Family Filmmaker & Star On The Real Horror Of Family Drama And Autobiographical Storytelling [SXSW]

One of the best trends in recent horror cinema continues with Family, which just premiered at South By Southwest. Written and directed by Ben Finkel in his feature debut, the horror drama centers on Johanna, an 11-year-old girl who has just moved across the country with her parents as her father undergoes medical treatment to deal with his declining condition. When the lonely protagonist calls out into the universe for a good spirit to bring her family better tidings, she inadvertently invites a more terrifying entity into her home.

Fleishman is in Trouble star Cameron Dawson Gray leads the Family cast alongside The Woman in the Wall‘s Ruth Wilson, The Nevers‘ Ben Chaplin, Tár‘s Allan Corduner, and Winning Time‘s Beauden McConnell. Following in the footsteps of such acclaimed horror dramas as Hereditary and Relic, Finkel mines one of the most emotional chapters of his own life to craft a moving and chilling affair.

In honor of the movie’s SXSW premiere, Screen Rant‘s Kevin Polowy interviewed writer/director Ben Finkel and star Cameron Dawson Gray to discuss Family. Finkel opens up about making his directorial debut with the horror-drama, including his concerns about some of the logistics of the movie, as well as developing the personal story from his own life. Gray shared how her frequent reading of the script led to being desensitized to some of the movie’s scares, with the duo also sharing their feelings on the supernatural.

Family Is A Very “Personal Film” For Finkel (& He Spent A Long Time Developing It)

Screen Rant: Give it up for Team Family! Ben, Cameron, congrats on this film. It is a chilling, chilling film to watch, from scaring us literally in the first 30 seconds from the tortured screams you hear off-screen before cooling it down and letting us catch our breath. Ben, tell us a little bit about the origins of this creepy, creepy tale.

Ben Finkel: Thank you so much. It started like eight years ago, when I started writing the film, and it’s a personal film. It’s based on my life. My dad had cancer while I was growing up, and he passed away when I was 14. It’s just sort of taking that experience. I wanted to do a movie that just really captured the emotional reality of that experience in a fun sort of throwing way. Because going through that, it’s like going through this insane organism, you feel like you’re traveling through this spirit that’s just moving through you and your family, and everyone becomes sick. The illness just sort of travels around and sort of possesses everyone, and that’s what we’re trying to do.

I was gonna ask you about the autobiographical element, because just in its title, I was like, “There has to be some reality in the story.” The Hollywood name for this would have been The Birdfeeder.

Ben Finkel: I like the brutality of the word, fa-mi-ly. It’s one of those words if you just say it enough times over and over again, it loses its meaning. And it becomes like this weird, almost medieval-sounding word. [Laughs]

Cameron, tell us how you experienced it. Because we’re, as viewers, watching it. We’re gonna have a very visceral experience, but you came on as an actor reading the script. Did it read pretty chilling on the page for you?

Cameron Dawson Gray: It definitely did. I remember it was very late into the audition process when I actually read the script. Before, I just had like three scenes. But I read it enough times that it definitely lost its edge just for me, just because I had read it so many times. But, no, it’s very creepy. Good job. [Chuckles]

What was your experience like watching it? Can you detach from your involvement in it? Can you get scared watching your own film?

Cameron Dawson Gray: I was definitely scared at points. Although I like seeing the dog puppet, I didn’t remember it looking that scary.

Ben Finkel: You did some amazing screams. You got really good at that.

Cameron Dawson Gray: Thank you, it took a lot of patience. But, no, I remember a lot of the time I was watching it, I was just going back to the specific moment, and I was like, “Ooh, it was really hot that day,” or, “Oh, I remember the cameraman was running back, I was hoping he didn’t trip.”

The Audition Process To Find Gray Was Very Important To Finkel

What can you share about the audition process of finding Cameron?

Ben Finkel: Absolutely, I mean, this movie on paper is impossible. It’s a really small, first-time film about a kid, starring a child, and then with animals and special effects and horror, and all these things. The thing that terrified me going into it was how do you find someone who can do a role that is sort of carrying the movie and really this monumental amount of emotion going through them? We looked at a lot of people who were really wonderful.

Cameron came in, I saw her when she was nine years old, and instantly it was like, “Oh my God, there’s Johanna.” And she just came in really fully formed, and I just sort of stepped back, and I think my only direction here was just like, “Just breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.” [Laughs] But, it was just an absolute relief and pleasure to find someone who was able to do this, because we were really worried about that for a long time.

You talked about this a little bit, but I want to dive in a little deeper. The tonal balance you strike here, because this film does really function beautifully, simultaneously as both a drama and a horror. It really pulls you into Joanna’s world and really makes you care. How tough is that as a filmmaker to strike that tonal balance?

Ben Finkel: It’s really interesting, because I think that culturally, American films generally don’t take the experiences of children that seriously. What I wanted to do with this film was take the emotions and the reality of a child really seriously. Because I think that there’s maybe the strongest emotions you even have. Stronger even than the emotion that you have as an adult, those are the things that sort of stay with you. It was about, for me, at least, thinking about that experience. I think there’s a lot of movies that track the progress of an illness or adversities. And some of them are wonderful, but a lot of them are sort of greatest hits of the logistics of going through.

I wanted to get something that got at the emotional reality of going through it. And that, to me, felt like a horror film. So, for me, the important thing was the horror isn’t this thing that we’re wrapping the drama in, and the drama unfurls. You see that her reality, the reality she’s going through, is a horror movie. That is the real thing, the horror wasn’t stuff that I wanted to just sprinkle through. It was like that was the point. The point was the horror of the situation that you can’t get out of being in this sweating room with the parents, and that you learn a fact that changes your world, and you can’t take it back.

Gray & Finkel Don’t Quite Believe In The Supernatural (But Have Specific Fears)

Cameron, let’s start with you on this question. Do you believe in the supernatural? Because there are two types of people in the world, some are like, “No, no, it doesn’t exist,” some people are like, “No, I’ve had experiences.”

Cameron Dawson Gray: I’ve never really believed that much in the supernatural. There’s always things that remind me of elements of that, and I don’t know if zombie is a kind of supernatural, but I’ve always had a pretty annoying kinemortophobia. I mean, there are logistical ways I think that the apocalypse can happen. But now I’m getting off-topic, so I should probably shut up. [Laughs]

Have you ever had any supernatural experiences, Ben?

Ben Finkel: Thank God, no. I’m terrified of that. I don’t believe in it, but I believe enough stuff out there, because I’m just absolutely terrified. I really hope I never see a ghost, and I never see an alien. Because I will go full bore into that if I do, and I will be out there, 100%, wearing those tinfoil hats. I’m ready for that, but I hope it never happens, because I’m very glad to live in a real world. [Chuckles]

About Family

11-year-old Johanna’s world is falling apart. She’s just moved across the country for her father Harry’s medical treatment, and as her father declines and her mother Naomi is consumed with caring for him, Johanna feels horribly alone. In desperation, she makes a call out into the universe for a good spirit to save her family. But as the long summer days wear on, and a series of increasingly disturbing events rips through her home, she begins to fear that something else has come instead — a terrifying presence from some dark corner of the universe that has latched on to her family and is now eating them from the inside.