Variety

‘Stream’ Director Michael Leavy on Why Fandom Helps Indie Filmmaking and Assembling ‘the Avengers of Horror’ for His Hyper Gory Slasher

By Jack Dunn,

5 hours ago

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From drawing attention to its trailer online to buying tickets for complete strangers, a small army of horror die-hards is willing to do whatever it takes to support Michael Leavy’s “Stream,” in theaters now.

While genre buffs have been ride-or-die for Leavy since he appeared in “Terrifier,” they were more important than ever for his latest indie gore fest. After saving the production from folding to COVID, Leavy made them official members of the “Stream” Team by giving them producer credits as thanks.

“COVID hit us right in the middle of production and we had used all of our funds for PPE and the HEPA filters,” Leavy explained. “So we ended up saying, ‘Let’s bring this to the horror community.’ And we offered producer credits and things like that for anybody who wanted to get involved.”

“Stream” follows a family of four who goes on vacation to soothe their infighting. But after checking into their hotel, they soon discover they cannot leave and become pawns in a deadly game of cat and mouse broadcasted to the world.

Ahead of the release “Stream” on Aug. 21, Leavy sat down with Variety to discuss indie filmmaking, his love for gore and how he assembled the Avengers of horror.

Where did your love of gory, transgressive horror come from?

It’s funny — that started for me later in life. Growing up, I was a huge horror fan, but it was more of the classic stuff like “Halloween.” I like fun movies. I’m a big comedy guy as well. But it wasn’t until I met Damien Leone, director of “Terrifier,” when I was in my mid-20s that I was exposed to this more graphic, gory subgenre. Working with him and being a part of “Terrifier,” I got to really appreciate it and see how much fun it can be. Because it’s gory and it’s crazy and it’s absurd, but really it’s fantasy. It’s not like the Dahmer stuff where you feel like you need to take a shower afterward. You can have fun with it and I got to see how our fans had a great time with the kills. So it was later in life that I really got an appreciation for this kind of horror.

The trailer got tons of buzz, especially for an indie production. What was your reaction to the attention? Why do you think the response was so strong?

It was so surreal. You never know if something’s going to take off. As horror fans and cinema fans, we want to put stuff on the screen that we enjoy and want to see. We always are truthful to that, and I think if you’re honest with your filmmaking, people will gravitate towards it. So when we started seeing this thing roll, it was very reminiscent of what had happened to us with “Terrifier.” And our “Terrifier” fans are incredible. There’s this movement that’s going on all around the internet where our fans are buying tickets for people who can’t afford to see “Stream” in theaters. For strangers . It just shows how powerful and strong and passionate our fanbase is. But at the same time, it also shows that there’s a want and need for creative, new, fun, entertaining movies that they may feel the studios aren’t giving them right now.

How did you come up with the story for “Stream?”

My brother and I wanted to do a slasher and I kept saying, “I want to modernize the slasher genre.” You’ll see the feels. It’s got an ’80s feel, it’s got a ’90s feel — but it also deals with technology, which is something new. And we kept saying, “Okay, well, what worked in these horror films that we love?” For “Jaws,” it was a day at the beach and you flip it on its head. You take safe spaces and expose them. “Halloween,” it was the neighborhood. With “Nightmare on Elm Street” it was dreams and the sleeping cycle. “Friday the 13th,” it was the camp. So we said, “What is something that everybody has a connection to and everybody uses?” And that is technology. Their phones, their computers, the internet. So that’s where the root of it was, but we wanted it to be a true slasher in its nature and not rely on the technology. There are some movies where everything’s shot with the phone: first-person found footage stuff. We didn’t want to do that. We wanted to make it a classic film where you can still have those feels as if you’re watching a movie back in the ’80s, but with more modern topics.

You brought together an all-star crew of horror filmmakers for “Stream,” reuniting with Damien Leone and David Howard Thornton and recruiting Jeffery Combs and Danielle Harris for the cast. How did this team come together?

Fans are calling it the Avengers of horror or the Expendables of horror. We never set out to do that. We set out to get the best actors for the roles we could find. There were a few that we targeted — obviously, being horror fans. Jeffrey Combs is unbelievable. I’m biased of course, but I think this is one of his top three performances. And, obviously Danielle Harris. Then eventually it became like, “Oh, wow, there’s a really big horror cast here.” The fanboy kind of came out. What was awesome was we got Tim Reed from “Sister, Sister” and “WKRP in Cincinnati.” He doesn’t do horror. He only has done one horror in his whole life. It was Stephen King’s “It” in the 1990s when he was a big TV star at the time and he never did horror again. But he read the script and he really enjoyed it. He said, “There’s some heart to this story. There’s some character development that you don’t usually see in slashers. I’m in.” And that’s how we got him. The story convinced a lot of people to jump on board.

You’ve directed, written and starred in several indie horror features. How do you balance out the fun, schlocky, camp moments with the horror so that the film is still taken seriously?

You gotta have people around that you can trust and lean on for advice, and know when to take advice and when not to. You have to go with your instincts for sure. Coming from a background where I like horror, I like comedy, I always try to have a little bit of comedy in our films. But I have a rule: the characters always have to take themselves seriously or the scares and the comedy don’t work. If they’re aware of their situation, it could become nauseating. It becomes very spoofy. If that’s the kind of film you want to make, great. I don’t think that works for me personally. I like my films to always have a roller coaster ride. I like to have some laughs. I want you to be scared. I want you to jump. I want you to cheer. I want you to boo. I want you to get excited and invigorated. I want some action and some good dialogue and romance.

How d id you come up with the kills for “Stream ?”

You try to do things that you haven’t seen before, or at least try to do them in a slightly different way. Also having Damien Leone in your corner, you can bounce things off him. He has a twisted mind and he’s a lot of fun to talk with. Damien always did this with “Terrifier”: researching medieval torture or serial killers. You got to put yourself in a weird place, for sure, but then you got to pull back and say, “Okay, how can we do this in a tasteful way?” Even though it is gory, we do try to do things tastefully, if that makes sense. There’s still respect for it in a certain way. You don’t go too far.

So once you have the kills planned out, what is it like actually executing them on set?

That’s where you start getting the real pros like Damien and Phil and Steve Della Salla with the camera. It’s everything in unison. It’s the lighting, it’s the camera, it’s the effects, it’s the body parts, it’s the pieces. It’s really an art form. No one understands how difficult it is to pull off stuff like that. So there’s that process, and then you start seeing it come together and you start getting excited because you’re like, “Wow, this is working.” Then the editing room is another process too. Should it go faster? Should it go slower? But the best part of it all, I have to tell you, is when the audience reacts to it. If they get a reaction like you want, that’s the most satisfying thing right there. And you can say, “Wow, we did it.”

In what ways does the indie horror scene differ from the mainstream movie industry?

It is quite different from the big studio films because you have to get boots on the ground. It is very grassroots. We love going out there and connecting with our fan base. We love going out and talking with them. They inspire us to keep going and to keep upping our game. You have to do that because you don’t have all this money to get to the masses. The only way you can do that is really connecting with them and sitting down and talking with them. They’re fans just like us. I think the studios don’t understand that. They kind of just see them as dollars. They see them as numbers. We’re very, very accessible to our fan base. We like to listen to them and we try to incorporate that into our work.