Grimmfest Interview with Threshold writer/co-director Patrick Robert Young and co-director Powell Robinson

Grimmfest’s first Easter Edition kicks off on the evening of Thur April 1st, 2021 with our preview night, and then continues across the evenings of 2-5 April, with a series of feature film premiere double bills with supporting shorts and Q&As with the cast & crew of each feature. In addition, there’ll be an exclusive pass holder double bill and an ARROW double bill both of which can be accessed any time across the weekend.

There’s so much to watch you won’t have time to get bored this Easter!

Sent by their mother to check on his sister, Virginia, who has a history of substance abuse, Leo discovers her in a state of disorientation, convinced that she has been cursed, and that in order to break the spell, they need to go in search of the man to whom she has been “bound”. He agrees to the trip with one caveat: if there’s nothing at their destination, she goes straight to rehab…

How did this idea begin, how did the project then develop?

Patrick: I actually had this idea back in high school, more than a decade ago and just kind of hip pocketed in it for a good long bit until the opportunity came up for us.

We spent a couple of years trying to get movies made through different studios, trying to find money for larger scripts and wanted to just kind of do something.

So I had this old idea about a couple who accidentally take a drug that combines them to somebody else, that they have to go find.

We really wanted to shoot something on the road, and I had this idea and we both latched on to it very personally and thought like, oh, well, we’ve worked in this horror space for a good long bit. That’s kind of where our interests have leaned the past 10 years or so of us working. So I go, how can we make this a little bit more scary? So…curse.

I read the film was shot on iPhones with a skeleton crew, what are the challenges and benefits of doing this?

Powell: I mean, honestly, it was mostly benefits for us on the road. We were able to steal every single location of the movie.

We didn’t have one permit by the end of it. Forty seven individual spots that we’ve stolen and not gotten kicked out of because people just thought we were like Youtubers or we were like travel bloggers. So we got all that. I mean we had tripods with two phones set up in cafés filming like coverage and no one said anything because they just thought we were blogging. So in terms of challenges, I mean I can do the really nerdy technical stuff. I can say the broader issues of phones aren’t made for extreme conditions. We were on mountaintops in wind chill.

I mean, the temperature was 11 degrees, but with the wind chill, it was much colder and the phones would freeze, the screens would stop working or we’d be down close to the border. And like we were filming in El Centro for a sequence and like the phones overheated.

Patrick: Also anyone could use them. I’m not a professional cinematographer like Powell, but we needed, just because of time and money, to run two cameras.

But the iPhone and specifically Filmic Pro the app we use to shoot in 4K is very intuitive and I could understand the basics.

Powell: What’s funny is we were able to get really creative, like there’s a shot in the movie where the phones in the middle of the highway and the car drives straight over it. which like you [would] have to have a really specialty rig on a bigger cinema camera to do. Another problem being there’s also no real rigging for iPhones. So, like, we had it propped up with two rocks and a credit card and like, you know, it was equal parts benefits and challenges.

How did you get into directing?

Powell: Well, what’s funny is we met in college and we were both in different programs. Patrick was in the screenwriting program and I was in the production program. And when you’re there, you kind of have to choose an emphasis. So initially I chose to emphasize in cinematography just because there were 400 kids or whatever, saying they all were going to be directors and like, that’s just not realistic.

So then we graduated and immediately wanted to make this movie Bastard, and we wanted to be the ones to direct it. And so we just kind of, you know, knew we were stronger together than apart. I’ve got to direct independent and commercial work.

And I do work as a DP, really.

Patrick: I mean, we realized very early on in our friendship that our tastes aligned really well and our working styles align very well. We feel in each other’s gaps.

How would you sell THRESHOLD in one sentence?

Patrick: It’s a very emotional road trip horror movie.

Powell: I second that entirely.

Were there any influences in how you approached THRESHOLD?

Powell: Yeah, I mean, COHERENCE a little bit.

Patrick: I mean, the main inspiration for realizing we could pull this off with iPhones was UNSANE. I’m not a literal text from Powell saying I may regret this, but I just saw UNSANE and II think we should do this on iPhone.

Then because there’s a lot of elements to this in that it’s a road trip movie, it’s improvised and shot on iPhones, it’s horror and cults. It’s a brother sister movie about estrangement. So there is a lot of things to pull from, a lot of it, mostly from our own lives. But certainly in the process, the things we looked at, movies like COHERENCE and some of Joe Swanberg’s work and Soderbergh and Matthew Cherry’s work with iPhones and whatnot.

We can’t wait for cinemas to be open again, what film would you love to see the guys at Grimmfest screen to a packed audience?

Patrick: I mean, I would die to see DEAD ALIVE with a massive audience or whatever, just something with balls to the wall splatter, just something extreme.

Powell: Yeah, I think one of my favorites I would love to see is the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, just because having missed out on getting to see it in a theater with people when it first came out because I wasn’t even a thought. That’s a dream.

Patrick: I would say and I know Powell shares my feelings on this, one of my favorite theater experiences ever. We saw, when we were in college, a prescreening of EVIL DEAD ‘13, the remake with a massive audience and is one of the most intense, amazing theater experiences I’ve ever had.

Powell: It was a tough call to not bring that one up. We watch that probably once a year together now with a group at Halloween.

What’s the best horror film you’ve seen for the first time recently?

Powell: We just got asked this, and POSSESSOR was my favorite one, actually.

Patrick: I log everything I watch. I guess recently ANNA AND THE APOCALYPSE. I didn’t expect the music or the horror stuff in it to be good, but it was fucking solid. A musical comedy horror coming of age. With Christmas. I missed it the first year it came out and was like ph, I’m not going to watch it if it’s not Christmas. And then I missed it again.

I’m glad you finally got to see it! That was a Grimmfest closing night film a few years ago, and it’s a shame that not enough people have seen it. I keep recommending it, what else can you do?

What have you got lined up next?

Powell: Yeah, this is the other question that we always want to do it no, just because we do have a lot of things that we’ve got written, like we’ve gotten multiple scripts that we both would love to make together, and we’ve got independent projects that we’re both trying to push to get made. But nothing that we can either talk about or is in a state like worth talking about.

Patrick: Instead we can point people to our first movie, which hasn’t been seen by a ton of people. BASTARD, a 2015 80’s throwback slasher with a lot of fun character stuff in it too that I would love more people to see.

Powell: Totally different than THRESHOLD. 20 years old, right out of college, living in a cabin in the woods together for like 15 days.

Interview by Sean Luby. Find out more and book your tickets HERE and check out the trailer below: