Tribeca 2016: Mark Moses, Stephanie Drake, and Luke Barnett Talk Fear, Inc.
With helmer Vincent Masciale and scribe Luke Barnett best known for their hot TV property-parodying viral videos such as “A Game of Thrones Halloween” and “The Walking Fred,” it was pretty safe to assume that their feature debut, the comedy shocker Fear, Inc. (review), wasn’t going to stray all that far from their tried and tested formula.
That was pretty much the case, the only difference this time being that the filmmaking duo leave much-loved television shows behind them to concoct a cosmically self-aware movie that tackles just about every cult horror movie imaginable.
Unapologetically aping the premise of David Fincher’s 1997 thriller The Game, Fear, Inc. finds ultimate horror junkie Joe in search of the ultimate scare. In dire need of some extreme excitement in his life, Joe unwittingly hires the services of a company which offers to bring his greatest fears to life in a tailor-made terrifying experience that comes at a disturbingly high price.
With the film screening at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Dread Central caught up with writer Luke Barnett, together with co-stars Mark Moses and Stephanie Drake, to talk about perfecting the art of deception and how these “ultimate scare packages” are not so far-fetched as we might care to believe…
DC: Luke, where did the idea spring from to write what can best be described as a satirical horror spin on Fincher’s The Game?
Barnett: It basically came from a friend of mine who went to a horror experience called Blackout. He asked me if I wanted to go with him and I politely declined. He paid $100, had to sign a waiver so that they could actually touch him, put him in a coffin and all these crazy things, and then when I saw him a couple of weeks later, I said, “How was Blackout?” He said it was better than a previous one he had done but that for $100 he’d expected more. And then what happened was that Vince had come to me wanting to do a short for a competition where you had to make something for under $1,000 so I just thought of my friend who wanted to somehow experience what it was like if he was going to die and then just not die. Vince and I both love movies like Scream and The Game and what’s really weird is that I think a company like Fear, Inc. will probably end up becoming a real thing and there are people already taking things to the next level.
So this short did really well and all the comments on YouTube ran along the lines of, “This should be a movie!” Vince and my background is more from doing comedy stuff and we had wanted to do our first feature so we thought we’d expand on this idea.
DC: The lead couple, Joe and Lindsey, were originally played by Dean Cates and Ashlynn Yennie in the short. They both have cameos in the feature version, but what made you decide to cast different leads?
Barnett: Obviously Dean and Ashlynn are both incredible actors and very good friends of ours so we wanted them to be a part of the feature in some way. When we went to write the feature, I think the role of Joe changed quite a bit and he became a different kind of character basically. We took meetings with lots of people, and just to be honest, Lucas is a great actor. He walked into the room and ten minutes into the meeting he had completely got it and he even gave us insight on the film that even I hadn’t thought of. He just fit the part as we’d imagined it and he did a great job. With Dean, he’s a fantastic actor that we’ll probably work with on every movie we do but it just didn’t work with this one; but we still got him in there, which is awesome.
DC: Stephanie and Mark, what was it about Luke and Vincent’s premise that appealed to you both?
Drake: Well, I love scary movies, particularly The Game, so when I read the script I absolutely loved it and couldn’t wait to make it with Luke and Vincent. So I had a meeting with them and we basically sat and talked about scary movies the entire time and I got a call a few weeks later saying they wanted me in it and I was just so thrilled.
Moses: I got hold of the script and years ago I’d written a horror film, The Killer Clown, and it was funny and that’s the kind of horror that I like; I’m not a big, serious horror buff, but I do like something with a sense of humor. When I read this, I thought it was a perfect blend of Fright Night yet funny. It turned out that with the casting of all the other roles in it they did a fantastic job of bringing all the actors together and many of them are funny. Stephanie is funny; she cracks me up all the time. But everybody did a really good job of keeping that fine line between horror and comedy and it really works well with Fear, Inc. so I was thrilled to be part of it.
Barnett: It was interesting, and also completely unintentional, but Vince and I had just finished “Mad Men” when we were doing this movie so when we got our first meeting with Stephanie earlier on, it was fun for us because she steals every scene that she’s in in “Mad Men.” And then later, when it came to cast the Abe role and one of the agents pitched Mark, we were like, “Dude, Mark’s amazing, and we just watched him on ‘Mad Men’ as well.”
DC: Luke, as you said, your previous output has been particularly comedy-centric. How much of a challenge was it for both you and Vince to balance yourselves on that fine line between horror and comedy to avoid falling into spoof territory?
Barnett: It’s tough because a lot of people have called it a horror-comedy, but when I think of that, I think of things like Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, which I love, but we definitely were not going for a campy movie. What I think Scream did really well is that the parts that were funny were really funny and the parts that were scary were really scary, and I think Vince and I miss those types of movies. I miss going to a movie theatre and laughing and then five minutes later watching somebody spill their popcorn because of a jump scare.
DC: Fear, Inc. is all about the art of deception and it packs plenty of twists. Were you ever concerned about overdoing things as some movies cram in as many twists as possible only to leave the audience totally confused by the end?
Barnett: Yeah. The goal was obviously to always keep people wondering what was happening and we tried to find that middle ground. If there had been a couple more twists, then I think people would have been annoyed by it but also, with less, people would have been like, “Okay, there’s a twist. Great.” I think we tried to make it interesting where there’s a twist that you think is the main twist and then maybe there’s another twist that throws a wrench in that whole idea.
Drake: There was always a fine line when we were shooting because my character always knew what was really going on, but I think it turned out perfectly. I thought I looked terrified for most of the movie. [laughs]
With an official release date yet to be confirmed, you can read our recent review here and we’ll leave you with the latest promotional video for the aforementioned Blackout horror experience that played a significant role in this project’s coming to fruition.
Luke Barnett and Vincent Masciale on the set of Fear, Inc.
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