Dekker, Thomas (ChromeSkull: Laid to Rest 2)
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Thomas Dekker: I’m back a lot more in this one than I was in the first one. Now I’m like a real character and am in the whole movie, instead of the last five minutes in a convenience store.
Question: Where is the character now?
Thomas Dekker: The film starts where the last one ended so you see him right out of the gate, but then it jumps to later in time, and he’s addicted to pain medication and pills and he’s dealing with the loss of his best friend, and he feels he’s going to be targeted, and of course he is, so it just kind of goes from there.
Question: This being a sequel, the gags are probably turned up a notch?
Thomas Dekker: I think the body count has gone from seven to a hundred? I’m absolutely stunned by what Rob has done with this because when he called me and said he was doing a sequel, I was like ‘Yay.’ I thought it would be a smaller budget and a smaller kind of movie, just a little send-off for the fans or whatever, and when he asked me to do it, I thought I would just be in the opening scene and then die. When I got the script after saying that I would do it, I was like, ‘Oh, I am in this whole freaking thing, and it’s huge and complex!’ So definitely, it’s a sequel in the sense that it’s totally like if you love the original it will be enriching, but it’s one of those situations which is really rare, where I think in my opinion, and obviously it’s not finished but I am watching it as he edits it (daily), that it’s going to be better than the first one. It feels really like now it’s not just a guy chasing a girl through barns and fields and killing people. The place that he has taken the story is almost shocking. It kind of for me is similar to Paranormal Activity 2, because I felt that sequel (to Paranormal) took a pretty simple first film idea and elaborated on it in a way that when you think of the first film, you are like, ‘Oh, that was there all along, but I didn’t know about it.’ And this film really does that. It really takes this simple first film and blows it up into this huge thing: the body count, the gore, the sets, and the cast.
Question: How has it been working with Brian Austin Green?
Thomas Dekker: I worked with Brian for two years on the television show (“The Sarah Connoer Chronicles”), and it’s been weird to be honest. I mean, obviously we’ve been friends this whole time so it’s not like we haven’t seen one another or spoken to each other forever, but it’s just weird to be on a set again with him. He’s definitely not playing anything like ‘Uncle Derek’, that’s for sure. He’s very, very different. I told him that this was his best work. I think what’s he’s doing is pretty perfect, and it’s pretty cool.
Question: Why do you think it’s Brian’s best role?
Thomas Dekker: He’s showing that he can do something so dark and so heavy and so mean, and he really hit it, which is what you want with that character (of Preston). I just think that he’s doing it with a lot of sincerity in a role that could have been really crap, and I think that’s he doing it really playful and rough.
Question: Has Rob changed at all, director-wise?
Thomas Dekker: This is my third thing I’ve actually worked on with Rob, and he’s always the same guy on-set, I think. He’s always very calm and he knows exactly what he wants, and what he’s doing, and how he’s going to edit it, and you know, there’s no dicking around. He’s very attentive to his actors and also very relaxed and funny so all that is safe to say. But I do think that his voice as a filmmaker is very strong in this. The first film was really gory and really heavy and really whatever, but it still had for me that air of ‘It’s all fun and games.’ But in this one there are sequences that are really actually upsetting, and he’s sort of taken it from a slasher film to being a really fucked up movie. I like that. For it has more of a director’s voice. He’s saying that he’s not here to play, and he’s really going to give it to you. It’s been interesting because I sit there and think, ‘How does this shit come out of my friend’s head?’ Because now it’s not just gory effects, and I can’t give away anything, but it really creates a darker view of human nature in this film, not just the human nature of the killer.
Question: What about the nature of the darkness of your character?
Thomas Dekker: I think everybody’s sort of gone into this abyss. I started out as this fun little kid in the first one who’s going to a rave and now he’s really just tormented, and rightly so. I have to say that it was very hard the first day I came in for this one because I said, ‘You never really made a character in the first one.’ But in this one I actually have to have feelings and be a person, and so that was a whole other step. Rob and I now are to the point where we are such horror geeks and such good friends that when he directs me, I ask him everything in movie lingo. We were doing this scene where I was supposed to turn and jump at someone, and I was like, ‘Do you want this ‘the Wes’, ‘the John’, or ‘the Dario’?’ And that’s we’ve been doing the whole film. It’s been geeky fun! I genuinely think that this one will do better (than the first). I was not anticipating what I’ve seen. I was really surprised, and I think Rob is, too, given how well everything is coming together. It’s looks really, really good – better than the first one.
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