Ryan M. Andrews Talks Sick: Survive the Night
Ryan M. Andrews’ well received horror flick Sick: Survive the Night, fixing on the survivors of a zombie infection trying to rebuild civilization, hits DVD and VOD January 6th from Midnight Releasing. We spoke to Andrews about all the important stuff – corn syrup, George A. Romero, and movie make-up.
Important stuff first; how many gallons of corn syrup were used in the making of the movie?
RMA: I’m Canadian, we use litres. I wouldn’t even know how to convert it so let’s just say we used a fuck-load.
In all seriousness, do they even use that stuff still for blood? I think every makeup artist has their own, mastered concoction for blood. Some still use that stuff. Hell, I’ve seen some crazy mixes that people have put together. In Sick we actually had two different kinds of blood on set. Blood for the living and blood for the zombies. The zombie blood was thicker and darker.
How is a good “zombie face” perfected? Lots of white make-up and drawn-on veins?
RMA: I think that perfection comes down to the actor committing fully and completely to the part and how they use whatever look they have to sell it. Makeup wise, you can do a green face comic book look or you can do full out decaying corpse or anything in between. Good makeup is good makeup, but it comes down to how the actor portrays it The makeup/look complements how the actor performs.
Did you try to create your own distinctive “infected” person for the movie, rather than just copying other films? How do your walking dead differ?
RMA: I could talk for hours about this question because yes, we created our own specific zombies for this film. When NOTLD came out, it blew people away because they weren’t used to zombies being these scary cannibals. Then, when 28 Days Later came out, I think it really blew people away because its “zombies” were something new and different. So it was important to me to make sure our zombies were unique to our world.
It’s pop culture that “zombies eat brains.” Everyone knows this, though the only film to actually have zombies eating brains is Return of the Living Dead. So we decided to go that route. Our zombies eat brains. But instead of following in the footsteps of the ROTLD, we went a dead serious route. We based everything about our zombies on science, and we actually give specific scientific reasons as to why zombies eat brains.
Other than the science-heavy aspect to our zombies, our zombies actually both move slow and run. Our zombies move in two different stages. There is a rest and digest kind of mode for our zombies, where they move mindlessly and slow, but as soon as they catch wind of their prey, they turn to attack mode.
I worked very closely with makeup artist Melis Stevens to create the look of the zombies. We went through different inspirations and went through all the science together.
What was the appeal of doing the film initially?
RMA: My co-writer on the film, Chris Cull, originally suggested to me a zombie film with no zombies that would be a short film. When I started outlining the story with him, eventually I said, ‘This isn’t going to be a short. We’re like 40 pages in and far from the end.’ Though the focus of the story is on the survivors, I felt we still needed to see the zombies more. Not too much, I didn’t want to flood the film with pointless hordes of zombies, but since we spent so much time developing the science of what makes our zombies so different, I wanted to make sure we still saw them enough.
Have you always been a fan of zombies and horror? Whose work do you love?
RMA: I am a die-hard, lifelong horror fan. I love all things horror. Every style. I grew up on Tobe Hooper and John Carpenter so I have a soft spot for everything they have done, but I also love more artful horror like Jacob’s Ladder, the work of David Cronenberg, and the work of David Lynch. As far as zombies go, my favorite is George Romero’s Day of the Dead. I love the Dr. Frankenstein character, the Bub character, and Savini’s makeup is amazing.
Have you shown Sick at festivals? How did it go down?
RMA: Sick spent all of last year playing select festivals. And like any film in any festival, we have sold out screenings and we have screenings where only a handful of people made it out. But I don’t care whether 3 people are there or 300 people are there. I just like being able to get out there and show my art. A lot of people got what we were going for with a very stylized look and color palette, and we won some great awards including Audience Choice awards and Best Director and Best Zombie Film, etc. But you can’t please everyone so I know there are some that didn’t care for it. And that’s cool. It’s like that famous quote, ‘I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everyone.’
Midnight Releasing is releasing Sick: Survive the Night on January 6, 2015, on DVD and VOD.
In the tradition of The Walking Dead, Sick: Survive the Night tells the story of a group of people who band together after a zombie outbreak. Debbie Rochon, Christina Aceto, Richard Roy Sutton, Jennifer Polansky, and Robert Nolan star in a Ryan M. Andrews film.
Synopsis:
Two years into the outbreak, the remaining people struggle day to day for survival. With the infected more active at night, three people seek shelter in an empty home, but with supplies scarce, they’ll be lucky to make it out alive.
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