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Love it or hate it, “elevated horror” has come to dominate the genre. Everywhere you look, there’s another movie that wrestles with a social ill by making its central monster an extension of that wrong or a manifestation of the trauma it causes. So it’s refreshing to hear that writer/director John Valley has modest aims for American Dollhouse, the slasher he premiered at SXSW.
“I’m drawing from a lineage of slasher films, starting with Psycho, Peeping Tom, Black Christmas,” Valley tells Den of Geek. “I’m obsessed with how minimalist a slasher can be, while still being a container for modern ideas. I stuck with the conventions and tropes, and kept telling everyone that we’re making a meat and potatoes slasher film, but we’re trying to find some new modern life in it.
American Dollhouse stars Hailley Lauren as Sarah, a troubled woman who hopes for a fresh start when she inherits her family home. However, her return to childhood roots gets disrupted by a disturbed neighbor, Sandy (Kelsey Pribilski), who insists that she continue the Christmas traditions started by her mother—whether she wants to or not.
Setting American Dollhouse in a family home allows Valley to find that depth in his slasher, while also keeping it grounded in the real world.
“The family aspect is how we keep the movie personal, because we find inspiration in our real lives,” he says. “We all have a family, one way or another. That ripples out to the whole movie in the way we’re all participating in polite society.
“There’s this weird paranoia and aggression in the air right now, given the state of the world. I thought there was an interesting link in the duality of family. Family is this thing that defines you, but we all try to rewrite our pasts. At the same time, society is trying to straighten us all out, even though we see all this carnage around us, and all these lies and hypocrisies.
“That’s what Sandy is about for me. She’s the personification of the perfect neighbor, and yet she has some dark secrets underneath.”
The revelation of Sandy’s dark secrets makes things bad for Sarah, but they provide a lot of fun for Pribilski.
“The first part of my journey with Sandy was figuring out her physicality, because I knew that was going to be a huge part of it,” says Pribilski. “In my mind, Sandy is a physical manifestation of Sarah’s trauma. Her trauma started as a young person, so Sandy is a young person intellectually and emotionally.
“So I first started thinking about how an eight-year-old would act. They’re a little bit more animated because we adults have learned to contain our reactions to be more socially acceptable and comfortable for the people around us. I had to know when it was okay to go a bit bigger, and John would tell me, ‘You’re like a grizzly bear!’
“We had to very carefully choose moments for me to go into grizzly mode, and that’s when Sandy was disassociating, like something else takes over and I’m just really focused on Sarah as my prized possession.”
While Pribilski was figuring out Sandy’s physical side, Lauren went more psychological for Sarah.
“One of the first things I wanted to do with Sarah was diagnose her trauma,” Lauren shares. “Then I could have a technical grounding point for her inner world, which I could overlay onto the script. There are lots of quiet moments where nothing is being said, but a lot was happening, so that had to be built out from inside for me.”
The emphasis on character described by Lauren and Pribilski doesn’t just affect the acting. It also informs the way that Valley designs the scares in American Dollhouse.
“I don’t think it’s about the spectacle or the kills, per se. It’s about serving the characters and making sure that you earn those big horror moments,” he explains. “On paper, those moments are pretty small and, in the edit, they happen kind of quickly. We don’t get to linger on them that much.
“But if you invest in the characters and let the actors really embody them, you’ll find the heart and soul of a scene. If you don’t constrict them too much, it feels like a full life and a full world.”
A full world is a lot to cover in one movie, which was also by design for Valley. “As part of celebrating the genre, I want this thing to function as if it could be part of a franchise. I don’t necessarily mean that I’m going to make 10 more of these—although, I had a great time working with everyone. Rather, it’s part of the design, putting stuff where it could feel like there could be a sequel or a prequel to expand the world.”
In most cases, a director already talking about sequels and prequels and a 10-part franchise sounds like big dreams and expansive plans. But as Valley’s comments reveal, it’s a basic part of horror filmmaking, the standard slasher model that American Dollhouse hopes to bring back to screens.
American Dollhouse premiered March 14 at the SXSW Film & TV Festival.
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