Interview by Rafy Mediavilla with “Dear David” director John McPhall about turning a spooky Twitter thread into a full-feature horror movie
Shortly after comic artist Adam (Augustus Prew) responds to Internet trolls, he begins experiencing sleep paralysis — while an empty rocking chair moves in the corner of his apartment. As he chronicles increasingly malevolent occurrences in a series of tweets, Adam begins to believe he is being haunted by the ghost of a dead child named David. Encouraged by his boss to continue the “Dear David” thread, Adam starts to lose his grip on what is online…and what is real. Based on the viral Twitter thread by BuzzFeed comic artist Adam Ellis.
Out in theaters, On Demand and Digital on October 13.
Criticólogos:
I know Adam was involved in writing the script, but I’m extremely curious because this is your version of his story, and he wrote the script with a little help. I wonder how involved was he in the project or did he give you a full range to do whatever you wanted to do with it?
John McPhail:
The script was written by Mike Van Waes and Evan Turner, but Make Van Waes was sort of like the lead writer on it, and he was writing it while it was all happening at the time. And so, it’s sort of taking about a dramatic license with the third act.
But Adam did help in the sense that I was asking him for loads of photographs of, like, the apartment because really wanted to get the apartment to have like a feeling of the original. So, he sent me loads of photographs, even just for furniture because obviously he’s been posting all of these different things online and being able to sort of get things that are sort of close or very similar to those like it was quite important to me.
Criticólogos:
I was glued to my screen while watching the screener, mostly because I was so curious about how, you know, it translated from text from Twitter basically to screen, which is a completely different medium. And I wonder how much of what you saw you translate it basically word by word. And what did you add to the story from what Adam already had?
John McPhail:
And one of the things I really sort of liked about this was that um, the like a love dreams and like I suffer from sleep psychosis myself, and trying to sort of translate that on a screen was like something that was really excited to do and really wanted to play with and things like that, you know, like, you know, that sort of in between dream and reality.
Just like obscured in the windows making this sort of everything sort of feel just a little bit off and odd. How I’m reading it and imagining it in my head was always like really important to sort of try and translate that onto the screen. The thing that I wanted to play with was like Adam Ellis as a person, you know, must have been, you know, could have been going through a really tough time at that time, you know, like, and that was always about it was always a guy who, as he had a mental breakdown or as what’s actually happening to him. Like that was the question I always wanted everybody to be asking themselves as he, you know, just, you know, just losing a little bit of control and, you know, in sort of needs to step away from the Internet and like, you know, like step away from everything at the moment. But through all that, all these kinds of external pressures, it’s just pushing down on and pushing down on them.
Criticólogos:
I want to talk about the cast. how was the chemistry in the set? Augustine carried the film but when you talk about Justin Long, Justin as such an iconic actor in the horror genre did he bring something to the table, did he tell you, hey, you should try this or that, or was everybody just following your lead?
John McPhail:
No, he like, like he totally got behind me. And I’m a very open director. Like, you know, I want my cast to come to me and talk to me about things like I want them to feel like involved in everything in that. And they’ve got a hand in these kind of things. Like, I don’t live and breathe the character. Don’t sit there and think about the character and try to get in their headspace. And if they tell me, John, I think like, don’t like the rhythm of this or don’t like this, like, see, as long as you’re not screwing my plot on, you go like, go for it, you know, and, and, you know, um.
Augustus, it was a real shame because we shot the end of this film fast. So, we had this set because we had the, um, we had this upstairs apartment set that we had to set on fire and then rebuild it to be the downstairs apartment. So, um, for the first two weeks, Augustus didn’t act with anybody apart from like, a ghost child and two cats. Like, do you mean, like, it was literally crying and screaming for two weeks? So, when the. When actually, he got actors to play with and like to come in and work with, I was like, he was so happy.
And seeing him like how they would get and how sort of like, you know, you know, just having a back and forward with an actor. It was like it was brilliant. It was so funny but felt so bad for him as well. Um, but yeah.
See the full interview below:
Trailer:
