guy to pen the first draft. And that’s exactly what happened with Girl House. We all kicked around this idea at the office and Nick had already come on at that point as the head of development. He banged out a first draft, and when it came back, we were stoked on it. It read well. The characters were great. It was a total page-turner. It was a no-brainer. We wanted to make it right away. We knew it probably had to go through one or two other drafts before we went to production, but literally the first draft came back and we thought it was so much fun and said, ‘Let’s do this!'”
One of the most memorable aspects of Girl House (aside from the smoking hot women) is the seriously off-putting look of Loverboy. Matthews talked about developing the killer’s image. “We mulled over a bunch of ideas on how Loverboy could look,” Matthews said. “It was written in the script that he was wearing that same female mask that he put on because he’s thinking he might blend in a little bit into the house and he’ll go unrecognized. It gives a little peek into his psyche. The mask itself and the look of Loverboy, we knew he was a technician and we loved the technician overalls and the big boots and loved the idea of him having his toolbox and using his various tools for killing the girls. The mask was just online research. We had all kinds of options, but there was just one in particular we had to fly in from Asia and had to wait weeks for it to arrive. It was about the simplest one of all the ones we were looking at, but it just had this really perfect, creepy look to it. We just ordered it online and it was the perfect little rubber mask. It was that perfect blend of simplicity, but also really daunting and scary. I think we got lucky with that!”
Finally, Matthews talked about one scene in particular that stands out when watching Girl House. It is indeed an extremely effective horror scene that is, all at once, sexy, tense, gory and intriguing. Matthews gave us the skinny on this standout scene. “We always said that one scene is the quintessential kill of this movie,” Matthews said. “I think that’s the promise of premise. It’s your cam girl interaction with her clients and then going into a private chat room and you’re getting this fly on the wall look at this interacting between a cam girl and her private client. And right before she starts to get into it and starts to undress and starts to try and turn this guy on, he starts noticing movement behind her that shouldn’t be there. And it’s the movement of Loverboy, who’s in the same room, in the shadows behind her. And what can you do, right? She can’t see him, he can only see her. All he can do is type, like, ‘I think there is someone in the room with you. Look behind you; I swear I just saw someone.’ And that kind of interaction is the building of suspense. If we had to take a stand-alone scene and try and represent this movie and what it could be, I think that is the scene that represents the premise of this idea. We loved the way it turned out. The character Devon looked great and the way you see Loverboy’s reflection in the screen, it really worked. We were thrilled with that. It’s that perfect marriage between the titillating sexiness of being in a private dance with this beautiful girl mixed with the suspense and the fear that we all go to see in horror movies. For us it was that perfect little marriage, and we were really thrilled with that scene.”
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